Old Memories and Pretty Paints

Last weekend we visited my great-grandma in Nashville. It was a bit of a melancholy trip. When someone asks "why are you going?" it's weird to reply with, "well...we're going to take one last group photo with my great-grandma because she's really old and may die soon..." Just a wee bit awkward. But okay. So that's officially why we went. It was sad seeing her, she's pretty much just wasting away. For someone late in their 90's, she's in "good health." I guess her only true ailment is simply being old. She's lost weight. Once a jolly, rotund, artistic woman, she's now unable to remember anything within the past ten years or so, and her papery skin literally hangs off her bones. She looks so small and frail and breakable. She sleeps all the time and I'm glad she does, she can't remember anything or take joy in art or talking or anything like she used to. I hope our visit brought her a few minutes of joy, but I think in reality she was just frustrated that we kept her from her nap.

Seeing her that was was sad. When I was younger we used to visit her in Nashville all the time. And we'd visit my grandma (who passed away a few years ago). I always wanted to stay with Memaw (my great-grandma) more because her house was so much more interesting. Plus, she had a massive television, and we never really got to watch TV. At her house, we could, and that was quite the treat. We'd play in the little man-made stream-river-water-in-a-concrete-ditch-thingy and get all dirty and mosquito-bitten. And best of all were the ceramics.

Memaw was an artist. It was more of a hobby for her, but she was still good at it. She did some oil painting (we have one in our family room) and she painted beautiful and intricately detailed ceramics. Painted tan and brown with white trimming, the one-story building in the back of Memaw's house was full of excitement and creativity. It sat there, tantalizing and inviting, full of unpainted ceramics and paints simply begging to be dug from their boxes and used. And best of all, we were allowed to use them. Every time we went to Memaw's we would spend hours unpacking the boxes, looking at the various options simply waiting to be painted. We'd pick a few and then find paints. There were so many colors. Bright turquoises and forest greens, some shiny, others matte. Hundreds of shades of pinks, reds, purples, and blues. The options were endless, sometimes so many that it was almost overwhelming. Often we were instructed to only pick a few colors, otherwise we could never have decided. The beautiful colors would be squirted out into paint trays, beautiful blobs of color, bright and cheery. Our house used to be full of our ceramic creations, though I'm sure many have been stealthily thrown away over the years. Those were some of the best of times.

So Memaw has grown old. She no longer paints or laughs or cracks jokes. But her memories will live on forever, and the wonderful memories of childhood weekends spent in Nashville visiting her will never be forgotten or lost.