The taste of love

She loves me, I know she does, might even be back in her good books haha! The she referred to here is in my Granny, the one who these days only gets visited intermittently by me. She's getting on in years, and growing more tired and less able to get around by the day. It's harder to have conversations with her, her hearing is not so good and she has trouble following what we're saying sometimes. But still, she's Granny and a little granny love goes a long way.

We grandkids all acknowledge that my little brother is her favourite. Oh, all parents deny that they have favourites but they do, you appreciate people differently, that's all. It doesn't mean you're loved less, really. For her, I'm the dragon, the person who can be relied upon to bully her doctors into telling her what is really wrong, why she might require surgery at her age; the person who will basically deal with any problems that crop up. I'm her "fix it" girl. Sometimes even she remarks that maybe, the problem is that I'm too capable, I probably scare off any prospectives, but that's for another day.

My brother showed up this week, to spend a little time with her before leaving for the continent and his month of vacation, lucky devil. No, I don't begrudge him, he works really hard and deserves it! So the rest of us grinned, nudged each other, we knew what that meant. Every conversation she had would start with what he said or did; her tiredness would be temporarily cast aside, his favourite meals cooked, he'd be fussed over. We've all come to expect it because she does not see him at all often, oh yes, he is her favourite. To be fair to him, he indulges her more than any of us, so what to expect.

Having not seen him all week, and being so tired that my desk was feeling more like prison than usual, I didn't go to work one day. My staff are probably still stunned, I'm a stupid martyr type dontcha' know. Work sick, on-call, can always be depended on to do my duty. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Dumb ass me. But I wasn't about to miss a chance to hang with the bro, he'd been too busy working the last time I visited him. That's how I ended up in her house on a weekday. He told her I was coming.

Fully expecting to have to cook for everyone or go find a meal, when I got there she was in the kitchen. Huh? That's how I know how much she loves me, really, she does. Because instead of stewed chicken, his favourite, she made mine, dhal, rice and tomato choka with salted cod. My eighty-four year old Granny, who can barely totter around on good days; who has to sit down between stirring pots; who used to be a lady who could cook for either a thousand or twelve; who now spends most of her time marking time; she'd cooked for me because she knows I like it. Nobody, including my mom could make this like her. It would infuriate my mother that she would slave away to make us stuff that she knew we liked and then we'd go, okay, nice but not Granny's. Because really, while it was good, it just wasn't Granny's so that made it different. That's what home is, a Granny cooked meal with love added.

You know how I know that I'm special? Because my uncle, who used to comb my hair and tease me unmercifully when I was a kid; will still go find me pommecythere's, plums or mangos and make me a good chow, though I'm long past ten years old. He will go find me a certain type of sweet if I ask without pointing out that I can probably make them better than the person he's buying them from. You know, everybody needs to feel like a star from time to time, most of the time my family takes the piss out of me. There I'm not the overworked, hard pressed Director of whatever it is that I do. They give me a hard time about pretty much everything; not married, no kids, getting fatter, hair too short; what another tattoo!!! But under it all, I know. The taste of love that will be waiting for me just because. So no matter how awful my week/month/year has been, my brother and I will still laugh at Granny's soap operas, we'll bitch about having to go up and down the stairs twenty or thirty times to do something or other, but we'll bask in the glow because she loves us.