Grandma

I had six grandmas welcoming me here
Four were my favorites

One had a candy store

I was too young to care

Red cars with black wheels

I always had space

I didn't really know her until she didn't know who she was

In my memories is all the space she made for me

Grandpa in his chair was not concerned

So many people in that small house I the smallest had the most space

The last time I saw her in one of those large buildings

What the word institution would always mean to me

I had two of her daughters on each side

To protect me from all those that would pinch my cheeks

She was a Wheeling now no longer McClelland

She remembered who she was with a large smile

Folding napkins of her dress

We had this picnic in the sun below outside the institution

Grandma Eller stopped driving because all of her friends need a ride

In nineties I remember her ninety sixth birthday

Four years from one hundred never seemed so close

She was my first friend from another generation

We were close when we visited cause her apartment was so small

Her life was so large lived in other climates

Many things I could not understand

She had the world about her in that small room

Her birthday cards were always continuations of our conversations

Nobody has conversations with children

This is why I am such a good teacher

I treat kids like she treated me like people

It is no end of wonder to me that we had so much to say

The next close friend eighty plus years old I had at forty

I recognized what the relationship was

Friends from other worlds

She did not talk many decades to my grandma 

I had no concept of what decades were

I had an understanding of what it was when she came to talk

People all around in shock but me to see Grandma Eller

I knew the relationships I had with them and them together made perfect sense to me

I spent the most time with grandma outside my house

We burned leaves long afternoons

She would feed and I would over feed

Her lessons never changed

She had seven brothers and sisters

It was her that got them together

I understood why they wanted to be with her

She started shopping for Christmas January first

Is the best description of her

When we lost her we lost most of each other

She was where we mostly met

Granny was gone before I chipped a plate of hers

This is the best thing about me

I was more careful when she was around

Many now more than chipped

We can do things we put our mind to

Just keep working I tell myself and think of her

She did not see the point of a party she could not host

Grew up in her church and her church grew in me

Her grandparents names on plagues here

Four generations in one place is legacy

For the Manx it gets so cold only the mantle remains you

Gets so cold in the winter we stay mostly indoors

In leaner times why would anyone stay the museum display shows

What the family has on the mantle becomes key to the dark winter

I have always been knick-knacky