For as long as I could remember, my dad’s parents had split their time between Minnesota and Florida. We visited them at the lake in Minnesota every summer, but only rarely made it to Florida in the winter. When we did, it was an occasion.
As soon as we arrived, while Grandpa helped Dad unload the van, Grandma would bustle us to the Sweetheart Room, a bedroom prepared and reserved for visiting grandchildren. A sun-drenched room swathed in cream and sea foam green, it was instantly calming and restful. Walking over the threshold, I felt that it wasn’t just a bedroom; it was a retreat.
Maybe my relief was due to the 24-hour drive. Or maybe it was because, from the moment Grandma greeted us, we were in the presence of love—a generous, sacrificial, deeply personal love.
She always offered the opportunity to unpack our suitcases into the wide, cream-colored dresser. I never did. Vacation was a chance to leave my rumpled clothes in the suitcase or, at most, draped over the footboard of the matching twin beds in the Sweetheart Room.
Each evening, however, I did stack Grandma’s homemade throw pillows in ruffled pink and green on the dresser under the watercolor picture she had painted of a sandpiper, slim beak and slimmer legs, gracefully picking its way across the sand. I fingered the shells, polished smooth, she had placed on the dresser, hoping that she had found them herself while beachcombing; then they would be so much more hers.
I loved padding barefoot down the hall in the mornings, knowing from the smell of instant coffee that Grandma was already bustling, ready to welcome me with a warm squeeze. As her arms, soft yet strong, wrapped around me, I would greedily inhale her many-layered aromas—lipstick, lotion, coffee, and the sharp mint of the lozenges she used to sooth a persistent cough.
One morning I woke early enough to join her in a morning routine that I was vaguely aware of but had never witnessed. I caught her, scissors in hand, heading for the front door.
Did I want to come too, she asked.
Oh yes.
Thick, Florida grass prickling the arches of my bare feet, I followed behind her tan, rubber-soled shoes and pastel shorts, to the row of hibiscus bushes that enveloped the length of my grandparents’ pale pink, stucco house. She fingered a few of the open blossoms, brilliant orange-red and trumpeting the gladness of morning, and then invited me to choose one for the breakfast table.
Honored but overwhelmed by the privilege, I scanned rapidly, feeling the pressure of my responsibility. Although every flower looked so perfect, a delicate five-pointed star bursting from a shower of pollen in the center of each, I was intrigued by the buds and the promise they held. Like a chrysalis about to reveal new life, the petals still turned inward held secrets known only to themselves. I longed to peel them back, to know. But Grandma was waiting. I chose and she snipped.
Back into the kitchen I carried the precious hibiscus flower cupped in my palm—five looping, lazing petals wrinkled by a mesmerizing pattern of veins resting in ten fingers alive with the pleasure of responsibility.
Sunlight streamed onto and almost through the green, slightly opaque round glass dining room table as Grandma placed the bloom gently into an elegant, spherical clear glass bowl at the center of the table. It floated lightly on the surface of the water, surrounded by a pitcher of orange juice, grapefruit halves, and coffee cups.
The breakfast table under the spell of sunshine and hibiscus felt magical. Standing beside Grandma, being with her, felt even better.
On another Florida visit years earlier, we had already eaten breakfast presided over by the hibiscus centerpiece and were getting ready to attend a service at my grandparents’ church.
I don’t remember which dress I was wearing. It may have been the dress with ruffled sleeves and double layers of flounces in alternating pink and white hearts that Grandma had helped my mom make for me. Or it may have been the new dress that Grandma had given me, mint green and smocked with pink and white, tied in the back with a massive bow. Either way, I felt beautiful and hoped Grandma would notice.
She was finishing getting ready in her bathroom and I had stolen a moment in the rush of family preparations to join her for the sheer pleasure of being near her.
As I walked in, Grandma was fishing a lozenge from the depths of her purse. Looking at me, she caught her breath and exclaimed, “You look awfully pretty!”
A sudden agony of confusion and disappointment consumed me. I mumbled a quiet thanks but couldn’t look at her as I slipped away. She had used the word pretty. It seemed like she had given me a compliment. But she had also said that I looked awful.
All the way to church, I pondered—silent, pained, and confused. The plain truth of the words was obvious: I looked awful. Maybe also a little pretty, but still awful. I had heard these words myself. There was no denying them.
Yet I knew Grandma, and there was the source of my turmoil. It felt wrong to believe she had said these words. She would not tell me that I looked awful. Even though I had heard her say it, I was confident it did not fit her; that was not her and could never be her. I knew her too well. She could not have said that. I could not square the Grandma I knew with the words I had heard her say.
Sitting beside her in the pew, I decided to believe in the Grandma I knew and set aside the words I could not understand.
I don’t remember exactly when I finally understood what Grandma had been trying to say, but I do know it was years later. The realization came with a flood of relief that I had trusted her—not her words as I had interpreted them, but Grandma herself as I knew her to be.
