Memories

Both my parents had close relationships with their grandparents growing up, and hold a reverence for the elderly that I’ve always admired.   When we moved away from extended family, my parents thought it was important that we knew how to interact with elderly people.   So when we were young, my older brother and I regularly went to visit old people: strangers in a nursing home, taking tomatoes from the garden to the neighbors, visiting shut ins with my mom when she was the Relief Society President.

One snowy Christmas in St. Cloud, Minnesota, we went to the nursing home to hold some frail, ice cold hands.   I was almost six years old and probably   cute and precocious, as I consider my own 5 year old to be.   I might have even sung a Christmas Carol.   My brother was about ten and probably sullen- not so cute.   He was more of an introvert, so I imagine these trips were more uncomfortable for   him than for me.   After we visited, a grateful resident presented me with a   chocolate turkey, wrapped in beautiful multicolored foil.   Then she looked around her room, reached over to her bedside table,   and handed my brother a mushy brown banana.

I remember the drive home in the back of the station wagon, holding that beautiful turkey, my brother seething beside me.   The banana hadn’t made it into the car (sometimes I imagine it laying in the dingy, icy parking lot).   It was the 70s, and my dad was in graduate school.   Money was tight.   It wasn’t as if they were going to stop by Target on the way home and get him a treat.   I knew it was up to me to share the turkey, and I admit I reveled for just a few minutes too long in holding it, watching it reflect the light, and imagining it’s luscious, chocolaty taste. I slowly unwrapped it and examined all the dark brown details of its wings, tail feathers, the mysterious waddle.

Then I broke off the head and handed the rest to my brother. At least, that’s the way I like to remember it.