The cell phone rang Monday afternoon as we were driving home from our week-end trip to St. George, Utah. I opened the phone and my son's name appeared. I held the phone to my ear and said, "yes?"

"Mom, where are you?" asked my son, sounding very serious and businesslike.

"Where are we?" I whispered to my husband.

"In the Cajon Pass," he answered, looking at me curiously.

"In the Cajon Pass." I replied.

"I have bad news, Grandpa died about a half an hour ago."

I turned to my husband and repeated the sad news.

"Your father has passed away." I said a few words to my son and hung up the phone.

"Are you okay?" I asked my husband.

"Yes. I was prepared," he said.

Indeed, my husband and I had talked in depth about the high probability that his father would not live much longer after his mother passed away. They would have been married 62 years this July. In fact, we often thought that with his own health issues, my father-in-law was just waiting it out until his beloved wife was gone.

It has only been two weeks since my mother-in-law had passed away and, in fact, the funeral services were originally scheduled for Wednesday, but were cancelled so arrangements could be made for both services to be held on the same day; it only seemed fitting that they have one final celebration together.

People have asked if my father-in-law had been ill and I have answered, that, "no, not really." However, one cannot expect someone to live forever and he had managed a long life, spending the last few years caring for his wife until he could no longer do so, and then, being by her side until the end, two weeks ago.

My father-in-law had turned 90 in September, on the 17th, the same date my son, his only grandson was born 33 years ago. My father-in-law was 57 when my son was born; I'm 57 now. Time does fly.

When thinking about the cause of death, some have speculated that he may have caught pneumonia, others say it was old age. Me? I think it was a broken heart that was never, ever, going to be the same again.

“I understand you like your hair, it’s just that your hair doesn’t like you as much,” consoled Kenney, my partner and coiffure for the past fifteen years.
I have, for the last couple of years, forced myself into the ever popular “crafty comb over” as to hide the increasing amount of skin that has been materializing on the top of my head. “And what is your remedy for this blight of my mother’s father’s DNA that has been so inconveniently passed onto me?”
“I believe we should take the proactive approach and remove it all before it gets the better of you and your self esteem,” he suggested
“Like in a western movie and cut it off at the pass, so to speak,” I replied.
“Yeah, just like that,” he added looking at me as if I’d fallen to Earth from another planet. “There are other remedies you could embrace, but they’ve all got their own drawbacks.”
“Fill me in, oh mighty one, by the way, when did you become the source book on male pattern baldness?”
“We’re bombarded by it. Open your eyes and you get more information than you can shake a hair spray can at,” he advised. “Your options are; Hair Club for Men, Rogaine, fake color spray to cover the shine, and the worst of all choices, a toupee.”
As I contemplated these future tortures, my mind wandered back to an earlier time, a hairier time, a time when I was twenty-two years old and riding in my convertible Triumph Spitfire with my hair whipping around my head like a cowboy’s lariat at a rodeo. The radio was blasting songs from the musical Hair and I sang the lyrics as if I had written them,

Give me a head of hair,
long beautiful hair.
Throw it, show it, long as I can grow it,
my hair.

The clippers whirring shocked me back into reality, “So I can have thousands of little hairs removed from the back of my head and planted like rice shoots on top. I could use a chemical that causes the dreaded ED and what’s the use of looking sexy when you can’t do anything about it. There’s painting my scalp, or running around looking like a Rip Taylor wanna be throwing confetti, those are my choices?”
“That’s all that modern science has to offer,” he informed. “I think that you’ve chosen the safest option.”
But time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like bananas, so I realized the truth of the matter and understood I no longer had my long auburn locks to comb, brush, or throw back off my face. Knowing this, I instructed Kenney, “Set the clippers to one inch and separate me from the cylindrical kerantinized pigmented filaments that grow from my epidermis and be done with this malady of my increasing age.”
“Not to worry, and now you can quit using the joke about not going bald but getting taller than your hair that you’ve beaten to death.”
As he began the buzz cut, I watched as the newly graying hairs fell from my head onto the floor. As they hit they were mixed with the tears of days remembered and the youthfull joy of the long strands that I prized so much.
I realized what goes around, comes around and remembered the pictures of me, at seven, when Ma had my chignon carelessly crafted into a butch haircut to keep maintenance at a minimum. I smiled at the fact that before long I’ll be as bald as a baby in a crib and again the cycle of hair will begin anew.

Junior and John were admiring the job. Perfect, just perfect. The rope was dripping, slightly, along the taught length of it, from the corral post, where it was tied on one end, to where the other end was lashed, firmly, around the front bumper of the pickup truck.

Stretchin’ a rope just right was a tricky thing to do and it had taken nearly an hour, with one testing the rope and the other backing the truck up, inch at a time to get to that perfect point. A job well done.

