Grandma’s Auburn Hair
My grandma Marilyn for her senior prom in 1964
Me in 2024 – 60 years apart, but close in heart.
The internet told me once that I existed in my grandmother’s womb; that all of the eggs a woman will ever have are created when she’s still a fetus. When my mom was forming in her belly, so was I.
My grandma isn’t here anymore. When she passed away unexpectedly at the age of 75, she still had her vibrant red hair. It was her dream to have a grandkid with her auburn locks. As her oldest grandchild, I couldn’t help but feel like I had let her down with my dishwater blonde hair. But I know she didn’t see it that way.
She was equal parts orderliness and tenderness. I grew up afraid to touch anything in her home, but she was also the type of woman who kept lotion around to give her grandkids spontaneous foot rubs. When it came to loving self-sacrifice, my grandma was a practiced expert.
The religion of my grandma isn’t my religion anymore. Forget the mousy blonde hair; this is how I worry I failed her most. I was raised to believe that families can be together forever. A beautiful premise until you realize the key word is “can.” That perhaps, if you don’t follow the rules quite right, you just might lose your family. It devastates me to think that when she passed, she thought that she might not have me in heaven.
I hope it would bring her peace to know that I still believe we have each other forever. In my own makeshift religion – and I use that term loosely – I believe that we’re not meant to know what comes next. I also believe that anybody who tells you they know why we’re here or where we’re going is trying to sell you something.
I used to be uncomfortable with the lack of specified and ordered direction, but now it feels like a familiar friend. Most of the time, I’m okay with not knowing. But what I do know is that decades before I drew my first breath, I existed in my grandmother’s womb. Is it too much of a stretch to believe that years after her last breath, she could exist inside of me, too?
I have two teeth that, even after braces and invisalign, can’t help but creep forward. I used to hate them until I remembered that I get them from her. I hear her in my mom’s voice: her cadence, her laugh. I see her every single time my fingers mindlessly, lovingly dance along my loved ones’ skin. Her legacy of loving through body and soul lives on through us, and in that way, I feel her with me all the time. Something about that makes familial love feel eternal after all.
And every once in a while, if the sun hits my hair just right, I see a shimmer of auburn.
