My
Grandmother Roberts lived in or around Sulphur Springs, Texas for over
70 years. When she was widowed and all her children had moved away, she
stayed put. We saw her for a few days every summer, and one year all the
kids and grandkids convened at Aunt Gwen's house in Garland to have
Christmas with her, but that was it. Every year she sent me a birthday
card with a dollar bill and a stick of Wrigley's chewing gum in it. A
move to a house on Aunt Anna's property in Wimberley was short-lived.
She returned to Sulphur Springs and stayed there until she died. She
rented rickety frame houses -- the kind they used to move on flatbed
trailers -- and clung to her stuff: a kitchen safe, a chiffarobe, boxes
of ancient telegrams. It smelled old. She had extension cords plugged
into
the kitchen light bulb socket. She wrote long letters with a fountain
pen, wore out a King James Bible, listened to her Zenith table radio,
and sat on her front porch and watched the cars, people, and weather go
by. She kept a bottle of wine around for medicinal purposes, stashed
under the sink behind the Bab-O so the preacher wouldn't see it when he
came to call. She stayed there, and she stayed, and she stayed.
She
was the only one of my grandparents still living when I was born, so
this is all of the grandparent/grandchild experience I've known. I see a
lot of her in my own makeup, and that's okay. I came by it honestly.
She died on this date in 1976, six days after her 91st
birthday. My brother and I drove to Sulphur Springs to bear the pall. She's still there. She stayed there.
13 June 2011
