The rain was coming down sideways when I pulled into Grandma’s driveway at six-thirty that Tuesday morning.
She was already standing on the front porch.
Seventy-nine years old, in a navy blue raincoat buttoned all the way up to her chin, holding an umbrella in one hand and an old brown handbag in the other. Tucked under her arm was a paper envelope. A big yellow one, the kind people used to mail important documents in before everything went online.
I jumped out of the car to help her down the steps. She waved me off.
“I’ve been walking down these steps since 1968, Daniel,” she said. “I think I can manage.”
That’s my grandmother. Evelyn Walker. She still lives alone in the little brick house my grandfather built with his own hands the year they got married. She still bakes her own bread every Saturday morning. She still calls me every single Sunday at four o’clock to remind me to check the oil in my car, even though I’m twenty-seven years old and have checked my own oil for ten years.
