My Mother’s mother, my Grandma Hart, is a typical woman of her generation in many ways.  She loves cottage cheese & fruit, board games and cross stich.  She makes addictive chocolate drop cookies, keeps a calendar of all our birthdays and always has chewing gum somewhere inside her beige purse.

Yet, she often surprises me, and sometimes shocks me; and I like that.  She’s prudish and private yet the raciest lingerie I’ve ever owned was a gift from her which I opened on Christmas Day years ago in front of my entire family, much to their delight.  She’s well read and cultured, a stickler with money but consistently hands over the reins of her life to the men she has married.

There’s a sneaky gypsy traveler trapped somewhere in her demure nature and having already seen all of America, she just recently went on her first trip abroad, to France, at the age of 75.  There’s more of my Mom’s wild spirit in her than either of them would like to admit, though I often see them look at each other as if unable to fathom how two such different souls were ever brought together in the first place.  I suppose though that is the tradeoff in life, the balancing act of two completely varied things, shaken and stirred, in the hopes of creating something new out of the threads of something old.  And as the cycle continues, with me and those to follow, I can only hope that those glimmers, those idiosyncrasies that make my Grandma who she is, show up somewhere down the line.

Zelda meows in French. She prefers the cheetah chase lounge for resting but just to be sure that she has properly dusted every piece of furniture with her soft, long fur, she rotates between them all.  Her stomach is nearly as wide as mine and she has officially been on a diet for the past two and a half years (aside from when Derek slips her sizzling bacon that she has learned to snatch less greedily and more gently).

Zelda meows in French with the pitch & tone of an old lady that has smoked the last half-century.  She meows when she wants to be fed again and when she wants to be petted and even louder when she doesn’t want to be pet. She meows when the room is too quiet and hides when it is too loud. She is eternally underfoot when you are running late and will even get a running start to leap upon your leg so that you remember that she is there.

I left Little (Big) Zelda at home this time—roadtrips with cat boxes are borderline unpleasant and it’s tough being the go between when Zelda and Derek start arguing over seats, food and me.  So she is there in our hot apartment with the fish and is probably stewing in her anger and laziness and all of her fur on all of our furniture.  And it is so lucky that Alice loves Zelda (or maybe just me) and is spoiling her with visits.

When I get back from this journey-road weary and tired- I will be working hard to bribe them both into liking me again. I will bring Zelda some Elk Jerky that hopefully she will prefer to pissing on my luggage. And Alice will get chocolate or coffee or wine. But mostly I am looking forward to giving them each these giant grizzly hugs I have here in my arms. And to hear that little big beast purr into my ears and stuff her furry face into mine.