Alyse Wylie 1927-2013
I am a romantic. It is not my fault. I am a romantic because I know what true love looks like. True love is Gramps and Granny. I grew up seeing true love in action. The way Granny would look at Gramps, eyes twinkling, giggling at something Gramps had said and the “Oh Bob” that would follow. When I was a child, I spent a few weekends with Gramps and Granny, on every trip I usually interrupted their kissing in the kitchen. I grew up knowing that my Grandparents were deeply in love with one another. On those weekends with Gramps and Granny, Granny and I spent most of our time sitting at the kitchen table talking about love, life and my future dreams. Granny unknowingly fueling my romantic tendencies with stories of the first time she met Gramps. She would tell me about how poor they were in the beginning, but it didn’t matter because they were in love. I loved hearing Granny’s stories. I always felt like Granny’s stories were what happened after the fairy tale ended. Granny’s life with Gramps was filled with love. I remember Granny telling me, she didn’t like sleeping because she was so happy she didn’t want to waste a moment. I loved spending time with Granny because she made me feel so loved and so special, like I could do no wrong.
I have so many great memories of my Granny, but more importantly it is the feeling that is attached to all of my memories the deep love that I felt when I was with her. Granny had this way of making you feel so good, and that you could tell her anything and she would never judge you. Granny is part of so many special memories: Christmas dinners where everyone had a vegetable, our mutual love for a chocolate peanut butter cake, Granny and I playing Gin and Rummy, Granny teaching me how to knit, Granny video tapping Anne of Green Gables for me, Granny’s sneaky money under the place mat in the kitchen, watching Gone with the Wind, microwaving hot dogs, playing with the mini tea set, getting my cabbage patch doll for Christmas, Granny’s return from Florida with cool presents and in the later years shopping together for her “perfect shirt” (that couldn’t have pockets in the front, the neck line had to cover her scar, the neck line couldn’t be too high because she didn’t like turtle necks). I don’t think we ever found the “perfect shirt”.
Five years ago, I made it my new year’s resolution to see Gramps and Granny once a month. It was a great new year’s resolution. Gramps would pick me up at Kippling Station and then Granny and I would go “shopping”. We never really went “shopping”. We would have lunch together in the mall and sit there talking for hours only to realize that Gramps would be picking us up in a half hour. We would hurriedly look through the mall together the majority of the time coming back empty handed. The one time we did actually shop, we were so tired at the end- we decided to get Kernels Double Butter Popcorn- we sat there on the bench devouring the bag of popcorn. This memory doesn’t seem like much, but it was a really special bag of popcorn for Granny and me. I don’t why it was, but we always talked about that bag of popcorn after- I think it was because maybe we moved our talks from the kitchen table, to the restaurant now to a bench in the mall. Maybe it was because she really shouldn’t have had that popcorn because it made her blood sugar so high. I don’t know why, but that bag of popcorn we shared became scared to us.
Granny and I spent most of our time together talking about love and my dreams of finding my match, like she found with Gramps. I remember it was at Gramps and Granny’s wedding anniversary that I came up with my “room of love” theory. I was watching Gramps toast Granny. Granny gazing up at Gramps with a deep and abiding love for Gramps that I realized that we were all in that room because of them. Their love created all these wonderful possibilities and although our lives in the room weren’t perfect, if it weren’t for Gramps and Granny none of us would be here. The room filled with love is a room, that because of your positive actions, you have positive reactions and that creates beautiful opportunities for others. A room filled with love doesn’t have to be perfect, in my grandparent’s room of love there is heart break and not everything always turns out as you had hoped, but there is also beauty, learning and love. I am deeply grateful that I was one of people in Granny’s room of love. I am a romantic because Granny encouraged me to be one with all of our conversations about love and life. I believe Granny was a romantic too. I am deeply grateful for my friendship and relationship I had with my Granny.
my new possibilities project 