Another visit, I was afraid I had eaten my last hibiscus breakfast.
It was time for the long drive back to Virginia, and as we all piled into our red, fifteen-passenger van, I could not shake the feeling that this was the last time I would see my grandparents. I wasn’t ready.
Tears pricked my eyes as I colored in the back seat, trying to breathe steadily. I didn’t see them often, twice a year at most, but in Grandma’s presence I felt unconditional love. A cousin had once said that everyone believed they were Grandma’s favorite and it was easy to see why.
She knew—even when we visited with hordes of young children—how to find time for each of us, to connect with each of us, to serve our favorite food, teach us a new craft, read us a book, play a game, give us that extra squeeze. Even when we were far away, she sent thoughtful letters and she and Grandpa called to sing to us on our birthdays. I couldn’t do without them.
And, despite the dreadful premonition, I didn’t have to. Not yet.
Many years later, I bounced my ten-month-old daughter on my knee while sipping instant coffee with Grandma in the tiny lanai of her retirement home apartment. Hibiscus bloomed nearby in gracious salute to breakfasts gone by. Grandpa has passed away three days before my daughter was born, and this was my first opportunity to visit Grandma since then. Although there were tears, it was a wonderful visit.
My sister Lydia had come with us, and Grandma gave us the privilege of late nights poring over letters Grandpa had written her while he was stationed in the Pacific during World War II. I missed his strong, quiet presence, but I loved this opportunity to get to know him better than I ever had before. He had not spoken often while I was young because his increasing hearing loss left him grasping for the gist of conversations and unable to fully participate, but now his voice felt so immediate, so accessible through his letters.
Lydia and I conspired with several of Grandma’s closest friends to throw her a surprise eighty-sixth birthday party, a celebration of a truly lovely woman. It was such a treat to hear her friends share the many ways she had blessed those she knew.
Although so much of the visit was wonderful, one memory is so sharply painful that I once again find myself trying to breathe as I blink back tears.
Several times during our week with Grandma I recall her mentioning how her daughter, my aunt Karen, would always rub her feet when she would come to visit.
I don’t know why—perhaps I was too busy as a new mother tending my young daughter or perhaps the explanation is not even that flattering—but it was only long after I left that I realized this was Grandma’s gentle, gracious way of asking me to rub her aching, arthritic feet. She was too delicate to ask outright; she was trying to leave me a way out. And I had not understood.
The realization struck like lightning while its ramifications rolled through me like a long, rumbling thunderclap. I felt it in my chest, tight with grief, while regret and shame radiated down to my fingertips. My precious Grandma was in pain, and I had not heard her pleas for help.
As years passed and circumstances continued to prevent another visit to Florida, I was afraid that I would never have a chance to make this right.
Five years later, my husband, daughter and I drove through the night from Pennsylvania to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with Grandma. She was not doing well, and we knew this might be our last opportunity to see her. She was no longer in her apartment, but instead lay in a hospital bed. Generous always, she insisted we stay in her apartment during our visit so that we would not need to rent a hotel room.
We arrived on a gloriously bright morning, nearly too bright to gritty, sleep-deprived eyes, and we dozed in the car in the parking lot of the hospital until the first moment we would be allowed into her room. I whispered to Josh to let Gaeligh keep sleeping until she was ready to wake up but that I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see Grandma.
After stopping by the front desk, I wound my way to her room. It felt so good to be back in her arms, to be with her. She smelled just right.
She asked if I was hungry. I was ravenous, so I said yes and asked if there a cafeteria where I could grab a quick bite. Kind and gracious, always, she offered me a banana leftover from her own breakfast that she had saved just in case.
I hate bananas. Even thinking of them—sickly sweet and slimy—makes me gag. But Grandma, a home economics teacher who had spent her life loving people by feeding them and who painfully felt the lack of hospitality she could offer while confined to bed, couldn’t offer me anything else. She was giving me the very best of what she had. I could not refuse.
This was my last hibiscus breakfast. It was terrible yet perfect. I was with Grandma. And in eating the banana, for the first time, I was able to love her sacrificially, something she had always done for me yet something I had not been ready to do for her the last time I had seen her.
After I finished the banana, I asked if I could rub her feet. I don’t know if she remembered my negligence on the previous visit, but if so, she did not let on.
Gently peeling back her socks to reveal delicate skin glowing in the sunlight, blue veins tracing mysterious, laborious paths, pink toenails like ribbed seashells, I cupped her precious feet in tender fingers alive with responsibility and pleasure and knowing. In her quiet, graceful service she had taught me the secrets I had longed and needed to know—how to be present with those you love and how to love them well.
I am not sure I have ever been more grateful and glad than while I rubbed lotion into those beautiful feet.
Rachel Brown
enjoys sipping tea, savoring good books, and spending time outside.
She is daily inspired to live more deeply and love more fully by her husband and two children.