Junior spoke, “Yep, that’s as good as I ever seen it done. Give it twenty-four hours to dry and that rope will be just right; strong enough to stop a bull and loose enough to make a good heelin’ loop. We’re gonna get us some headin’ and heelin’ money at the rodeo next weekend.

John, always a man of few words, nodded. “Yep.”

Junior continued, “Boy, am I glad the boss went to Denver yesterday. I don’t know how the hell he does it, but he can find more work on Saturday than any other day of the week. I never could have done this rope, if he hadn’t taken off. This way I don’t have to move the pickup ‘til tomorrow.”

From John came a nod of understanding, as he took off his hat and slapped it against his leg, and then settled it back on his head. “Old Dick woulda found something that had to be done usin’ that truck, for sure.

Just then, Junior’s wife, Mary, came out onto the porch of the Spring House, so named because of the small clear stream trickling out of the small hill to the south of it, and, shading her eyes with her hand, looked down toward the corral. “Junior,” she called, “where’s Jeff?”

“I thought he came back up to the house a good half-hour ago,” he called back.

“No, he’s with you.”

Both Junior and John automatically looked around. Nope. No kid here: just them, the pickup, and the rope.

“Hell, woman,” Jeff shouted, “don’t bother me with this crap. Get off your ass and look around the house. He’s prob’ly back in his room.”

Mary turned back into the house, as Jeff continued to bitterly complain, “Hell, I get one damned day a week that I can do what I want, and she sends the kid out here to bug me. You saw him go back to the house, didn’t you?”

John had to think back on that one for a minute, “Nooo, I don’t think so. He was out here when we tied to the post. Remember, you told him to stay out of the way. And, he was out here when we started stretchin’ the rope, ‘cause you told him to stay the hell out from behind the truck. But, I didn’t watch where he went from there.

Both of the men glanced around again, but they didn’t move.

Suddenly, Mary came bursting through the door of the house. She was walkin’ like a hog goin’ to war, and both of the men backed up, nervously. Mary on a tear was definitely something to be avoided. She was talkin’ before she reached them, and none of what was comin’ out of her mouth was complimentary. “Listen, you stupid bastards, you had a three year old kid out here with you. Wasn’t either of you watchin’ him?”

John looked at Junior, who looked back, pleadingly. John spoke up, “Well, now, Mary, we was kinda watchin’ him and stretchin’ this here rope, and, well, his feet shuffled, nervously, in the dust, “we sort of got busy. We both thought he’d gone back to the house. Honest!”

She gave the two of them a look that would peel paint. “Well, now that you’ve lost him, you’d damned well better help find him.” She waved a hand toward the gathering of outbuildings, holding pens, and corrals, “Get your asses out there and look.”

They all moved away from the truck and the rope, each going in a different direction. Moments later, John and Junior heard Mary cry out. They ran back in the direction of the truck and reached it just as Mary came around the corner of the barn with a small body hanging, limply, in her arms. They all reached the truck at the same time.

“What happened?” This was Junior speaking, a look, both concerned and irritated, crossing his face.

Mary’s voice was shaking, slightly, “I think he tried to climb up on Old Dun. He must have been standing by the fence and Jeff probably thought he could slide from the top of the fence over onto his back. Old Dun was still standing there and Jeff was laying between him and the fence. Feel the back of his head,” she offered the small body in evidence, “and, look, his eyes are open a little and rolled back in his head. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”

Saying this, she started to open the pickup door.

“Wait,” the two men spoke in unison.

“What the hell for?”

Junior gave her pained look, “We can’t move the pickup,I’m stretchin’ my rope. I told you I was gonna stretch my rope today. We can’t loosen it up for hours, yet, or it’ll be ruined.”

Mary’s angular face took on a red hue, as she moved up closer to the two men, and her voice had dropped to a feral snarl. “Listen to me, you miserable son-of-a-bitch, if anything happens to this kid, your rope ain’t gonna be the only thing around here that ‘s ruined. I’ll turn you from a bull into a steer, by god, now get that rope off that damned truck, and let’s get movin’!”

Junior looked terrified, but determined to hold the line against this blatant disregard for a vital piece of a cowboy’s equipment.

John turned to Mary, and, in a flash of brilliance, said, “I think the doctors say you should keep him warm. Why don’t you take him up to the house and wrap him and, we’ll be right there.”

Mary looked down at the white face of the child in her arms and said, “You’re right. He’s as cold as ice. I’ll meet you at the door.” With that, she started for the house.

She had no more than turned away, when John slapped Junior on the shoulder and said, “The boss’s car.” Then he placed a hand on the top bar and leaped over the corral fence near them, and, running across the corral, did the same to the opposite fence. Two seconds later, he came around the corner of the barn on Old Dun, riding him bareback and guiding him with nothing but his hands in the horse’s mane. He took the straight route to the bosses house, no more than a quarter of a mile away, going over a couple of irrigation ditches and a fence, and, as Mary walked out the door of the house, Junior could see John coming up the lane in the bosses Caddy and turning into their yard.

