Apparently there was a good grandma in my life, but she died before I could put too much of her to memory. There are a couple of things though that I have of her to keep her with me, and I hold them close when I call on her in her pretend heaven to watch over my children. I know she is long gone and nothing is there to hear me now, but I know if she were there, and if she could, that she would do her part to keep them safe when they are not with me. It makes me feel better.

She gave me a stuffed bear when I was three years old who I called Ben. I still have him, and yeah, he is still a "him" to me, and not an "it." He's had so many tears cried and kisses squished into his lopsided head that I am sure he's been soaked and hugged to the proverbial "real," somehow. Too bad he is in a box in the attic, but the rest will do him good because even as an adult I dragged him around with me while I wandered, I like him that much. So, he had been my companion for a long time, much longer I think than the usual stuffed bear signs on for.

He used to talk, and in his belly there is still the apparatus that carried his recordings, and when I pick him up he rattles; his eyes were little moving discs inside flat, round, plastic eyeballs, and are now stuck amblyoptic-like; and many surgeries later, different colored thread hold his skinny old man limbs on. In the early days, I would give him makeovers, and there is still the tiniest bit of blue liptick around his matted fur mouth that looks like scabs to be picked away ~ I don't do that though, even now. Blue lipstick? I can prove that people really wore that. Or maybe it was just stuffed bears, I don't know.

I now call the grandma Rachel, which was her name so that is a good thing, but I don't call her grandma which is kind of funny.

There is one time I remember standing up in the backseat of her car with the windows all down, while she was driving I saw her stretch her neck up to look at me in the rearview mirror, and she was smiling. She was taking me to the A&W, and while it probably wasn't a drive just for that, there were probably errands involved, I do remember root beer, hot dogs, and a happy older woman who wasn't my mom who liked her place in the world; which was, in part, eating lunch at a drive-in with me.

There is one other time I remember when there was an Easter egg hunt at an old folks home, and I was in a white and yellow frilly dress, ankle socks, and white patent leather shoes. I was running around with some kids in the yard gathering eggs and other booty, and I held up something so Rachel could see it from where she was sitting. She was in a chair at the window of the home even though she wasn't old, she had on a grey robe that I am sure wasn't really that color -- she was too pinkish and bright to wear something like that -- but I remember it as grey anyway. She waved when I showed her whatever it was that I found.

And sadly, the last thing I have of these things that I keep like pearls and gold in the child's memory box of my hippocampus is drawing a picture of her for my mom and dad while I stayed with a neighbor and they were gone to her funeral. On a piece of paper with a crayon, I put Rachel in the ground with an arc of dirt drawn over, and a cross stuck in the mound to mark her there; her eyes closed, and body positioned in a horizontal eternal rest.

When I am homemaking with cooking and cleaning, I often wear her blue and white little dutch people apron on the days my own pink one with windmills and tulips is in the wash. Fearing sometimes as I wipe my hands on it that I may wear it too thin and it will at some point fall to pieces; but then, when I untie it it feels so sturdy as I fold it to put it back in the drawer, knowing it'll be there the next time I need it, longlasting and sure.

And I think it would make her happy that I have it on doing my generation's version of her work, and enjoying it, feeling grateful as I pour treasure into another child's memory that maybe they too will one day recollect times with me of goodness and safety.