"That will be $12.98," the clerk said.
She counted out the change, gathered her tissue-covered purchase
and turned to leave.
"Miss?" She turned back toward the clerk. "Did
you want to enclose a card with that?"
Shaking her head ruefully, she moved again toward the door. Outside
the sunshine was bright enough to require sunglasses. Slipping
behind the wheel, she pulled her pair out of the glove compartment
and donned them before moving carefully out into traffic.
A card. She smiled to herself. Maybe she should have enclosed
a card at that. But what would it have read?
Dear Grandma
I thought you'd like the flowers. The clerk thought I was mad
to mix lilacs and roses, but I knew it would make you happy. Odd
combinations were always your specialty. Boy, would you love *my*
life at the moment.
And wasn't that the truth. Letitia Ryerson had been an eccentric
long before reaching the age where that was considered acceptable.
She loved mixing fabrics and colors, taste and people whenever
possible. "They make lovely explosions and keep life interesting,"
she'd once told her favorite granddaughter.
She'd been a true original. A single mother in an age where that
was not only unusual, but highly unacceptable, Letty had bowed
her head to no one and tried hard to teach her daughter the same
strength. It hadn't taken, unfortunately, and she'd been forced
to watch her only child bowing and scraping desperately to the
1950's and 1960's idea of conventional living and social acceptance.
And failing.
"I think sometimes I tried too hard with your mother,"
she'd once sighed. "But that doesn't make her a bad person."
Letty could never bring herself to speak ill of anyone, ever.
It was a charming, if occasionally exasperating habit. It was
her granddaughter that Letty had maintained such high hopes for.
"Don't let anything stop you," she'd said once, firmly,
after a mother-daughter conflict had ended with an adolescent
sob story in her comfortably disorganized kitchen. "You may
not always be right, but you won't know that `till you've tried.
Remember something, kiddo, it's not what we do that we regret.
It's what we don't have the courage to try. Don't let yourself
in for those kinds of regrets. They'll eat you alive and leech
all the joy from your life."
It had been good advice, she mused, turning off the main road.
But had she lived up to it? She considered the matter carefully,
paying scant attention to her surroundings. She'd been to visit
her grandmother so frequently in the past few years, it was as
if the car knew it's own way.
Letty had never let public opinion, or fear of consequences stop
her. She'd held a variety of jobs, bought her own home and invested
in the stock market during a time when a woman's place was in
the kitchen. And, well into her 60's, she'd had a scandalous affair
with a man 20 years her junior that had only ended when a drunken
driver slammed into him at an intersection, killing him instantly.
Letty had grieved, then moved on.
Moving on had been Letty's specialty. When her daughter cut off
all relations shortly after her marriage, Letty had taken in two
foster children, and, almost two decades later, had helped raise
over 14 children successfully when their parents hadn't been able
to. She'd run her own fabric store for over 10 years before that,
before creditors and high taxes had stopped her. She'd bought
and sold a total of three houses in her lifetime and lived in
God only knows how many apartments and cheap rooming houses.
Moving on was, of course, the hard part. She didn't have Letty's
strength there, she supposed. Had she ever really left her own
childhood behind her? Letty had always encouraged her to turn
a blind eye to the misfortunes that inevitably come to any life.
"Just say oh well and get on with it," she'd urged,
time and again.
"Honey," Letty had told her more than once, "change
is the only constant life has to offer. Appreciate it."
Change and growth. Those were Letty's watchwords and her loving
granddaughter had tried, in her own confused way, to live up to
them. But she sometimes doubted that she had Letty's simple courage
in the face of "outrageous fortune." Some things were
worth risking, but her heart--- that had always been her Waterloo.
Letty had scoffed.
"What's a broken heart to worry about?" she'd said.
"A few cracks just let in more light and make an interesting
pattern besides. Take the risk. You'll find that you can live
through the result and come out stronger for it."
Had she ever learned that lesson, she wondered? Considering her
own life, she had to conclude in sorrow that the answer was no.
She still shied away from emotional risks even while taking other
chances that most people wouldn't dare. It was a mixed bag. Letty
would love her lifestyle, but would she approve of some of the
more cautious choices being made?
She would not.
Flowers weren't an adequate gift to cover the guilt of that knowledge,
she realized as she turned in at the ornate, wrought-iron gate.
But there were the best she could do for the moment.
"Life runs at its own pace and there's no rushing it,"
Letty also declared. "You miss one chance, don't fret. You'll
have another eventually. It ain't over `till you quit trying,
so the trick is, you don't quit."
Pulling the car over to the side of the roadway, she collected
the flowers and stepped out of the car. Crossing a soft carpet
of green grass, she stopped in front of a small brass plate set
in the ground.
"Letitia Ryerson --1900 1971. Loving mother, loving grandmother,
loved by all."
There was a circular plate set into the ground next to the marker.
She pulled it up and turned it over. It's underside was a flowerpot,
connected to the grave site by a small chain. She arranged the
flowers in the pot, set it upright on the gravestone and stepped
back.
"There you are, Grandma. Roses and lilacs." She blinked
back tears. "And love."
It had been a stroke that had finally felled the indomitable Letty,
and she had been the one who found her grandmother's body, sprawled
on her living room couch, a soap opera blaring on the television.
Letty, who swore throughout her life that she never watched "that
damn foolishness" was staring with avid, sightless eyes at
the screen in death.
She had wondered, for years afterward, if Letty had actually had
a secret passion for soaps that she'd denied in public or if she'd
died hours before they began. Finally she'd dismissed the thought.
Letty had never had any secret passions. She wore her heart on
her sleeve and dared anyone to laugh at her. Hearts were made
to be broken in lovely explosions and their beautifully cracked
imperfections admired ever afterward.
She considered her own life. She was independent, financially
secure and doing what she loved best. There was also a certain
mismatched quality of odd combinations in her own love life, marked
by numerous "lovely explosions." Still, difficult as
it was, it seemed to be working. Most of the time, anyway.
And for now, that would have to be enough. Life for her was moving
at its own pace and she was learning to allow this. Some of the
cracks, she felt, were beginning to let in light, and perhaps
one day she would appreciate their pattern. As Letty would have.
She wasn't living up to Letty's standards yet, but she wasn't
done trying either. Maybe someday. Maybe even someday soon.
"I love you, Grandma," she whispered, then Laura Holt
turned back to her car, got in, and drove away.