grandmother
The above photo is from my mom’s childhood bedroom. Today I was thinking about what I wrote after being at my Nana and Poppa’s old house. I wanted to be more reflective of everything that happened there and then I was thinking about the women who gave birth to the bodies who gave life to me, and I think I need to write about Coral.
My mom’s mom was an artist through and through. She sketched, sewed, painted, she wore gold. She wore lipstick sometimes too, maybe even when we went to the beach. But not red lipstick, it was a more nuanced, coppery tone. She was blonde and her laugh was thick with joy.
Sometimes I am afraid of not accomplishing what only I know I am here to do, when I feel like I have watched women my whole life give up on the things they would love to throw themselves into. I don’t want to be a woman who vanishes behind her family or her partner or her work. I don’t want to be a wallflower, even if they are beautiful.
The women in my family are so resilient and strong and unnecessarily selfless. They are too wise for the rest of us and I know we don’t deserve to bask in their light, but they let us anyways, so we do.
My Nana had so many lamps with crystals or prisms hanging on the outside. I used to slide a couple crystals off and pretend I was wearing huge earrings even though I didn’t have my ears pierced when Coral was alive.
When I saw those lamps around the house the other day I realized I was mourning the loss of Coral in my world all over again. She didn’t get to see me grow up, and we didn’t get to talk about art or colours or what it means to need to create. I found myself going through old art supplies at her house and scanning every page in stacks of colouring pages to see if there was a message she would have left for me. I honestly thought I was going to find some words of wisdom or something specifically addressed to Hannah Leigh Noble Stover.
There were 21 of us grandchildren before she passed away and there are more of us now, but somehow I thought that after 15 years of her being gone I would find a message from her just for me…?
The other day I was outside in the garden at work and a moth fluttered over and just wouldn’t leave me alone. This moth didn’t scare me - but she landed on my chest and just wanted to be close to me. She made me laugh out loud because she was a little clingy for a creature with wings. It could have been flying anywhere! Why was she camping out over my heart and lungs?
I want to believe that Coral was like that moth for me. That even though she had to leave, she would have stuck around just because she wanted to be near me. I want to believe she is in everything I see - she is the moth, she is the next thing I make, she is in the gold I wear. There’s so much I had to learn from her still and I’m so surprised that saying goodbye to that house feels like losing her all over again, but it does. But maybe it also feels like reconnecting with a story, an ancestor, a piece of myself I needed to remember. For right now. For such a time as this.
The day we went to the house was the second last day of the cancer season on the zodiac. Cancer represents the mother, the divine feminine, the ocean, the womb.
Even in that empty house I could taste the bread she used to toast to perfection for us sisters every morning we stayed there. I can smell the coffee that only the adults and big cousins got to sip. I can hear Poppa watching the baseball game with my uncles as cousins are screaming with laughter in the basement. I can still hear us running around the yard and playing manhunt or tag or hide and seek after a day at the beach. I can still hear my aunts reminiscing in the living room over tea. The only time I would sneak into my grandparents’ bedroom was to snag a cherry Halls from my Poppa’s bureau.
When we were younger Coral used to buy Ab and I matching outfits, but Ab’s were blue and mine were pink. I’m not sure why those colours were assigned to each of us, because I really didn’t love pink. But over time and especially in art school I found myself repeatedly using pink and blue in my pieces and I loved it. I couldn’t tell whether my subconscious was drawing me into politically charged themes around sex/gender or what was going on. Looking back I think those colour themes started early on for me.
My first tattoo was pink and blue. I’m sure Coral would approve.