26 5 / 2011
Because Grannies are the wisest women of them all.
Grandma: You gotta be careful with that. You gotta be careful with the person you fall in love is worth it… to you.
Cindy: I never want to be like my parents. I know they must’ve loved each other at one time right? To just get it all out of the way before they had me. How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?
Grandma: I think the only way you can find out is to have the feeling. You’re a good person. You have the right to say I do trust. I do trust myself.
-Blue Valentine
I remember once, I was sitting in the sun room at my Grannie & Papa Gene’s & they’d just had their driveway re-paved in the dead of the summer. My Papa Gene was telling me all about the sweet workers who’d come & how he’d taken them out a 7up & some nabs in the heat of the day and told them to take a break. When the lady sat down, she began talking about her relationship with the man doing most of the paving. My Papa Gene watched the way she watched him & being the blunt & blatant man he is, promptly asked if that was her buddy. She laughed & said that yes, he certainly was her buddy. Papa Gene then looked at me and said “You know, everybody needs a buddy. Grannie’s been my buddy for fifty years.”
The older I get, the less love looks like the version I grew up believing was true. As a little one, I believed it fixed everything and was absolutely promised to me. I hit 18 and I thought it was an ugly thing, a word that carried far too much meaning & multiple contexts that I wanted no part of. As an adult, I’ve come to realize it doesn’t fix anything, conquer anything, or change anything.
But if its my Papa Gene’s definition, if it’s really and truly just having a buddy to grow old with, that might be okay. A friend, a relationship, and an agreed effort to grow separately, but together. And if it’s a choice-if it’s really just about the trust, then I think that might be okay too.
