The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

In January, 1943, my grandmother Bunny Murray enlisted in the WAVES. Born Jean “Bunny” Miller Brundred in 1920, my grandmother loved fishing, hunting, fashion, and the best of American values. When the United States joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Bunny’s friends started dying soon after, she knew she had to help her country. At first her war effort was restricted to volunteering for the Red Cross and other community organizations, but soon Bunny felt she had to contribute more. She enlisted in the Navy and went to boot camp in the Bronx. That’s her on the right.

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Today my cousin Everett and I were trying to scandalize Big Wis by showing her sexy Facebook photos of one of her grandchildren. Big Wis kept scowling at the little black cursor I was navigating across the computer screen. “I don’t understand how those varmints got into the computer,” she said.

When Big Wis is trying to position herself comfortably in her sick bed, she describes it as “scrounging around.”

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This morning at the soccer game I was subbing out with another girl. We were talking a bit too loudly about how good the other team’s goalie looked in his short shorts. “Too bad he’s married,” I said, having seen him around.

“Actually, he’s married to me,” said a girl in cleats on the sidelines. Then she elbowed the hell out of me when I was defending her in the second half. Or maybe it was the other way around.

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I went to bed without dinner last night and before I fell asleep I had visions of eating chocolate chip mashed potatoes.

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I’ve been stalking the writer Stacey Richter on her website. I’ve been leaving her self-obsessed comments meant to show her how clever I am. I hope no one ever does that on my site. Please remember, people, this website is about ME. Unless your comment makes me sound smart, popular, or mentions my cleavage, I am probably going to erase it. Let’s try to get two million viewers tomorrow! I’ll start!

Because there was some confusion at work this morning about who still needed a nap and who was going to be fully clothed during work hours, I was delighted to have lunch with my family. My little brother and his girlfriend are in town from Wyoming, so I brought them some bacon sandwiches. At my parents’ house, I found my grandmother stretched out in bed with the wool covers pulled up to her chin. She had a tear streaming down her cheek as she watched TV.

“What’s the matter?” I said, lying down beside her.

“The elephants,” she said. “They can’t find the water. It’s just agony.” She was watching the first episode of the Planet Earth documentary entitled Pole to Pole, wherein a herd of elephants treks hundreds of miles across the desert through dust storms and enemy territories in order to reach water. By the way, lately my grandmother describes everything as either bliss or agony. Bliss occurs when she gets to lie down in bed again, drink Coca-Cola, and watch soaps after a doctor’s appointment.

“It’s okay, Big Wis,” I said, “They’ll make it to the water eventually.” Her eyes stayed glued to the screen and she pulled the covers up to her nose so I could barely hear her.

“I can’t stand it,” she said. “I worry so about the animals.”

Today Big Wis received a letter from her cat Rascal in Georgia. She has been feeding this stray cat for years on her back porch, and at night it sleeps on her bed. She has been worried that the cat would abandon her during her convalescence in Virginia, because a week-long trip has now become a month-long medical ordeal. Her faithful employee David, who has changed her lightbulbs and watered her flowers and filled her car with gas for decades, has been putting cat food outside her condo twice a day. Like many Southern white folks of her generation, Big Wis has a close, albeit complicated relationship with her black “help,” but David is like family to her. I always assumed that he liked my grandmother, but kept a certain distance because of the de facto social segregation that still exists in the South between black and white, not to mention employee and employer. They were so different, she with her genteel Sweet Briar education and he who learned to read and write only much later in life. And then today she got this letter in the mail, addressed to Wisteria, which made her cry:

Mama,

Thangs have gone to hell hear since you hav gone. David feeds me the same ole cat food. I miss u at nite. I stay wif Ellie & Barney [the condo neighbors] but it was not like u being here. Come home soon.

Rascal

When Jennifer brought her two-year-old daughter Harper to the nursing home to visit my grandmother, we pushed the wheelchair into the sunlit center courtyard, wound vacuum in one hand and “Co-Cola” (as they say in Georgia) in the other, and we were all cheered up by watching Harper run from plant to plant and tree to tree, poking her little fingers at bark and bloom. She swung round and round the crape myrtles until the salubrious effects of my grandmother’s Valium started to wane and we went back inside.

After they left, my grandmother pronounced the red-headed Harper “full of beans.” She said Jennifer was delightful too, but after a few beats she wondered “why such a pretty girl would do that to her hair.” Maybe she was just hair-obsessed because her own hadn’t been washed for a couple of weeks, except by a shower cap shampoo at the hospital, which just seemed to make her hair greasier. I offered to bring her some astronaut shampoo, but she really wanted a wash and set.

