opinion

You cook. I’ll be the Granny
by Sarah Beck

As far as I know, there is no one in my family whose name hasn’t been used in the family tree at least twice. Everyone is named after so-and-so. Unlike the rest of my siblings, though, I was lucky enough to be named after someone who is still alive and whom I admire greatly: Sara Lu Frederick, my Granny.

The couple weeks or so that I spent with my Granny every summer when I was growing up were probably the most anticipated weeks of my life back then. It seemed as if she never ran out of fun activities and games to keep her grandchildren busy, and she never seemed to get tired of us.

Granny would play with us from sun up to sun down, almost non-stop. We would pick snow peas in the garden, color in the sun room, play card games, pretend to run a car repair shop named “Hosty’s,” feed the sheep, or go for bike rides. Yes, my seventy-five year old grandmother (or she was seventy-five then) would ride tricycles with us. She was so devoted to her grandchildren there was nothing she wouldn’t do to entertain us and make us happy.

My Mom tells me that whenever we went to visit, Granny would greet her at the door by saying, “You cook. I’ll be the Granny,” and off she would go pulling a wagon full of kids along the ditch beside the highway.

One summer, about six or seven years ago, Granny was doing exactly this, playing with her granddaughter Claire outside. Although Claire was a little old for it, she, like the rest of us, loved riding the oversized Amish-made red tricycle that Granny kept in the garage. It had heavy-duty and had real tires that held air. It was approaching dusk when Granny and Claire decided to take one more ride down the street before heading in for dinner.

I can imagine Claire on the black seat, her legs bent up a little too high when she peddled, and Granny standing on the back of the tricycle, pushing off for a good start down the street. They must have shouted a bit with excitement, but soon the tricycle started wobbling out of control as it gained more and more speed. They swerved and sped down a newly paved hill, heading for a round-about at the end. Granny could have jumped off, but that would have left Claire by herself, frantically trying to get off the red tricycle. They hit the curb and Granny and Claire were thrown off. We have all imagined what must have been going through seventy-five-year old Granny’s and six-year-old Claire’s minds those terrifying moments that the tricycle headed down that hill.

Granny struck her head against the curb. She was taken to the hospital and spent several weeks in a coma before waking up a completely different person. She looks much the same, but a brain injury has left her unable to walk and missing a big part of the personality we used to know. Each time I see her, she’s a little farther away; a little less Granny-like. But she’ll always be someone I look up to and hope to be like when I’m a grandmother some day. What she was doing when she got hurt shows how devoted she was to us. When I’m a grandmother, I hope I can say, “I’ll be the Granny” to my children as I rush off to play with my grandchildren.