Greta

My grandmother is eighty-four.
Five-foot-nothing.
She shrunk three inches last year.
Something having to do with the vertebrae in her spine.

She makes the best biscuits.
She watches the Gospel channel when she is at home,
between the soap operas she pretends she doesn't watch.
She likes to dance when there's no music.
When I visit her, she dances around her green 1960s carpet and sings to no tune in particular, "I'm so, so, so happy."
When she goes swimming, she wears a bathing cap to keep her curls intact.
She wears one-inch heels to church on Sunday,
where she shows me off to friends and calls my friends her grandchildren, too. 
She sings in the choir and doesn't use a hymnal.
And she plays Bingo there on Tuesday nights
and sometimes she wins things like hand-me-down dresses
and new shoes
and she says it is because she is that good.
And she probably is.

Once, in the grocery store,
she shared the Gospel with a woman pushing a baby down the juice isle,
the meat cutter behind the deli counter,
and the cashier that rang up her cranberry juice, ham, and flour.

Another time, she called the wrong number
and kept them on the line saying,
"Well, honey, do you know the Lord?" -
just because she knew they wouldn't hang up on a old lady.
The conversation lasted an hour and ended with mutual God-bless-you's.

In 1995, she was widowed.
In 2010, she lost her sister.
In 2013, her brother.
This year, her best friend fell ill
and she spent nights at the hospital
holding her hand
and reading the Bible
and playing cards
and telling stories
about my grandpa
and probably forgetting that she told them
and telling them again.

And then when she was sure that she had exhausted all the stories she had,
she would gladly lapse into talking about Jesus or the weather.

Once, she went to Florida with my family
and you should have seen her eyes
light up like flashbulbs next to the ocean
where her toes crept into the sand
and the wind blew salt and stickiness into her tightly curled hair.
I walked down to stand next to her,
hold her hand.
"Well, hey.  Here comes Miss America," she would say
and lean her head on my shoulder -
light as a butterfly
and just as beautiful.
And she just looked out at the ocean with her watery eyes -
like she was seeing it for the first time -
like it reminded her of a dear friend -
and she said to me in a quiet whisper:
"God sure does know what He is doing, doesn't He, sweet baby?"