“Well,” I said, “I think the crimson and purple look great on Jen.” Big Wis looked at me skeptically. “And actually I saw a picture of her head shaved once. She’s one of the few people I know who can carry it off.” In her silence I became self conscious about my split ends and the rat’s nest at the back of my neck. I thought of the time in 10th grade when I tried to pierce my eyebrow with a safety pin, but my skin kept spitting out the ring, rejecting the transplant. And the belly button that got infected in 8th grade because I’d gone too deep with the needle. And the time I ran away. And my senior year of college when I dropped out for a semester, gained major lbs (could no longer fit into those Gap khakis and Talbots button-downs she loves so much), and developed some substance abuse issues. And the nails - always too short - always more obvious than the other mistakes. (Since I was a kid - “If you grow them out, I will buy you a new such and such/take you to Chucky Cheese.”) She nudged me a few times in the hospital room to stop biting.

“At least Jennifer doesn’t have tattoos,” I said. “Or piercings.”

“Yes,” said Big Wis. “That is certainly true. It could be worse.”

We try to prevent our grandparents from knowing exactly how much worse it can get. But I have decided that they like the challenge of loving us through the phases and rebellions (as long as they get to love at a distance). I think they’re proud in some way that they’re still friendly with the cool kids. Even though Big Wis came back from the nursing home salon that afternoon with a smooth grey helmet for a head instead of her natural, wild curls, I felt like she was inspired in some small way by Jennifer’s hair. Just like she was inspired by Harper’s somersaults in the grass. At any rate, I feel like it’s good for older people to see the most flagrant signs of youth. And I don’t think that it’s intolerance that makes some grandparents shake their heads at the mohawks and ripped jeans and gum-chewing on the street corner (yes, I think like a 1950s housewife sometimes - that is my secret), I think they’re just over all that stuff. They just want to meet people so put-together that looks aren’t a distraction. They don’t understand people trying to draw attention to themselves in that way. “Why would such a pretty girl do that to her hair?” was a very real question to my grandmother. She didn’t see that appearance can still be an effective translator of emotion. Especially, I think, for people who are attracted to metaphor, to poetry, and to art in general.

Later that day I explained to Big Wis that Jen had had a really tough year, and my grandmother said that she was sorry, and that she now understood the hair.

They say that the sweetest sound in the English language is one’s own name. I heard a lot of it today. “Wistar, you have no blood vessels in your left leg.” “Wistar, can you eat some fruit cocktail, or do you think you might throw it up?” “Wistar, we’re just going to stick this needle in your vein for a hot second.” I am my grandmother’s namesake. I was there with Wistar, sitting beside the orthopedic hospital bed, editing an erotica novel on my laptop while Big Wis watched the first few episodes of Desperate Housewives, and we both started to get confused. “Hey Wis,” said my other, visiting grandparents, “Would you like to come to dinner with us?” “No,” said Big Wis, thinking they were inviting her, demobilized with infection on her fluffy pillows. “I don’t have anything to wear. I think I will just dine here tonight. I ordered mashed potatoes.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was me who had been invited [that seems like bad grammar - me versus I - someone help me], that no one was dreaming of taking her out to dinner, that she was obviously bedridden while I was mobile and restaurant-able. The other Wistar. The young, healthy Wistar, who can hoist the 90-pound grandma onto the commode, who can eat a cheeseburger in 30 seconds, who can tune out the TV during Law & Order. As opposed to the elderly, southernly Wistar, who can catch a fever and be suspicious of Mexicans. Who can refuse to be hungry for dinner. Who can reject the circulation in her leg. One nurse came into the room and said, “My father-in-law is named Wistar. I’ve never in my life met another Wistar and here are two in one room.” “Terrific,” I said, “Make the other one get better.”

Old man in jeans and a baseball cap waits for the nurse to call him in for a procedure. Elderly, overweight woman wearing a smart pink suit walks into the waiting room with a cane and a girlfriend.

“You can sit in that loveseat right there,” the man says to the pink lady.

“Why? You wanna make love?”

The nurse opens the door and calls for the patient.

“How long will the procedure take?” says the pink lady.

“Fifteen minutes,” says the nurse. “But there are two hours of recovery time. You can go get some lunch.”

Ladies arise from loveseat.

“All right. We’re going to the cafeteria.”

“Don’t spend my money!” the patient calls as he disappears into the Cardiac Center.