Granma’s Walk to Church, 2002
Every Sunday I know that Granma walks
to Uncle Johnny’s house,
to ride with him and Aunt Pearl to church. She leaves her green trailer
across from my great aunt Frankie’s house and walks to the end
of Golden Lane. She turns left at the stop sign, passing my cousin Jamie’s
trailer, once off white with brown trim. It has since been replaced with
a metallic blue trailer that is placed in front of the old one. Walking
down the country lane, on the right, is a trailer park, filled with “Mexicans,” according
to Aunt Frankie. On the left, all kinds of relatives I never knew existed.
She walks slowly, but determinately, teetering between the shoulder and
the centerline. She’ll walk this road every Sunday, passing her
former childhood schoolhouse, now a community center that holds our Golden
Family reunions every December. She passes the cornfield on the gravel
road that dead ends on my great uncle Johnny’s land.
I’m afraid she’ll die on this Sunday walk. I’ve always
figured she’d die walking. But it’s something to hold onto
for both of us. Her walks represent her independence. For me, this walk
is a way that I enjoy her, a way I visually remember her. She spends
her time in her trailer, I think, waiting to die, except on Sunday when
she has somewhere to go. Surely she didn’t plan on this. She didn’t
mean to grow old, to move back onto the land of her family name and
childhood, to sit and wait, rarely visited because her family never
felt the warmth
that beckons people to come. She sits there holding on, or just waiting
to let go.
When I go to see her, she always comments on how I’m the only
grandchild who ever comes.
-by Jessica Ingram
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