My name doesn’t matter much to this story, so I’ll leave it where it’s always sat, quietly in the background, the way I’ve sat in the background of my family for most of my twenty-six years.
I’m the oldest grandchild, the one who used to spend summers at Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Walter’s house while my parents worked, the one who learned to deadhead roses standing on an overturned bucket beside her because I was too short to reach the good blooms otherwise.
I loved my grandmother the plain, uncomplicated way you love someone who fed you cinnamon toast and never once made you feel like a burden, and I loved my father too, in the more complicated way you love someone who taught you to ride a bike and also taught you, without meaning to, exactly how
far a person’s patience could be stretched before it simply stopped mattering to the people stretching it.
