Grandma Likes It When I'm Dead
I acknowledge the potential turn-off to use a superlative here, but my daughter has the best imagination. Though she generally prefers to be in someone's face and talking while also running in circles, there are days she will play by herself with animals and make dresses out of blankets and build rocket ships out of pillows and paper and string and stickers. Lately, she wants to pretend she's dead and wait around for True Love's Kiss. When I told her I don't like to pretend she's dead, she said, "Grandma likes it when I'm dead." So, there's that. Having kids broke me open to mortality violently. I've heave-cried having witnessed time passing through each tooth popping through gums, through each leg roll emerging and disappearing. This weekend, I saw a photo of my grandparents and their kids (my mom & her brothers) when they were so young. My grandparents were even younger than I am now. They were just two people happily married with kids,...
