My 101 year old grandmother, still living in her own apartment in New York City with her entire sharp mind and even sharper mouth, insists on me taking her down the 5 flights of stairs (by the elevator which happened to be working that day…) out to the street so she can see my truck in person.
My grandmother who has trouble seeing and hearing, points a gnarled shakey finger at the side of my truck that I’m trying to make a huge arc around to not get too close but somehow she can see it. Like claiming hard-of-hearing when I was young, and mad at her so running the vacuuum while grumbling softly how much I couldn’t stand her. The next thing I know, she’s telling my mom what she heard.
“What is my name doing on your truck?” she curtly demands, her shrunken eyes shooting daggers in my direction. “Take my name off that truck right now!” she continues demanding.
“But Granny,” I try to reason “You said this and I think it is so very important for people around this country to hear you.”
I have painted a direct quote from my Granny a week or so after 9/11 when she called me in California, insisting I “take the babies and flee the country.” Even though there were no more babies but only young adults in our lives. She recounts again how she tried to convince her husband, my grandfather, to ‘take the babies’ and leave Germany way back in the early 1930’s. She insists the same thing is happening again, here in this country.
I feel it too, the loud, blind nationalistic violent, uncontrolled energy and evidence everywhere around us, even outside New York. I am alarmed by the fear and panic in her voice and so trying to reassure her, I tell her about the new group of womxxn I’ve hooked up with: CodePINK: Womxxn for Peace who are fighting every day to prevent war and bring peace to our country.
Instead of feeling mollified or in any way placated, she insists again, saying “Granddaughter: the world wants peace; but a few men want to be very rich.” That was two years ago, when she was 99. This is what I have painted in quotes on my truck with her name and age next to it.
I wheel her quickly around to the other sides of the truck, saying with my fingers crossed behind my back that I will take her name off my truck as soon as the weather is warm enough for me to repaint it.
Other than that, she smiles broadly, as if she’s proud of me – but it is not in her nature to tell me so.
