Articles - Loving Circles

by Tracy Neff

The Sweetness of Life

When I order a Vanilla Latte, "No foam, but lots of whipped cream, please," it is for one reason - to taste my grandmother. Every time I taste whipped cream, I taste her - her deep love for life, her deep faith and her quiet determination.

She was such a gentle and powerful presence always achieving what was inside her heart not through force, or anger, or manipulation but through love and gratitude.

Loving Wisdom - this was my grandmother.

She could have been bitter and resentful, given her life, this would have been the easier choice. She could have played the victim and related to the world through complaint. I know many women, far more fortunate than my grandmother, who are stuck in complaint, who relate to others and themselves by voicing again and again their stories of pain and misery, how unfair life has been and how much their bodies ache because of it all.

But, my grandmother made the hard choice in life - she chose to be grateful and appreciative and to spread joy even though she was struck with polio at the age of sixteen and almost died, even though she was crippled and could not walk and rode in a wheelchair the rest of her life, even though she struggled to become pregnant and when she did, she miscarried again and again and when she finally did give birth, the baby died after a few days of living, even though my grandfather wasn't the most faithful man in the world, even though they were poor, poor, poor - through all this my grandmother chose faith and gratitude and hope. In her quiet determination, she birthed a baby girl, my Aunty Mryt, and eleven years later, several miscarriages later, my father, Wayne.

I asked my grandmother once how she cared for my aunt as a baby.

"We spend the first year together on the ground. I crawled just like she crawled," my grandmother laughed.

I imagine my grandmother crawling combat style on the floor of her house to reach her crying baby. I imagine the strength she must have had in her arms to pull her body along the floor, the will and determination it must have taken to prop herself up to a sitting position, to grab hold of my aunt and bring her gently to her breast to feed her. The thought of the effort it must have taken exhausts me. And that was just the energy it took to care for my aunt in one moment of one day. What about the rest of the moments? Changing the dirty diapers, washing the diapers by hand, cooking meals, washing dishes, giving my aunt a bath. The will it must have taken to keep going and to stay in the heart space of gratitude and faith, when it would have been so easy to say, " Why me, why me?"

It would serve me well to think of my grandmother as a young mother whenever I get stuck in complaint around the busyness of being a mother. At least I have working legs to walk on, disposable diapers, ready-made dinners, a dishwasher, a washing machine, a faithful husband, money to spend - I have so much and yet I still catch myself in complaint more often than I care to admit.

My grandmother expended more energy in one moment caring for one child than I've expended over a year of caring for three. The will and determination she had astounds me, and she was happy, she was grateful. She held the space of love for everyone around her, often for those far more fortunate than herself. She inspired people to live fully from their hearts, to capture a dream called faith and hold in their hands. She knew the power of faith because she lived it every day.

My grandmother raised two children and sat on committees for the physically handicapped. She was instrumental in getting the law passed for mandatory wheel-chair accessibility in everything from restaurants to shopping malls to washrooms. She worked hard to make the changes her heart called for but she worked gently and quietly, without a need to be recognized. She did what she did because she made the hard choice to stay open in faith and love even when life must have felt difficult.

When my grandmother died, I was eighteen. I missed her the moment she left - I still miss her today.

In honour of my grandmother's life and efforts, William Watson Lodge, a lodge built for handicapped people in the forest of Kanaskis country, named one of the rooms after her and made up a beautiful plaque acknowledging her efforts in helping handicapped people live more easily in a world that hardly acknowledged them.

In her quiet way, my grandmother left her legacy. Every time I see a wheelchair ramp or wheelchair accessible washroom or smell the sweet peas that covered the fence in my grandma's backyard, or open my heart and feel her love inside me and all around me, I remember her. She's still here, quietly encouraging me to live fully from my heart and quietly from my head.

I take my spoon, dip it deep into the frothy white cream that sits atop the Vanilla Latte. I take it into my mouth where it's sweetness dissolves on my tongue. The sweetness of life - this is what my grandmother lived and taught each one of us. I taste her on my tongue, dissolving and blossoming, reminding me to live in the sweetness of my life, to focus here in faith and love. It's not that my grandmother lived in denial, she faced her limitations everyday, it's that she understood what many of us have not yet learned - that there is sweetness in pain and difficult moments, there is sweetness in ALL of life.

I watch my grandmother, standing at the kitchen counter in her leg braces, holding tight to the counter with one hand and using the other to slide one leg, then the other toward the fridge.

"Let me help you, grandma," I say.

"No, no. Sit down. I want to serve you," she insists as she slowly makes her way. When she gets there, she opens the fridge and with a great big grin on her face takes the big bowl of whipped cream and places it on the counter. Then she slides the whipped cream and herself back down the counter until she reaches the cupboard of bowls and the drawer of spoons. She takes two bowls, one for her and one for me and fills them both.

"Here, Tracy," she says reaching out to give me the bowls of whipped cream.

"Thanks, grandma," I say, anxious to taste it, but I wait for her to slide herself down the counter again, then I get up to move her wheel chair in behind her, help her to balance and fall back into it.

"Thanks," she says. "Now, let's eat!"

Together we sit and eat the whipped cream. We slowly place it in our mouths and let it dissolve and blossom on our tongues, we play together, putting the whipped cream on our noses and we laugh out loud at our silliness and together as we eat and play and be with one another, we remember how preciously sweet life is.

That moment was a long, long time ago and it is every moment of my life now. I can choose to see the sweetness in all moments in my life or not, and so can you. My grandmother has been gone for twenty years but she drops in once in awhile, as she did today to remind me to remind you about the sweetness in all of life - and she means all of life - she means the sweetness of having polio and being unable to walk, she means the sweetness in sitting with her granddaughter eating bowls of whipped cream, she means the smell of sweet peas in the garden and the death of a child - there is sweetness in it all, if we choose to feel it.

Somewhere along the way, probably because of her polio and crippled legs, my grandmother said, "Yes to it all." And when she said this, she lived the sweetness of her whole life - the pain, the joy and everything in between.

Top