A Bit Diminished

My life lately has been eaten alive by my family corporation. Due to my partial ownership and the profits involved therein, I’ve been spending basically every day at the spec house. We’re trying to get it done by Thursday so we can close on it before we have to start paying the interest on the loan. The (other) Stewarts, the buyers, come by at least once a week to visit their newest (and 9th..and most expensive) child. I yearn to have my life back, but I’m not sure what that life entails when I take a good look at it. I have a feeling the sudden influx of cash will tint the amount of work in a bit rosier light.
Anyway, I wrote this short story because my friend Josh is the editor of The Talon, Oklahoma Christian’s newspaper and asked me to write something. I suppose he needed to fill some space.
A Concerned Obsession
My grandmother had an insistent and consistent passion for bowel movements. My mother went back to her secretarial job when I hit kindergarten age. From that point forward, I book ended my school days with Grandma’s perfectly organized and creatively delicious existence. Each day I would leave for the Meadowdale Afternoon Kindergarten dressed in one of four overly matching twin sets: three formed by interchanging pastel-colored sweatpants and shirts, one a hunter green set covered in yellow airplanes. At the young age of five I had already acquired the self-conscious acumen to be embarrassed by the lack of variety in my wardrobe.
After an exciting half-day of sight words and coloring, I would board bus #107, shyly say hi to Floyd, my classically redneck bus driver, and ride over to the big school (where we’d meet the 1st through 8th graders to ride home together). I’d wait for my cool, 7th grade big sister to hop on the bus, scoop me in her lap, and sit in front with the other 5-year-olds. After 30 minutes of unwinding and early childhood socialization, we’d arrive at the Mt. Nebo Church of Christ-my bus stop from age 5 to 18. My brother (a big tough 6th grader), my sister, and I would begin the ½ mile trek to Grandma’s.
Upon arriving, we would be greeted by love, pepperoni and cheese mini biscuit pizzas, and the inevitable question, “Have you had your bowel movement today?” I’m not sure when or why her fixation with bodily functions surfaced, but to her this was the key to maintaining health and balance.
Grandma was a local legend. She never possessed a driver’s license, but was a mover and shaker about the small community. She was an active volunteer EMT, the queen of the homemaker’s association, organizer of community fairs and craft shows, and a much-sought-after wedding cake creator. As far as grandmothers go, I saw her as pretty much magical, having come along in the years after she’d mellowed past menopause. Along with her BM wisdom came warnings that I could “drown in a teaspoon of water” and that chewing on a washcloth in the bathtub would result in “trench mouth”.
Over the last 18 years I have matured, as has she. She no longer greets me at the door with an intestinal checklist. Instead there is a chart in her bathroom where others-husband, siblings, children, grandchildren- keep track of her body and its many functions. Alzheimer’s imprisons her mind as her body deliberates with the judge on the length of her sentence. It’s been years since anyone asked me in all seriousness about the state of my colon, but from the right 85-year-old, I would welcome the inquiry.