The Myth of the Breeze

Jean

Jean Sax­ton is my 95 year old grand­mother who I just saw for the first time in nearly fif­teen years.  The last I saw her was on a fam­ily trip to Cape Cod, where she lives–a trip I remem­ber vividly.  I remem­ber see­ing my first fire­flies, ice cream and calamine lotion melt­ing all over my skin, a whale watch­ing trip that gar­nered no whale sight­ings.  Jean was con­cerned with being proper, drove a Cape Cod edi­tion red oldsmo­bile, wore a wig on the last day of our visit because her hair looked dirty.

Since then, our con­tact has been lim­ited to a few short phone calls on hol­i­days.  She knows much about me because of my mother’s dot­ing words, but she has always been the prim New Eng­lan­der I once met in my youth.

But now we live only three hours apart.  And recently my moti­va­tions to recon­nect have strength­ened.  And so I took the drive through Mass­a­chu­setts trees nearly empty of leaves and sat in her retire­ment com­mu­nity condo to lis­tened to her sto­ries.  For 95, she is extra­or­di­nar­ily lucid.  Her pos­ture is still per­fect and she is apolo­getic for her thoughts when they trail off to dis­tant mem­o­ries.  the pains of aging are stacked upon her fin­gers, shoul­ders, and feet.  But she does not men­tion the aches with­out men­tion­ing the joys of life behind her.  Grow­ing old, it seems, pro­vides her with no rea­son to fade.