Listening

My grandmother, Mimi, loves to tell stories. Like age rings in a tree, they are circular, ever enlarging. She will start a story, then veer off into another story, and then another, and an hour later, you realize you'd never heard the end of the story she'd originally been telling. If I didn't pay close attention, maybe eight tales would entwine me until I was on overload. I learned to say, "But wait, what happened to (fill in the blank)," and in that way I was able to keep up, just barely.

The problem is that Mimi is interesting, even though now her stories are more of the ghostly and confused variety. She regales the staff in the behavioral ward where she lives with her tales. They like Mimi; they think she is entertaining.

Mimi could be ribald. One time, after I'd published my fourth book and sent it to her, she called me up. "My, they really loaded your hero up front," she stated.

"What do you mean?" I asked, staring at the cover.

She giggled. "Didn't you look at his pants?"

Well, to be honest, I hadn't. It never occurred to me to peruse the cover hero's groin. Perhaps that's shallow and disinterested on my part, but I had been overjoyed when I received the cover. I thought the art department had captured the essence of the book; I suppose I'd only examined it in the overall packaging. It ranks as one of my favorite covers and books. There are twelve copies of DESPERADO for sale on Amazon, one priced at $88.00, it was published that many years ago. Yet when I look at this book I smile, mainly because I would never have seen the rather long rise in the hero's jeans if she hadn't pointed it out. My grandmother was right as she almost always was. Yet it wasn't the kind of thing I think most grandmothers would comment on.

Mimi could also be sanguine. One day she called to tell me that one of her friends had died calling out bingo at the department store where the game was held. I thought she might be sad, but she almost sounded admiring that the lady had gone out with such audacity. Imagine: Calling out bingo and suddenly you're in the next life. I do think my grandmother was a little envious. When I'm a senior citizen, I'm going to play bingo, and if I go out on a wave of bingo glory, I hope people talk about it and think I was somehow cool and spontaneous.

My grandmother was interesting enough that people used to drive through the semi-circular drive of her backyard to come in and chat. We never knew who might breeze through the door at any moment. Rarely did anyone knock or ring the bell; just a yoo-hoo! and there was company. Grandma knew an awful lot about birds and the stars; I don't think I've ever met anyone who can quite match her for knowledge. She'd been a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse called Skunk Hill. She had several grades to teach. A gal who had come up through the Depression, once being hospitalized for lack of nourishment, she had scraped to go to college. Yet I don't think she considered herself a great thinker. She liked what she liked, and things she had a thirst to know more about. She is one of the smartest women I've ever known, and I tell my children that there is a lot of candlepower in that little granny head and that they'd better not let her down.

But it wasn't worth getting on her bad side. She would argue you to the mat over whether Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi was the best tennis player. Anyone who wasn't interested in tennis was, to her mind, simply not interesting. You had to proceed carefully around her love of Pete Sampras.

People would come to have a drink, talk about birds, bring a sewing project that had hit a snarl, discuss recipes—the list of things people wanted to chat with her about was endless. Many of those folks who visited were pretty interesting folks themselves, so the house stayed lively. And though her mind is not the same anymore and she lives with her ghosts, often times she'll remember something with pinpoint accuracy. I was bemoaning the loss of her cucumber/onion salad one day to my father. Mimi made this recipe from memory. My father dutifully went to her recipe box and trolled through it, trying to find it for me, but it wasn't there. I said, "I'll call Mimi. I bet she will remember it."

I called her in the behavioral ward. She said, "Onions, cucumbers, salt and pepper, oil, vinegar, and sugar. You have to have the sugar."

I said, "But I can't get the combination right. I can't quite balance the sugar and the vinegar the way you did."

She said, "Oh. Well, I can't remember exactly how much I put in of those anymore."

It had been a stretch for me to ask. Yet the astonishing thing was how much she remembered—every single ingredient. That's pretty good for a woman who's ninety-four. And on days when she's not quite clear, and sometimes forgets who I am, and is confused about my children, I say, "Mimi, did I tell you that Andre Agassi has written a book?"

And she'll say, "Andre Agassi! Now, Pete Sampras was the only player worth watching, in my opinion."

And she'll go off on stories about Pete and Andre, and this match and that match, and sometimes, she even tells me that she's in Paris at the French Open. Sometimes she's at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open. Occasionally, her mother is in charge of running these events. And for those moments that she's talking about tennis, she's telling endless stories wrapped inside each other, one ripple that starts another, that take me back to long, wonderful days when all I had to do was listen.

Comment any time during the month of March to be eligible for the drawing of three $5.00 Amazon e-certs, chosen by Fresh Fiction! Until next time, Tina Leonard

Tina Leonard is celebrating a new seven book contract--her fiftieth project to date! She is looking forward to her new six-book series, CALLAHAN COWBOYS, as well as a 2011 Christmas novella. You can find out more about Tina at www.tinaleonard.com, read her monthly Leonard Light column at www.freshfiction.com or her monthly blog at www.thebradfordbunch.com, and say hi to Tina on Twitter!