About Alice

Dear Friends,


My grandmother, Alice, was born on September 13, 1928.


She's the one who drove a white, Mustang convertible too fast. To keep her curly brown hair from blowing too much in the wind, she usually wore a sun visor. On summer evenings Grandma loved to drive her car with the top down and the windows up, and only when my brother and I asked, would she turn on the heat.


Grandma, on the other hand, was almost always hot. I think Grandma liked to sweat -- she was a hard worker, but the consequence was that she was always thirsty. "I'm dry as a bone, hon!" she would say. Nothing refreshed Grandma like a glass of water. Go heavy on the ice.


She's the one who took me hunting for turtles at Nichols Park just before my eighth birthday. We didn't find a single one, but Grandma told me a fantastic story about the giant snapping turtle living in their basement. Even the turtle in her story required water.


As did the flowers in her backyard, where Grandma spent the majority of her time. "Gardening is good therapy," she was known to say. Though she was an ardent churchgoer, her religion was simple and very tied to the earth... and making it look lovely. Her home was a clipping from Better Homes and Gardens. She was Martha Stewart before Martha Stewart.


No one did holidays like Grandma. Christmastime was utterly magical. Easter brought about the annual Egg Coloring with the grandsons. "Oh, hon, that is the ugliest egg I've ever seen! But, keep going!" she'd bellow, dangling one of our creations. Of course, to her grandsons, that meant, "You are the most artistic and beloved child on this earth." So, we kept going.


Grandma loved to laugh. Grandma laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks. Hers was a real laugh. I mean, she'd lose her breath. And so would I. "I've never laughed so hard in all my life!" she'd exclaim. I couldn't count the number of times I heard her say that.


Grandma had little tolerance for sour pusses and spoiled sports. If she couldn't bring out the life in you, then she assumed no one could. You were a lost cause.


Any sour mood of mine was immediately turned upside down when I saw Grandma. There's something about being tackled or having your cheeks pinched and hearing the words, "Get over here and give Grandma some sugar, hon!" that made it impossible not to smile.


She's the one who lost her cool, though, when she was heckled by an overbearing usher at the Sangamon Auditorium where she and Grandpa had taken us to see a musical. Having had enough and sensing she'd been treated unjustly, Grandma wheeled on the unsuspecting woman, "What is your name?! I'm going to report you!" Walking back to the car afterwards, I asked Grandma if she was really going to report the woman. "Oh, hon," she said, pulling me close. "I couldn't even see her name because I didn't have my glasses on!" She roared. I puffed out my chest. Yes, world, this woman is my grandma!


Grandma worked for years in the Illinois College Bookstore. Everyone on campus knew Alice. I know this because people still tell me. They tell me they loved her. Big football players would open up to her, spill their guts and cry. Girls referred to her as their college mother. The biggest thrill of my life was to help run the cash register or bag books for students or see the many people who'd come in just to talk to Grandma. Grandma really listened to people, but she never left them where they were. She inspired them.


When I was a freshman at IC, Grandma and Grandpa came over for a visit one night. They came up to my room and met my roommate for the first time. "What's your name, hon?" Grandma asked him. When he told her, she literally pushed him down on his bed and chortled. Soon, all of us in the little room were laughing and could not have told you why.


There was something about Alice.


Grandma met my first girlfriend, as well, that first year of college. Grandma and I were following the young lady up the steps of the chapel when Grandma bumped me, pointed directly at the girl's posterior, and gave me two thumbs up and a wink.


Some years later, a friend put it well when he said, "You're grandmother was all Chipman... but with spice."


When I was in college, I learned that Grandma and her friend and colleague had been jokingly referring to each other for years as "ol' witch" and "big witch," respectively. The names were playful terms of endearment. Her friend even went so far as to make a T-shirt for Grandma with the title printed on the front of it. I only saw Grandma wear it once.


Laughter and humor were her medicines, though she was rarely ill. "If you've got your health and family, you've got everything," she would say. Family may always endure, but health is a passing note.


Grandma was diagnosed with cancer sometime in the early part of my junior year of college. We cried when first we spoke about it over the phone. Her stubborn sense of humor still in tact, Grandma vowed to fight it. And with Grandpa's abundant assistance, she did.


"'The worst thing cancer can do is rob you of your identity,'" Calvin Trillin recalls his wife saying, a different Alice who also battled cancer. "Her identity included engagement and optimism and enthusiasm." Precisely.


I was in Japan in June, 2000. When I landed back in the States, I spoke to Grandma on the phone. She sounded enough like Grandma, though I knew she was suffering. When I saw her the next day, she was transformed. A baby bird. Bald. Fingernails still strong. And painted red. I held her hands. We prayed. And, when she turned in bed, I could make out the small letters on the white T-shirt she was wearing. There, in red ink, were the tiny words, "ol' witch."


Somehow, Grandma had managed the last laugh.


Alice had become the rabbit hole.


Death, swallowed up in victory.


*********


When I arrived in Riga last month, I immediately thought of Grandma. My furnished apartment was nice, but it needed, oh, a touch of something. I recalled Grandma calling me early one morning after I had moved in to my first college apartment, "Timmer, I couldn't sleep last night thinking about how you could arrange your furniture!"


What would Alice do? I pondered.


And what would Alice say about me traveling so far away to teach for a year? I suppose it's risky business trying to form conjectures. Memories are blessedly fluid. What were once clear-as-day pastoral snapshots in time blend and blur into Monets. So, we are left with colors. Impressions. An etching or two, if we're lucky.


I am holding close to the words Grandma wrote me before embarking on a Spring Break trip to New York City some years ago: "Tim, We love you very much! Have a wonderful time!!" Sage advice from a very colorful lady who defined the meaning of "wonderful time."


There's an elderly woman who dances on one of the sidewalks in the Old Town of Riga. Like any big city, Riga has its share of beggars, most of whom simply sit and hold out a cup. Not this gal. She boogies. She does not remind me of Grandma. Just guessing, but if Grandma would have seen her, the words "crazy kook" may have come out. She might have watched her, for a moment, shaking her head and smiling in awe.


On the other hand, Grandma was a dancer, too. Others walk through life. Grandma ran. Others talk. Grandma laughed. Others stand. Grandma danced. And, yes, she might have occasionally stepped on some toes.


"Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety, so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security... You should sing as wayfarers do -- sing, but continue your journey... Sing then, but keep going."


St. Augustine had it right.


Grandma might have added, "And don't forget to smile."


Love,
Tim