He stood by the rope as she came down off the steps, and, transferring the boy, so she could hold him in one arm as she opened the car door, she looked across the distance between them. It was only a second, but it seemed like a year, before she got into the seat beside John, closed the door, and settled the child in her arms, and turned her face away as the car moved toward him for a few yards, then made the wide swing that would take it out of the gate and on the way to the hospital.

Within the year, I had divorced John. I was determined to never again become involved with someone who would find ‘stretchin a rope’ more important than a child’s life.

ROLE REVERSAL by Cecile Betts

“Mom, do you want to go to the Mall with me? We can have lunch and do some shopping.”

“Yes, I’d like that, I need shoes and should get some more outfits, I didn’t bring much from Alaska. I’ll go upstairs and change and be ready in about ten minutes.”

Martha waited at the foot of the stairs. She looked at me and said, “Mom, you are wearing four different colors, that makes you look old and dowdy. You need to be color coordinated.”

“Martee, in Alaska, I felt I was doing okay if you and your brother, your father and I had clean clothes to wear. I never thought it so important to be color coordinated. My sister Anna did teach me that clothes should not be held together with pins but buttons should be sewed on and hems straight.”

“Well, unless you are wearing plaid, and even then there is usually a predominant color you will look much nicer if you do not wear so many different colors at once.”

After lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Mission Viejo, we shopped for patent leather pumps for me to wear to the formal dinner which would honor Martha for being the Number One Agent of Merril Lynch Real Estate office in her district.

When I tried on a pair of pumps, Martha leaned down and felt the tip to be sure there was enough room at the toe.

“Martha, do you know what you just did?”

“Yes, I wanted to be sure the shoes are the right size.”

“You are treating me as if I were the child and you the adult. I used to feel the toes of new shoes for you like that. I used to decide which clothes you would wear each day. Now, you have reversed our roles, telling me what colors to wear and feeling the toes of new shoes. And last week, even though you gave me a key for the front door, you waited up for me to get home when I went out to dinner with Cousin Goldy.”

The next day, I borrowed my son-in-law’s car and went shopping at K-Mart. I bought four pair of canvas slip on shoes, black, red, white, blue. I also bought new pants and new shirts in those four colors as well as purses and socks in these colors.

My daughter never again had to tell me I wore too many unmatched colors and I take pains to be color coordinated at all times.

Autobio.
Week 5
Dialogue

“Where’s Grandpa?”

By Carolyn Cummings

“Why are we driving out to the farm so early in the morning, Mama?”
“We have to comfort my Mama, because Papa died last night, Carolyn”

“Tell me what ‘died’ means, Mama.”
“It means that the person has gone from this life, on to the next life, and we won’t see him anymore,” Mama said. Her voice is shaky and her lips are quivery. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Mama has never looked so sad and I don’t know what to say to her.
“Won’t Grandpa come back for my seventh birthday party next week, Mama?”
“No, Sweetheart, he won’t be coming to your party.”
“Will Grandma come to my party?”
“Maybe.”

I’m lost in my thoughts for awhile as the old black Ford takes us down the highway, ten miles west of town, to the farm where my Mama grew up. The same farm where her Papa and Mama still live…the same farm where we go to visit every week. A place where I feel loved by Grandpa when I run to his open arms.

I notice that my sister is very quiet. She must be thinking of something to say to Mama. Since Grandma isn’t warm and loving like Grandpa, I guess it will be alright if she doesn’t come to my party. But I don’t know how I can have a party without Grandpa. He has the best bear hugs and scratchy mustache kisses. He really loves me.

We are driving up the long driveway to the farmhouse, and I see my grandma standing at the open door. She’s saying the same thing over and over: “He loved the children so, he loved the children so.” Grandpa would be at that door with his arms open ready to hug me, if he was here. Grandma doesn’t hug me. All around me, it feels empty. Grandpa’s big cozy rocking chair is still in the corner. Maybe he will come back to it soon and he will let me sit in his lap again, maybe just once more.

My aunts and uncles and cousins are hugging each other. They are speaking with quiet, hushed tones about things like the service, the cemetery, and the music; and all the time Grandma walks from room to room of the old farmhouse saying the same thing, “He loved the children so, he loved the children so.”

At the end of the long day, my mother comes into my bedroom to tuck me in.
“Mama, do you think Grandpa is in heaven now?”
“Yes, Honey, I believe he is.”

On my knees at the side of the bed, my Mama, my little sister and I go through our nightly routine.
“Can I go first tonight, Mama?”
“Of course, Honey.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray, Dear Lord, my soul to keep,
Make me loving, kind, and true,
Make me, daily, more like you.
And give my Grandpa a big hug.
Amen.”



Note to readers: This is the first story about my maternal grandparents. The previous stories were about my paternal grandparents.