She is a short woman who is never seen without her makeup, the most important being her bright red lipstick. For as long as i can remember she has worn her hair up in a bun. When i was a kid, she always made up stories about her hair. My siblings and i would sit in the back seat of my grandparents mini van on our way home from our weekly dinners with them, and the whole ride she would create a fantasy of how a family of spiders lived in her hair. Then her hair turned grey, we children grew up, and those stories stopped.
Unfortunately she still thinks I am a little girl. Every time i see her i am always greeted with a big loud kiss smack dab on my lips, and it is quite embarrassing. Her next door neighbor used to have this large, yellow lab that we would love to play with whenever we went to visit. Too often she would clutch her neck at the sight of him walking over. She would tell us to be careful because she didn't want us to get hurt. Her voice is fooling too, because she talks with a high pitched, innocent tone that makes it seem like she is cooing over a baby. And boy, does she talk.
She talks about anything and everything.
"I saw a bear the other day in the woods, and you'll never guess what he was doing! Yes, he was eating berries off a tree. It was the neatest thing, i tell you." Nana lives in a thick wooded area, and her conversations about nature are never ending.
"Obama is the best president we have ever had." She is very democratic.
"I saw this story on the news where a man killed his two daughters after attacking their mother!" Sometimes i don't know how to respond to the things she says, so i let my mother do it.
For my 16th birthday my Nana and grandpa took my sister and i out to shop; it's our annual birthday celebrations, a trip to the mall. Nana usually picks up a piece of clothing, checks the price, and either sets it down slowly without a word, or exclaims "Ooohh, this would look so good on you." I always feel bad letting them pay for me because i know they don't have much. So i nod my head and agree, yes it would look good on me.
When i went over my limit of spending money the year i turned 13, my grandma told my grandpa i didn't then turned to give me a wink. She smiled to herself and i couldn't help but smile back, because she was so happy she had a secret with me.
For christmas, it's different. She assembles intricately decorated gift baskets for each of us, all filled with random crap that we would never think of using in a million years. They are very extravagant- just like the numerous decorations in her living room, her homemade card that probably took her hours to make, and the amount of spices she puts on top of every dish she ever makes. One year i got a tin sign with "twilight" printed on the front. I also got a coiled cross with pearls on the end. It's things like this- things i would never use- that she always gets me. My mom said she has this ideal world in her head of what all of us want. For instance, since i am a teenage girl i would love to get sparkly lip balm or tangerine shampoo.
Nana was the only person who tried to teach me to sew. She bought me my first (and only) sewing kit with numerous amounts of thread colors and a tomato needle carrier. I sat on her couch watching Beetlejuice and trying to copy what she did with her needle and thread. My sewing days didn't last long, but i still use my sewing kid sometimes to re-patch holes.
Whenever i see my nana she let's me know of the many compliments she gets about me. "I showed my friends a picture of you from homecoming and they told me i had the most gorgeous granddaughters in the world. I agreed with them." When her mother was dying and placed in a nursing home, Nana made her an entire bulletin board collage with pictures of her five grandchildren on it. Our faces were everywhere in my great-grandmothers sick room.
I think that bulletin board is in Nana's living room now.
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