JUST LEAVE THE DISHES

"Just leave the dishes. It'll give me something to do after you've gone," my paternal grandmother repeated every time we got ready to depart after a short visit. I felt guilty driving away, knowing she was faced with a sink loaded with dirty dishes. It's only after decades have passed that I understand.

Grandmother was one of those women long ago who never received the attention she deserved. She never expected nor sought it either. Grandmother was like everyone else, trying to get by in this old world and making the best of it along the way.

Born in 1900, she would live for 88 years. Her parents, who were farmers in East Texas, raised three children. Grandmother was born with one leg significantly shorter than the other. She stood under five feet tall and wore a built-up shoe that still didn't correct the discrepancy in leg lengths. Since she was considered "crippled," Grandmother never received the college education to become a teacher, as her siblings were allowed. Instead, she married early and birthed 7 children. Six children would live long lives, with the oldest dying in childbirth. The oldest surviving child, my father would live the longest, passing from this life at age 91. All the children were born and raised on a farm where my grandfather worked as a hired hand. It was a hard life. Yet, Grandmother never complained about the life she led.

Grandmother had a natural gift for playing the piano by ear. After hearing it once, she could belt out a hymn or a favorite song. Grandmother's voice was slightly unpleasant and high-pitched, but she could sing in tune. The piano playing was thrilling to hear.

After her children were older, the house Grandmother lived in was near the cotton fields and a cotton gin, where my grandfather worked as the night watchman. My father picked cotton in those fields when the labor union would go on strike at the Phillips 66 plant a hundred miles away. If you've ever tried picking cotton, you know how hard it is. When my father wasn't picking cotton, he was schlepping five-hundred-pound bales of cotton onto trucks. 

Their home had two bedrooms, a small living room with the ever-present piano, and a tiny kitchen big enough for a table with a couple of chairs. My grandfather died of a heart attack in 1955 when I was barely 6, so my memory of him is almost non-existent. Shortly after my grandfather died, a bus ticket to our town 100 miles away was found on his dresser. Grandfather had planned to visit my younger brother, Timothy Raymond, the first of the grandchildren to carry his name.

My grandmother lived for over 30 years by herself in that house. She worked in the laundry at a local hotel and walked two miles round trip every day. For many of those years, there was no bathroom in the house. An outhouse stood on the other side of Grandmother's bountiful garden at the far end of her lot. I remember being warned about the snakes that liked to hang out around the Outhouse. Every time I sat on the toilet, I feared a snake would slither out of the big hole and bite me. However, when you gotta go, you gotta go, so I shoved those fears aside and opened the door to the Outhouse to relieve myself. Grandmother placed a chamber pot in the middle of the floor for nighttime use in each bedroom. That porcelain pot could get mighty cold in an unheated house in the middle of the night. I was the lucky grandchild who got to sleep with my grandmother when we visited. She loved to tell me stories before we drifted off to sleep. Even though decades have passed, I can still remember my grandmother's fascinating stories told in a singsong, high-pitched voice.

The tiny kitchen was a place for our Saturday night baths. A number three washtub would be brought inside. Water would be heated on the stove and poured into the tub. Three children would use that same bathwater, and you would always want to be the first. Alas, I never seemed to get to be the first, as the oldest earned those honors.

My father and an uncle would eventually build my grandmother a bathroom and install a hot water tank, although she was not sure this would make her life any better. Grandmother soon discovered that a bathroom with a toilet and bathtub was heaven on earth.  

She would regale me with stories of her life on the farm, riding in mule-driven wagons, friends living in neighboring farms, and the joy her children gave her. One story was about losing their chickens. They depended on chickens for eggs and as a source of meat. Losing them meant going without food. They looked everywhere for the chickens to no avail. A friend told her about a woman who lived several miles away and had a "gift" of seeing things that others couldn't "see."  Grandmother paid her a visit. The woman described where they could find their chickens. And that's precisely where they were located. My grandmother became a believer in psychics.

A cellar on her lot was used to store canned food from the garden. Her shelter under the ground served as a place of refuge during storms. During those days, a fierce storm would be announced on the radio station, and you just knew to make a run for the cellar. I spent many evenings hunkered down on a tiny bed, wondering if we would emerge to a flattened house. The house always survived, as did the occupants. My grandmother must have spent some lonely times alone in that place, but I imagine she never gave much thought to how alone she really was.

My husband and I stopped by her house on our way back to Dallas after visiting my parents once with our three-year-old daughter. We had not been there long when I heard a man's voice shouting and crying from my grandmother's bedroom. Grandmother apologized for the noise and explained that she was taking care of him. He needed her, which gave her Life meaning to care for someone else. I judged her taking care of what was probably an old drunk that day, but I wouldn't today. It didn't change that she was my beloved grandmother, but it would be a few more years before I visited her with my child.

Grandmother had a massive stroke when she was 87, leaving her in a semi-coma and eventually unconscious. I saw her shortly after her stroke, and for a few brief moments, she knew who I was by my voice. She had told me that she never wanted to live in a nursing home, yet that's where she lived for the last year. I don't think she ever knew where she was that last year.

This weekend my daughter and her family came for a visit. We had lunch at my house, and a pile of dishes was left in the sink. When my daughter tried to clean the kitchen, I told her, "Just leave the dishes. It'll give me something to do after you're gone."  What I didn't say and what my grandmother never told me was, "Life is too fleeting. I want to spend every second with you without doing any chores. Just to be in your presence, to play with the children, to watch them, to look in your face, to have you near me––all those things bring me more joy than you can imagine.

Just leave the dishes.