The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma (25 page)

I've never heard this story before, of how Grandma and Grandpa met.

“Heavens, I should stop going on. And I have something to give you before I forget.” She's switched the topic of discussion so quickly I can't react or even comment.

Grandma bends down to the bag on the floor in front of her. She's moving her hand around in the bag like she's randomly drawing a name from a hat. When her hand finds whatever it's fishing for, she brings the bag, with her hand still inside, up to her lap. “Here,” she says.

I accept a tiny bottle of gourmet champagne mustard. I recognize it immediately from the fine foods store.

“Didn't you say you love mustard?” she asks, hopefully. “You put some in the meatloaf, right?”

“Yeah, definitely. I love it. And champagne. Thank you. You really didn't have to get me anything. But I also have something for you.”

“What? Really?”

“It's nothing. Just, well, a little thank-you.”

I reach behind my seat and grab my own bag. I hand her an equally small glass jar of red pepper jelly.

“I always remember having red pepper jelly at your house when we were kids. That was the first place I had it.”

“Yes, of course, I love it. Thank you.”

For a while we sit with steaming scratch pads in hand and our lampoonishly tiny glass jars of spread in our laps.

“I think I've realized something on our trip,” she says. “I hope you don't mind me saying, but I think you and I are a lot alike. I always thought that, but I'm certain of it now, after these days together.”

I look out the windshield. We're sitting in the rain, an hour or so outside my sleepy town, still an hour or so from Grandma's house, in my twenty-year-old car, where it's just been theorized that I might be more similar to a white-haired ninety-two-year-old woman with a bad knee than to anyone else. Beyond being prone to a runny nose when the temperature dips below eight degrees, I'm not convinced there's any truth at all in the claim. It seems too unjust to Grandma. But if there is, even a trace, I will definitely take it.

“We've done pretty well,” says Grandma, bringing her paper cup toward me. “To the road trip, my last one.”

“The trip,” I say, finding my voice, touching her cup with my own.

WE'VE PASSED MANY
woodpiles and log barns. Several streams and ponds. Even sparsely inhabited towns with the odd inhabitant walking a dog on the gravel shoulder of the road. The engine is loud. We're quiet.

I've refocused on the road but am glancing over periodically. Grandma's eyelids have dipped shut. I adjust the mix-tape I've put in the deck, turning it down.

“It's okay,” she says, keeping her eyes closed. “You can leave it, dear. I like this song. I think that's a piccolo.”

She's right; “Rockin' Robin” is a pretty great song. I return the volume to its original setting. I was anticipating a busy ride, with lots of cars and trucks. We've only seen a few. It's because of the rain, I think — that's probably why the road's been empty. People don't like driving in the rain. People would rather stay home.

She's enjoyed our trip, but I'm sensing Grandma is ready to be home. She'll want to unpack and do some laundry. She'll want to get into her garden and go grocery shopping so she can fill her fridge with her favourite foods, some salty, some sweet. She'll be pleased to run into her neighbours, and to feed her old cat treats and rub her ears. She'll have phone messages to return and mail to open. She'll make herself some tea. She'll take a nap on her couch.

“This is probably a stupid question,” I say, still looking straight ahead, “but do you have a first conscious memory, Grandma? I've been trying to think of mine as I drive. I can't. I have some memories from when I was around four or five. But they kind of meld together. There's nothing really distinct.”

“Yes,” she says, “I do.”

“Really? What is it?”

“I was four.”

“You were in Winnipeg by then?”

“Yes, but we hadn't been there for long. We had a garden in our backyard. There were flowers, but it was mostly for veggies. I remember being outside one morning in the spring. I was alone in the yard. It had been raining. The ground was all wet. I was wearing rubber boots that had probably been my older sister's, because they were too big for me.

“For whatever reason I decided I wanted to explore the garden. I just walked right in to see if anything had started growing yet. The earth was so wet from all the rain that after a few steps I got stuck. The more I wiggled my feet to get loose, the deeper they sunk in. The mud was tight up around my ankles.”

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I just stopped moving. Out in the middle of the garden wasn't a bad place to be stuck. I didn't call out to anyone. I just looked around. It wasn't long before my brother Pat must have noticed. I felt two hands come down and lift me up out of the boots. The boots stayed in the mud and he carried me back to the house in my socks. I still remember that.”

I glance at Grandma momentarily, then back to the road.

“Well,” she says, “it's not much of a story, but it's the first thing I can remember.”

She's cracked her window. I'm thinking it's a bit brisk for that while driving. My hands are cold on the wheel. I consider suggesting a roll-up. But when I look over again a few minutes later, she seems to be thoroughly enjoying it, and I resist.

Her breathing has changed; it has slowed. Her head is resting back and to the right. Her eyes might be closed again. The gap is small enough that no rain is getting in, but large enough for the wind to rush in and swirl her thin white hair into disarray. Strands are flailing in different directions, like each is an unmanned fireman's hose.

4:02 p.m.

