A few years ago my mom gave me Grandma's brooch. It's pinned to a piece of lovely orange cloth that hangs over my bedroom dresser. I see it every morning. And every night. And I wonder about my grandmother, about being a woman, about losing your voice.
Grandma had a stoke when she was in her 40s. After that the only sound she made was a sort of muted noise, something between a hum and a squeak and a groan. I never heard her voice.
On her dress, pinned up high on the right, she wore a silver brooch, solid and round. A silver pencil hung down from it on a recoiling chain. When grandma wanted to say something that all of her pointing and expressive eyes couldn't convey, she'd take her good left hand, pull the pen down, and scribble on a notepad, illegible to me. My mom would read it, sometimes out loud, not always, and carry on with the lopsided conversation.
I wonder if my mother ever saved any of Grandma's papers. What kind of things she wrote. The words—written slow and awkward since she'd been right-handed before her stroke—must have been carefully chosen. Did she write of her heart or only of her need to use the restroom?
As a writer, I feel close to my grandma. I think of her often.
She was a writer, too.
The cloth she wore must have been very strong.
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