Grandpa greeted me as always: a hearty kiss to the cheek, bristled with the stubble he’d missed, and a hug that put bears to shame. His smile crinkled and creased around his eyes, his joy such that he couldn’t quite keep still, quick shakes of his arms and then anchoring them behind him to lean forward and listen from behind his glasses, mild and jowly. Every so often, a hearty laugh leaned him all the way back and we all laughed with him. Everyone said how wonderful it was – sixty years.
I went to greet my grandmother, sitting like a bird in a wheelchair, hands and shoulders folded in. A cousin sat next to her, talking in the other direction.
“Hi, Grandma.”
Her eyes turned to me, pink-rimmed and at once both too small and too large for their settings, but still beautiful blue. Mumbles helped get her voice going; turning slightly to the cousin but keeping her eyes on me, she asked
“Who’s that?”
Her hair was fluffy and longer than she kept it when I was young, and like every time in the past few years, it was whiter than when I saw her last. I sat next to her, among cousins and other relatives, and try as I might I found myself talking in the other direction.
Everyone said how wonderful it was – sixty years.
Scribbles from a Songbird 
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