SO MANY OF
the houses on her street, in her neighbourhood, have been renovated in the past few years. The area has become trendier, but the houses are too small and outdated for contemporary taste. People are buying for the location, gutting pre-existing homes and building their own, much larger structures. Driveways and garages are expanding; lawns are shrinking.

Grandma's house is one of the few that remain intact. It was built just after the war. There's no bulky addition on the back. She doesn't even have a garage. If I lived here, all the (unnecessary) change in the neighbourhood would upset me. I would resent the shift in aesthetics and mentality. I would be discouraged. But Grandma is not me.

She doesn't endorse these developments but, looking at her, I can tell she's pleased to be back on her street. It's still her street. She's sitting up straighter, gazing out her window, down the street toward her house, the one she's lived in for more than sixty years.

By today's standard it's a small, plain house. The kitchen and bathroom have never been remodelled. The dishes, the metal cutlery, pots, and pans are the same; so are the ornaments, books, framed photos and art, her coffee table, dining table, chairs, and cupboards. Her carpets are older than I am. For as long as I've known her she's had a glass jar of caramels and candies on the counter. The piano in the living room (which Grandpa played) remains in the same spot it's always been, just to the left of the front window.

“It looks like we've had lots of rain here, too,” she says, running her hand along the floor to retrieve her purse, setting it in her lap. “It will be a good summer for the garden, I bet.”

Of everything she's experienced, her own accomplishments, the eras she's lived through, it's still her interest in others that fuels her. Her deep connection to family, friends, and acquaintances has dulled the attenuating effects of time and growing old. When they first moved to the house, in the early fifties, Grandma was in her thirties and the road was unpaved gravel. The ditches were freshly dug. She's lived more than ten years without Grandpa and almost as many without Donald. Both died in their early eighties. She never imagined living this long without them.

She still thinks about Grandpa and Donald, but also, more distinctively, about people she continues to meet, or those she hears or reads about. It's an energy typically reserved for youth. After all her shared years with Grandpa and her own exploits, she doesn't dwell solely in memories. She remains impressed and irritated and upset and touched and interested by people in the present; they nourish her. It's not just about maintaining equilibrium in a circle of close friends. It's relationships, old and new, that enliven her, that remain her connection to the past but also her filter for the future. Her desire for new interactions isn't rooted in politics or ideology or beliefs. It's something I'm aware of only after seeing it for five days. Grandma continues to make brief, unselfish connections with individuals, every day, wherever she goes. What I initially perceived as negligible or incidental encounters I now understand to be intentionally sought and significant.

“By mid-June all these trees on each side of the road will almost touch overhead; some of them will touch. It's almost like we get a temporary leaf canopy every year,” she says, “but only for the summer. It's hard to remember when they weren't this tall.”

Grandma didn't go to university. She didn't spend four years studying in libraries and great halls. She's never sat in on a calculus class, literary theory course, or philosophy tutorial. She's never waited after a lecture to talk with a professor about the specifics of a lesson.

I'm not sure I completely understand or even feel comfortable attempting to unravel it. I've been thinking about it on our drive: Grandma is profoundly smart.

She is smart beyond the cliché of emotional intelligence. Intelligence is so often perceived and explained in blunt, rudimentary ways. We decide someone is astute based on a certain career choice or educational path. We call some people bright and others dim. We say someone is logical or mathematically minded, while someone else is creative or imaginative. We deem some “book smart,” others “street smart.” Sometimes we speak of positive attitudes and admire those who are able to look on the bright side.

Grandma's disposition can only be fully appreciated after moving beyond those basic platitudes. Hers is a rare intelligence, more complex than a positive outlook, obsession with reason, or comprehension of complex principles. It is neither masculine nor feminine. It's not forceful, pretentious, or judgemental. It's subtle and modest. It's outward, not inward. Grandma's is a practical aptitude, a salient social dexterity. It is a compassionate toughness. She knows and accepts both happiness and sadness, how each is reliant on the other.

She's comfortable with all that is unintelligible. Her mental currency is reality, not abstraction or invention or apprehension. She just knows how to exist in her world. At ninety-two, Grandma is very old and she is very alive. She lives.

I can see the single maple tree on her lawn as her red-brick house comes into view.

“Well, well,” she says. “After all that, and here we are.”

Here we are.

Acknowledgements

Thank you:

Samantha Haywood and Janie Yoon, for all the indispensable contributions.

Everyone at House of Anansi, my sister for her editorial eye, Mark Medley, Peter Norman, Kenneth Anderton, and the Ontario Arts Council.

My family, for continued encouragement and support.

Grandma. For our chats and everything else.

About the Author

Author photograph: A. J. R.

IAIN REID IS
the author of the critically acclaimed and award-winning comic memoir
One Bird's Choice
, which was published in several languages and sold internationally. He was named by the 
Globe and Mail
as a top five up-and-coming Canadian author. He writes regularly about books and writing for the
National Post
. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.

About the publisher

HOUSE OF ANANSI
PRESS
was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi's commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada's pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”