I Like You

There is nothing quite like the feeling of ending one, very difficult phase of life and entering a new one.

It was 18 months ago that I began the process of searching for a new space for my company to relocate to. After months of touring buildings with real estate brokers, having one deal fall through after weeks and weeks of lease negotiations, and eventually finding a gem of a spot in the Pearl District, which was actually (miraculously) pretty much within our budget.

Signing the lease gave way to months upon months of preparations for the Big Event. I coordinated everything from choosing and purchasing new workstation furniture for our employees to selecting a moving company, organizing office-wide de-cluttering events (where we recycled as much unneeded stuff as we could), helping find affordable monthly parking in the new neighborhood, having an alarm system, satellite TV, vending machines, coffee and water service installed, choosing paint for accent walls, selecting couches, end tables, conference tables and art for the common areas in the building, and overseeing the Technology Services department who was responsible for making sure our email and other servers, and a brand new voice over IP phone system were fully functional in time for our first day of business in the new space.

Last week, I successfully completed the project — on time, on budget, and without having a complete mental breakdown! After weeks of long hours, heavy stress, and an incredible number of variables to keep track of, I am now breathing deeply and enjoying life again. I’m actually taking the day off on Friday!

I’m so thankful for God’s faithfulness during this very trying time, and for The Arteest who has been amazingly patient and supportive. I think I can actually say that I’m thankful, too, for the experience. Not that I’d want to repeat it again anytime soon…

On Monday I sat at my grandmother’s bedside, holding her hand in mine. The warmth of human touch was about all I could offer…though her eyes did flicker in recognition at one point, and a smile spread across her lips, I’m fairly sure she didn’t quite know who I was. Still, she knew someone was there, and I think she understood that the someone loved her.

Her hand was warm and responsive, and her fingernails shimmered with a pearly brown glaze, which was at once encouraging and unnerving. On one hand, it warmed me to think that some well-meaning volunteer sat patiently and painted my grandma’s weathered fingernails — an act of kindness and human connection; an attempt to connect in a tangible way with a dear lady who is steadily slipping away. On the other hand, Rita Simpson is not a nail-painting kind of woman. I can’t remember ever seeing her nails painted before in my life! I like to imagine that if she still had her wits about her, she would have thanked the volunteer kindly and declined the offer, feeling that she couldn’t possibly be bothered with something so frivolous.

She would have read a book, instead. Or written a letter to her sister, or worked on a geneaology project, or played a game of Scrabble. Alas, grandma doesn’t have the option of doing any of those things anymore. And so, her hands are held captive to nail-painting and other things she never would have chosen for herself, like having strangers assist her with every part of daily life, no matter how private.

As I was holding grandma’s hand, I looked again at the class ring she has worn on the fourth finger of her right hand since she graduated from high school in 1930. Mom tells me that grandma’s family was in pretty tough financial shape in those days, and yet her older sister Geneva, who had a job, paid five dollars for that ring, and gave it to grandma as a graduation gift. She has worn it for 77 years. Now, much like her wedding ring, it is worn down to a thin ribbon of gold.

These hands are a good encapsulation of my grandma…

On her left hand, the wedding ring that represents her ultimate commitment to her marriage and her family. She and grandpa were married fifty-some years before he died in 1995. Together they weathered some pretty intense challenges: raising a child who was developmentally disabled, sending another son off to war (he was never the same after that), losing a grandchild to a tragic accident, struggling to establish a business and then having it burn down, and continually struggling to make ends meet.

It amazes me that no matter what grandma’s children did — whether they dealt drugs out of her house, spent time in prison, even attempted to take away everything she had worked for her whole life — she loved them. She wanted them to be happy, wanted them to grow, to be good people. She wanted to have relationships with them. It seems like just about everything she ever did, at least in my lifetime, was for her family.

On her right hand is the class ring that reminds us of the immense value she always placed on education. Mom has said that when grandma was growing up on a homestead in Montana, there wasn’t a library around, and they didn’t have access to many books. Hungry to learn, grandma and her siblings would climb into the window of a neighbor’s house while he was away, and secretly borrow books…they were voracious to learn.

Grandma has always been that way — even into her early 90s. I remember just a few years ago, she looked around the living room of her small apartment at the stacks of books she had accumulated and worried aloud that she might not be able to finish them all before she died. She could hardly stand the thought that there was so much left to know, and she wouldn’t be able to learn it all in time.

By encouraging us to read (even giving us random used books she’d found at garage sales for Christmas), trying valiantly to infect us with her love of history (pulling over at every roadside viewpoint to read the historical marker), pressing us to pursue formal education (and helping pay for college), and taking great delight in our international travels, she was always a champion of the learning adventure.

At her bedside, I pondered the many things I know about my grandmother, and the many, many things I don’t. Hospice says she may only have a day or two left. I have run out of time to hear her stories. 

Being connoiseurs of that all-American culinary delight known as the PIE, the Arteest and I are always on a quest for the ultimate combination of tangy local berries and flaky pastry crust…the slice to end all slices. So far, I gotta say — Portland is letting me down.

We already know that Grand Central Bakery makes a mean marionberry masterpiece with an all-butter crust (which is why we special ordered about 30 of their whole pies in lieu of cake for our wedding), but that’s mostly a “buy a whole pie and take it home” kind of experience. Sometimes you just want to go out for dessert and eat a really, really indescribably good piece of pie. Our last attempt involved a long drive out to the edges of Tigard for a slice at the 24-hour family dining establishment known as Banning’s. Their cloyingly sweet slab of pectiny pie just didn’t cut the proverbial mustard. Given Portland’s utterly fantastic restaurant selection, there’s got to be something better out there…

For those of you who live around here, please leave your suggestions in the comments section!