My Valentine Grannie

February 14th is Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day for next Thursday, y’all.

More important to me, however, is that Feb. 14 is my grandmother’s birthday. She’d be coming up 118 if she were still around. She’s not. She hasn’t been for a very long time.

My grandmother was expedited to whatever afterlife she is experiencing at the age of 68. I was 14 at the time. She was struck and killed by a car as she was crossing the street to post a letter. It was an awful event.

Especially awful for me, I think. I had a certain bond with her the other 25 (or so) grandchildren didn’t have. When I was just born my mother came down with scarlet fever, or some similar 'quarantineable affliction. Consequently, she could not tend to my newborn needs, which I suppose were plentiful. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Ma. You just get well.” No, I reckon as a newborn I wasn’t quite that accommodating. Babies are like that. Gimme-gimme-gimme!

Therefore, with her daughter ailing, Grannie took over. So I, being a normal helpless mammalian creature quite naturally bonded with this caregiver. We ‘imprinted’, as Konrad Lorenz would have it, and ever afterward this woman was the female, caregiving mainstay in my life. My mother was quite secondary to me, which probably suited dear old Mom just dandy, since she wasn’t exactly the most nurturing materfamilias on the planet.

Everyday after school I would go to Grannie’s. She lived only a couple of blocks away, and I would take ‘tea’ with her. Mine was mainly milk, with a drop or so of tea in it. She was an old-school Brit and her afternoon tea was as vital to her as his jug is to a drunk. My memories of those afternoons are still warm and strong. They always will be.

In saying I was bonded to Grannie, I shouldn’t neglect Granddad. He was just a great guy to me. There was something of the pirate to him (and when I later learned of his hell-raising youth (he was on San Francisco’s ‘Barbary Coast’ before the ’06 earthquake when it was really a wide-open town), and slummed through Australia, New Zealand and the South African war before finally settling in BC, the pirate thing worked.

One of the happiest times of my entire childhood was when we lived at my grandparents’ for a few months while my parental home was being completed. I loved every minute of it. And when the time came to leave, I didn’t want to. I think I’d still like to go back and sit in that big old farm kitchen once again.

Anyway, when my grandmother was untimely killed – one minute she was there, and probably had a lot of good years left in her, and then she wasn’t and never would be again – I was, as I say, devastated.

But, I went inward with it. I went inward because ‘nobody asked.’ Neither parent ever inquired as to how I was doing with it. I wasn’t doing well. I couldn’t get my head around how she would never be coming back. The only immediate impact on me, I suppose, was that my grades began to suffer badly and I went from being an honor student to ‘just passing.’ My parents decided I was just jacking around and I’d better pull up my socks. I did. I pulled them up enough to get through university and into a profession.

But, always within me ever since there has been a disquietude; a vague discontent and especially a fear of abandonment. My fears haven’t always been unfounded.

On the other hand, maybe Grannie’s legacy to me is just that disquietude. Perhaps that is where whatever creative impulses I have originate. My attempts to maybe mould the world into something I would want it to be.

So, Happy Birthday Beatrix ‘Tita’ Bond-Pontifex this Feb. 14, and thanks for your help.