Our Day Has Come

Dear Grandma,

tomorrow is the day. There's a phone call I'm expecting at about 11:30 and let me tell you, that's one call I won't be dodging (God, how I loathe talking on the phone).

It's Jerry, my real estate agent, and he's bringing keys to me at work -the keys to my new house.

That I own.

It's mine. All mine (I know, I know, try skipping a mortgage payment and see how 'all yours' it is).

My own piece of earth. My own roof (that needs repairing). My own floors (hardwood, and very nice). My own fireplaces (not one, but two - count 'em).

Of course from your vantage point in heaven you know that the first meal I eat there will be the first bite of food in my forty-one-year life that I have ever eaten in a place that belonged to me. Not a family member. Not a friend. Not a landlord.

Me.

And it is all because of you, and I swear that I can feel you smiling at me, even as you tell me to gear up for some hard work and sacrifice.

It's not just because you left me a few bucks to help with the down payment (but you did, but you did, and I thank you). 

It's because you taught me that I was allowed to have a dream. That I was allowed to believe I could be so much more than so many told me I could ever be. That I was a woman of substance, culture, intelligence, and sense.

It's because you were able to see that despite the thoughtlessness of my youth, I still deserved to have what I should have all along but never did.

It's because you believed in me, when it seemed no one else did, and you let me know that I could earn this and didn't need anyone else - my parents, a husband, whatever - to give it to me.

It's because you made me earn it, and didn't just hand it to me, that you helped make me a person who could do just that. And you still do, because this place needs love and money, and I have lots of one and not so much of the other but by God I will do it....because you allowed me to dream, you showed me that with enough focus  it's almost spooky how I can manifest what I want.

I am a girl who grew up in rented houses. The roof over my head never belonged to my mother or father. I have been renting myself since I was 18, always answering to and forking over my hard-earned money to a stranger. This would be fine if I were a fleet-footed Sagittarian, but I am a home-obsessed Taurean. I was so afraid this day would never come, that I would remain rootless, landless, forever shut out of what I perceive to be autonomy, security, a future. What I I have longed for all my life was a home of my very own. And now you've given it to me.

I know you lost your home in your youth, too, and lived under roofs that weren't your own. I imagine how much your first home meant to you, and I know how much your last home meant to you. I know that you shied away from the stock market and put your faith in real estate, in earth, in tangible, touchable property, and that it was good to you, and I am if nothing else, my grandmother's granddaughter in all these ways.

This house is yours, Grandma. Your photograph (maybe the one in the coconut bra and grass skirt, maybe something more dignified) will hang by the front door so that I and everyone else can know who the spiritual mistress of this home is: Dorothea.

Today I had the impulse to go to your grave and tell you all about it and leave you flowers, not sad white ones but happy happy purple and pink ones. But you're so far away. You rest in the ground in Los Angeles and I can't go that far right now (with the move and all), but Ramon is coming to see you for me and he will leave the flowers and he will tell you how thankful I am. And soon, I'm hoping on what would have been your 95th birthday, I'm going to come see you with more flowers, and I'm going to take that key that Jerry is bringing me tomorrow and I'm going to dig a little hole over your grave and drop it in, because you are my home, Grandma. You always were and you always will be.

I promise I will make you proud, and I ask you, every day, to please help me be the person you always wanted me to be. I'm trying.

All my love,

Your Granddaughter