linnéa

This morning I helped my Grandmother put on stockings prescribed by her doctor. They are tight, designed to constrict like the skin of a sausage. For years now, poor circulation has prevented the proper rush of blood through her legs.

Lately, I notice that she carries her body like cumbersome luggage. By her disposition you wouldn’t know her pain, but her marbled, purplish skin expresses what she prevents her mouth from speaking.

This morning her ankle lay in my hand, naked and thick. Without warning my vision blackened under a flood of panic. Something had punctured the blissful carelessness of my youth and I sat on my grandmother’s bathroom floor holding her ankle, disoriented, dazed and utterly terrified. All the while, acutely aware that in the other room, propped on the cherry wood dresser is a sunny snapshot of some July afternoon in which my Grandmother stands at the zenith of her own youth. She is on a pier, triumphant head thrown back, hand resting on a comely hip, long legs in shapely silhouette against the expanse of Cottage Lake, sparkling. Her equally beautiful friends flank my glamorous grandmother. One seems to be loosing her balance in a giddy paroxysm of laughter. No doubt the strong arm of some forgotten beau will soon enter the frame to steady her. They wear cheerful bikinis and hairstyles cut to their era…. my grandmother’s smile is blinding. Now I am holding the ankle of that same summer beauty, and wasn’t that picture taken only last week? Surely it was. Must have been. But on my palm her skin is waxy and stiff; like wood, indurate… hardening unto death, her leg is heavy and clumsy, knee a wad of tissue- like the elbow of a diseased elm.

It is Saturday. Take a picture of me now: strong, in the backyard, full sun, red skirt, green grass, smooth skin … at this moment, right now, when I hold the dying limb of my family tree in my own hand. Years promise to come, I am vital and expectant, but in this one nauseating instant, I am absolutely terrified. One day my own body will betray me, and it will feel like two weeks from now.