BIG LITTLE THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR

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BIG LITTLE THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR

How can it be that so many years have passed since I entered the following in my Red Clay Diary? Seems like yesterday. Read on…

Jessica, all sixteen years and nine months of her, brakes her car in front of our Southside home just seconds after I pull up and stop in the parking place right in front of her.

She and her friend Dawn get out and strut their stuff.

Jessica has just bleached her beautiful red hair a lemony color, and she’s wearing some kind of gel to make the hair stand up not of its own accord. Dawn’s jet black hairdo is puffed up on top and longer in back, and they both wear the latest things that can be had at your friendly neighborhood thrift store.

I’m happy to see Jessica, because she’s the first granddaughter of a long line of grandkids, and I guess she’s taught me more about how to be (and not be) a grandfather than all six of the other grand kids—and sometimes, she’s enough of a handful to overshadow the other grand kids.

But that’s Jessica, you see. Jessica has always been an in-your-face kind of woman, a woman who’s liable to tell you what she thinks even when you wish she would pull her punches just a little. In the long run, I appreciate this ability of Jessica’s, the ability to tell the truth unexpectedly and the extra-added ability to lie when you wish she wouldn’t. This is how Jessica makes sensible her world, this truth-telling and truth-bending, this saying what you know is true but would rather not hear, this saying what isn’t quite true when you wish you knew the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. As a teenager, at this time in her life, Jessica is an artful dodger, but this is just her way of getting through the thicket on her terms. She has to keep you a little off-balance in order to maintain her balance.

Anyhow, Jessica and Dawn accompany me into the house, helping me carry loads of freshly-done laundry and newly-formed smiles to bring to her grandmother, Liz, whom she has called “Grammy” since she was able to talk. I’m “Poppy,” you know.

Grammy brightens up considerably when she sees Jessica. She always brightens up when she sees Jessica, Jessica being attached to her by an almost visible chain of experience and genetics.

Jessica sports her new lemon hair and we make all the necessary comments about it and about how it got all lemony, and then we get down to the business of eating and sipping and chatting about this and about that.

It’s a nice visit. Its significance is unfathomable, but it’s quite significant that, once Jessica got her license to drive and her own wheels, she started attempting to visit us more often. We need to see her, you know, just to be sure she’s still with us, still thinks of us, still needs to appear.

Jessica and Dawn head out of the house, full of coffee and laughs and expectations, headed for their next Southside adventure.

Grammy and I finish our soup. We reflect on the complications of simplicity. As always, we try to find a way to simplify the complications. Too often, we stumble and complicate the simple. We take our daily doses of friendly encounters and season them with whatever seems to work at the time, based on experience, skill, and just plain luck.

That’s how we get through the day—a chunk at a time. We don’t spend too much time looking back at what we should have done. We don’t dare look too far into the future for fear of actually seeing it (wouldn’t that be scary?). We try to focus on right now, right this moment. We try to appreciate the times we feel good. We try to see the sunny light reflecting off lemony hairdos. We try to wish real hard for peace and love for everybody, including us

That’s a long-ago entry in my Red Clay Diary. Just to update you, it’s gratifying to note that Jessica grew up, became even brighter, carries on her career full speed ahead, and still takes time now and then to drop by and show us how she’s doing these days.

Are we lucky, or what

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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