Grace

On my birthday I called my Aunt Grace. She is my godmother, my mother’s sister, 20 years older than me, and the last living elder woman in my family. She gives me a feeling of being parented and I reciprocate with care for her because we share so much — so much more than we can talk about. There’s no time left in our lives for that much history. So we focus on the present. Hi, how are you? I’m just fine, how are you? I tell her she sounds strong. She says, I have to be. Emotion ripples through me as I make a note of her tone. I hear the inference. My uncle is watching TV a few feet from her while she talks to me on her phone. He is not well. She will be 90 in May, they are the same age, and she is his caregiver. Has always been. The notion of lifelong caregiving strikes me as something inherently female. We don’t talk about it. That’s how deeply embedded in our lives caregiving is. It’s been expected of us since we were born.

They are from Wisconsin, but they have a home in Florida on a lake that used to be surrounded by orange groves. When they first bought it, the drive to their house was a lovely meandering country road. Now the orange groves have become suburbs. The houses are packed together, and their three-acre lot on the lake is the last homestead. She tells me that soon the last orchard will become a new subdivision of a hundred homes. I think about the lake and the land and the impact of a hundred new homes on the environment. But I don’t say anything. She has enough to think about with my uncle’s decline, and I don’t want to go negative. We both know time changes everything.

I ask about her gardens. She wants to take a picture of them while we’re talking and send it to me. As she goes outside, she says, oh, something just moved under the boathouse. What is it, I ask. Probably just an alligator, she says. I immediately imagine the giant leather lizard with his snapping jaws chasing my tiny aunt across the lawn. She could disappear into bone salad before my uncle even realizes she is missing. I’m so spooked. Maybe you should go back inside, I say. Alligators can move really fast. Only at first, she says. They’re not really that fast. I’m going to take a picture and I’ll call you back. 

While I wait, I poke voodoo pins into that alligator to protect her. The picture she takes is mostly of the big old trees in her yard bearded with Spanish moss. When she calls me back, she says, I love those trees. Oh, yes, I say. I love old trees, too. In my head I’m reminded, this is our DNA. We love old trees. We witness them. We talk about them. We try to keep them. They make us feel stronger because they are still here after all they’ve been through. They are like us. Survivors. We are like them. Old. Winter hardy.

There is a knock at her door. It’s the neighbor come to shut off the broken pipe in the garage that’s blasting water across the floor because my uncle hit the pipe with his golf cart. The role of my uncle is shifting. He is beloved, so we don’t talk about it. The future is understood. A given. I tell her how it makes me feel good to hear her voice. She replies, I’m fine. I hear the statement, the great wall around her emotions, the resignation and acceptance. He was her boyfriend in eighth grade. They were a couple in high school together and married soon after. They have been lifelong lovers and best friends. Her commitment to him is her life’s work. An act of love. I used to think it was her whole identity, but now I hear the bifurcation in her voice, and I remember how I felt when my husband died, the realization that I am me, not us. 

She has to thank the neighbor. I hear his cheerfulness. When she returns to our conversation, I tell her I noticed his Southern accent. She says, oh, I know, don’t you just love that Georgia voice. We’re so lucky to have such good neighbors. I tell her I’m happy to hear they are doing so well, and she assures me that they are. She asks my uncle to say hello to me. He asks, who is it. She says, Billie. He says, Hello, Billie, and then goes back to his TV. This is how her life is now, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Caregiving is the meaning and the message, her beliefs in action, her word. I admire that. I admire that she stands strong in the place she’s chosen. She could have photographed anything in her house, but she sent me a picture of her old trees, and I can relate. She sees herself in them. Endurance. Grace.