I've been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately. I even dreamt about her twice over the last few days. Her birthday is coming up and I ALWAYS (like clockwork) start thinking about her at this time. I even picked up two more Jamaica Kincaid books a few days ago.
I wonder who my grandmother was. She was a mystery for sure. We are both Leos. I don't follow astrology but I do know that when people who do follow astrology ask me my sign they always back up a bit and say "Oh" when I tell them. I imagine a lot of people backed off from my grandmother too. She always insisted that she didn't need anyone but Jesus. My grandmother told a lot of stories but I've been left having to read between a lot of lines to get any real impressions. All the women before me are like this. None of them ever told a straightforward story. I've had to take the bits and pieces from all of these stories I have packed into my memory and put them together to create some kind of truth.
I just read Dorothy Allison's memoir "Two or Three Things I Know for Sure" in which I found a lot of similarities, not culturally but in the sense that our family histories are so matrilineal. I especially like this part:
"But where am I in the stories I tell? Not the storyteller but the woman in the story, the woman who believes in story. What is the truth about her. She was one of them, one of those legendary women who ran away. A witch queen, a warrior maiden, a mother with a canvas suitcase, a daughter with broken bones. Women run away because they must. I ran away because if I had not, I would have died."