There are tears on my cheeks, and approximately 47% of them are sad tears. The other 53%, I think, are ones of happiness:
I don't want to get into any sticky details at the moment... or ever, really... But this week my hillarious, frugal, spry, Godly, altruistic, 100% Dutch grandpa VerPloeg is going through a messy divorce from a woman who isn't my biological grandmother. My mother, her twin sister and their brother are all major worriers, and so our home for the past five days has been drowning in VerPloegian agitation. It's suffocating me.
But my grandpa walked into the kitchen, where I was hiding, to get away from his fretting children. I patted him on the back and said, "I bet that by now you're really tired of hearing people talk about you..."
"Oh, Gracie, you don't know the half of it."
I gave him a hug.
"Gracie," (he's the only one allowed to call me that besides my nieces, Dallas Bee and Earl Taylor) "I'm not gonna be up and running much longer... But before I go, I think I'd like to see you get married to a nice fella."
"Got anyone in mind? You'll have to find someone for me."
"I'd love to."
"Let me know when he's passed your tests, alright?"
"Sure."
We turn to go our separate ways.
"Oh, and Gracie?"
"Yeah Grandpa?"
"He's gonna have to be Dutch."
"... I think I can live with that."
1. love this post. it's funny what we focus on.
ReplyDelete2. i wrote a poem on the seventeenth that uses simultaneous sad and happy tears. weird. i am posting it right now.
3. Verploegian agitation: though the content is troubling, saying it outloud makes for a couple of strange looks in the computer lab.