I have this bracelet my grandmother gave me, cheap metal squares linked together, little circles of redwood glued to the top of each. I imagine that somebody in northern California made his living by collecting thumb-width branches among the giants, slicing them up like so much Kielebasa, varnishing them, applying a bit of Elmer�s, making what was then a typical souvenir. Probably sold it for a buck, maybe two.
It now resides in my jewelry box, minus a couple of circles but still a powerful object of remembrance to me, which never fails to bring to mind a pale color photograph of that cheerful yet stalwart woman, my grandma. She stands tiny, miniscule at the massive base of the requisite Redwood tree. Grandpa�s powder blue �58 Dauphine waits nearby. It is an insignificant picture that my progeny will probably discard someday without a second thought.
I can hardly grasp the meaning of it, the meaning of my mother�s mother, this second-generation Swede who married a second-generation Norwegian, not knowing that someday we would all be struggling to remember where we belong, which relative came from which country, what culture or slight remnant of a culture we will call our own. Already the forebears on my father�s side had squandered our legacy, appearing mysteriously from someplace in Mississippi, two brothers with our last name, having nothing but a wad of cash and bad tempers�who knows who they were. I prefer to study my Norwegian great-grandfather�s features, so like my own, and seek my self in his gaze.
They were happy wanderers, my grandparents. They met in Iowa, they had my mother in South Dakota, they built a house in southern California from which to launch their numerous future vacations. They were Vikings set adrift in the great wide world, this barely discovered country. Tourists. Like their ancient fathers, they looked, they looted a bit, they returned home.
My grandma was a steady woman. She worked for the city, then retired honorably from the Long Beach Public Library. During her years of checking books, binding books, driving the bookmobile, my grandfather toiled away in his shop, starting a new business every few months. He invented things that other people invented later. He hatched all kinds of schemes, encouraging his buddies to buy property downtown, property that made them rich. He drank and laughed and told jokes. Every Christmas he filled the house with guests and served them codfish, lefsa, kringla. He died a happy man, having used Grandma�s retirement money to build her a house in Oregon.
I went to live with Grandma, in her house, with ghosts of my grandpa all around. If we passed by the living room in the middle of the night, we saw him reading in his chair. If we declined to pass by, it didn�t matter. We heard the transistor radio he carried in his front shirt pocket. And so, we called the pastor of the Lutheran church, who anointed the house as we said good-bye.
Grandma spent the next ten years doing whatever she liked. She bowled, she made annual pilgrimages to Las Vegas and Hawaii with �the girls,� she had monthly luncheons with the Ladies Circle. She volunteered at the hospital, she picked up around her house, our house, my uncle�s house, my father�s construction sites. She bought an electric chainsaw and cut down trees, chopped up the logs with her own axe, gathered the scraps for kindling. She spent her last day on earth cleaning windows, hauling wood, mopping, straightening, living. The next day she had plans to go bowling.
I was far from her when she died. I had a letter I�d written her, still in the envelope ready to be mailed. My letter was a response to hers, in which she had traced the outline of her hand, which was a response to my previous letter, in which I had traced the outlines of my children�s hands. I wept because I didn�t have anyplace to send my letter, and I could do nothing but put it in one of the many boxes containing papers I�ve accumulated over the years. She did not linger, she did not require Lutheran intercession to say her good-byes. She was self-sufficient, whole and strong.
My grandma was a Black Swede, harking back to the age when the Vikings gathered their women from African shores and poured out their genes across a frozen land. All that she carried of them was thick, wavy black hair and a spread nose, which she did not pass on to her children. And of the Swedes in general I have only my wire-bound Ladies Circle Cookbook, circa 1954. I�m told that many of the recipes came from Bisquick boxes and Gold Medal Flour, rendering them meaningless to me. All I have of her, really, is this bracelet and a picture, a snapshot of her life. The massive tree, the little circles, the heart of the Redwood. My grandmother�s heart.
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