Chi Style Shenanigans: From Home to Hobo

My grandma

Why is she so crazy? It’s funny, ‘coz in her altered state of mind, she resembles the enigma that she was throughout my childhood. She was and she wasn’t your normal little old grandma. She baked cookies but pounded on the floor with her broom, inviting us to come eat them. She watched us while we enjoyed the summer days, but screamed out the windows for us to get inside before we get too “black.” She babysat and cleaned up after us. But as we grew older, she hoarded my extra dollars when I was a server in college—we’d watch her stuff the dollar bills in her pocket as she sifted through my open purse.

One time, William was thrilled I’d just gone to Chipotle and brought half my burrito home with me. He hid the wrapped gem on a chair, under a pile of clothes, while he ran to the kitchen to make himself a beverage. Then he heard the sound of a paper bag being ripped apart and he ran into the living room in worry. There she was: stuffing her face of his now-ravished half-eaten burrito. 

“NOOOOOO!”

We’ve had to bring her along with us on a couple family road trips. This was a hassle in preparation, since it usually takes us about an hour to convince her to get into the car without a fuss. 

“Where are we going? I don’t want to leave the house. Why am I getting in the car? I have to say my prayers first.”

If she can make it the entire trip without screaming or unfolding my dad’s various directions, it’d be a blessing in disguise. Imagine a family traveling in an SUV—seems big, but hardly was. Six of us crammed in there, dad driving, grandma in front to give her more room, two grown kids and my mom in back, the dog at her feet. 

William woke up in the middle of the night at the resort, to find grandma sitting in the corner, up from her bed, wearing his sweatshirt, wiping her nose. 

“WHY are you wearing my fleece?! I’m throwing that away.” 

He always had a way of being the most dramatic. 

After a week of putting life and its fleeting nature in perspective, I realized my family is the craziness that keeps me sane.

Does that even make sense?

I walked home the other night in the falling snow, dragging my feet and allowing the tears to paint my face red. It was cold outside and the blustery wind was slapping against my bare skin, but it all seemed to numb me to everything going on around me.

After my friend’s mom passed away earlier this week, I couldn’t get the image of the two of them in the hospital room on one of her last nights, out of my mind. The tube in her mouth prevented her from talking, but my friend rubbed her hand and seemed to speak to her without any words. 

We all stood by the bedside, grasping our own hands, too sad to acknowledge our watering eyes, too scared to utter a word. It could’ve been any one of us, any one of our own moms. 

“It makes me never want to fight with my mom again,” said one of the girls as we walked back to the waiting room. 

Inconsolable for days, I’d randomly hear a song and find myself choked up. It could all just slip away in a second, it seemed.

I had this thing when I was younger, this fear of losing another parent when you least expect it. My mom and I would get into a petty squabble, she’d walk off to the garage, ready for work, and I’d have a fleeting picture of life without her. My last phrase to her couldn’t possibly be: “You’re mean!” 

I’d run to the window in the back porch, throw up the screen and yell out,  ”Drive carefully!” And that was the end to the disagreement. 

Even now, to this day, I have a fear that the last word I say to a family member will be something mean-spirited. When they walk out of the house, I worry about when they’ll be back. Maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age.

It’s weird, that at such a young age, I recognized that life could be changed in the blink of an eye. And despite the  many arguments we had, the many requests she burdened me with, the many times I rolled my eyes at her—she was still my mother, my rock. 

I can’t even picture life now, at 25, without her. I thought she was so old and mature at that age, when she had me. When she, too, lost a parent, and a significant other, so close to the eve of her birthday. It seemed like she had the world figured out back then. But maybe it was just all that loss that hardens a person. 

Maybe I’m just a 25-year-old with the mindset of a 16-year-old. I don’t seem to think I’m ready for anything welcome of the adult world.

I guess, during the turbulence of the last week, it made me re-evaluate all the trivialities of every day life. I couldn’t write about boys and break-ups, because that shit just doesn’t matter when compared.

My brother hung a dress up on the back of my bedroom door before I moved back ‘home.’ And now, every day and night I wake up and stare at it, this white dress that seems a mocking symbol of what I had, what I can’t now handle but what seems too far to even imagine. 

No, not marriage—obviously I was never married, but I was in some way settled. And when I wore that dress and cut that cake (at my 21st birthday party), I smiled my brightest, without the knowledge that life would be this hard four years later.

I jumped for joy at the thought of working at a magazine. “They want someone mature,” I was told. I nodded along while listening to the vague requirements for the position. Anything at this point in time. 

Endless job applications filled in, a steady stream of resumes and reaching e-mails forwarded on. It’d be lifetimes, at this rate, before I was sitting with my own window office, traveling at my own leisure, an empty, spotless and completely silent apartment to mosey on home to. 

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The monotony of it all keeps boggling me, when I think about the scheme of things. I’m tired of being the peacekeeper to end all fights, the clean-up to fix all messes, the laughter that keeps up all moods. I’m tired of going out, just to sip a couple beers and scan through the randoms, but I can’t stay in to scroll through the job ads. 

I didn’t want to be 5, but now I do; I want gifts I’m enthralled with, less reasons to cry about ‘spilled milk’ and happy time—apart from nonstop bickering—with my family. 
I don’t want to be 30, but I do; I want more vacations, actual health insurance and a real paycheck I don’t throw to the wind.