the pink balloon

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I came to this family late, to know Leanne’s grandma Rena and have her as my grandmother late in both our lives.

But I’ve spent the past 12 years spending more time with her than I ever spent with my parents’ parents.  I’ve spent the past 12 years not only being with her every time we came out, but being with Leanne all the time.  And being with Leanne oftentimes means being with Rena…because she talked with her or about her all the time.

I don’t think I knew anyone as close to their grandma as Leanne was to Rena.  It was like I’d read about in books.  And somehow her memories of Rena have in a way become my own.  I can almost be there in the room when Rena would make grilled cheese with the crusts cut off or made little parties every new years eve or pick her up from school when she was sick or it was a snow day.  I’ve heard these stories so many times that I can create visuals for things that never happened to me, like stories our parents tell about us before we had memories.

What a gift.

I’m not going to say that I didn’t have grandparents, I did.
But not really.

Not like Milt Kolman.
Not like Rena Kolman.

I mention them in a pair now because, for me, with Rena’s death then the couple dies.  In a way Milton was still around while Rena was here the past two years.  They were still here.  The same American flags outside their front door, the same message on the answering machine, the same chair in the living room, the same “no kvetching” sign hanging from the wall above their two-seater kitchenette.

She brought him with her like a purse….on trips to the dollar store, to gymboree where she’d buy clothes for Lydia that lee nor I would ever buy, to wal-mart where she pushed her own cart and searched for some new kind of sugar-free candy, trips down to the cafeteria where liddy would ride on her walker, or to the pizza place in the mall, or dunkin donuts for her bagel sandwich, to boscov’s to search for an outfit that she’d probably end up returning, or how I’d drive her back to her apartment sometimes in ira’s big American car with a bench seat, fold her walker and put it in the trunk, lift her legs up and put them in the car, stretch the seatbelt across her and make it click, give her a kiss on her forehead just because.

I started out just now talking about her and ended up talking about me.

See that?

Rena did that all the time.
She made me, made us, all of us, feel important.

Both of my grandmas carried the weight and aftermath of the depression on their chests.  They wore it like a heavy cloak.  They used to put that cloak on me.

Rena never did.

She was simple and sweet and she liked to laugh.
She’d cackle, actually.

I used to ask her questions she didn’t want to answer and Lee would chastise me.  But I got them anyway sometimes.  The answers.

That’s right, she’d say.
And then I’d say it mocking her.
And she’d laugh and I’d laugh.
We did a lot of that.
Her saying something, then me saying something, then both of us laughing.

I’d crank call her pretending to be a taxi driver from India saying that I was told I could stay at her house.

And she’d fudge for a bit, exasperated, and honestly worried that she might disappoint this strange man….and then I’d start laughing.

And she’d laugh.

Like that.

My Dannyboy, she’d say.
And I was.

Tell me something in Yiddish, I’d say.
Gay gazunta hay, she’d say.
What does that mean?
Go in good health.

Oh, I’d say.  Thanks.

You want to learn something in Spanish?
Sure.
Lame mi codo.  Say it:  la-may mee co-dough.
Law-mee co-dee.  What is that?
That means “lick my elbow”.
Ha!
Ha!

You’re mishugganah!
What?
Mishugganah.
What’s that?
Crazy.

Ha!
Ha!

It wasn’t all funny stuff, but a lot of it was.  We talked about being lonely too and missing Milt and she’d cry and I’d commiserate with her and hug her and offer, if I was there, to take her to suburban house and get her a bagel 3-ways and then have her wonder what she ordered when the waiter put it down in front of her.

And sometimes we didn’t talk.  We’d miss each other’s calls and leave messages for each other.  I remember her message to us after Leanne had beaten cancer.  “Have a drink on me.  Make it a chocolate soda.”

A month or two ago I gave Lydia her first camera.  She ran up and down the block taking pictures.  On Tuesday morning we decided to send a card to GG in the rehab hospital.  I asked Liddy to pick out which picture to send…and she picked out the picture she snapped of a single pink balloon floating in the air in our front yard.

It reminded me of the book so many of us read when we were kids.  The Red Balloon.  That one splash of color that transcended the dullness of life.  GG was that color….for me, for so many of us.

I put the picture in an envelope and Liddy and I biked to the mailbox and I watched as she dropped it in.  We decided that we wanted to balloon to have enough helium in it to lift GG up.  It was the first letter that she sent all by herself.

I dropped Liddy off at school and biked back home.  And when I got home, GG was dead.

But the balloon was already on its way.
And so was she.

To somewhere, a place where Milton is waiting for her with a blow dryer in one hand and a bouquet of Lucite flowers.

And to both of them I say
Gay gazunta hay
And
“Have a drink on me.  Make it a chocolate soda”.

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