Background: Last night's dinner was Grandmother themed. No, it wasn't all soft foods, suitable for the denture crowd. Dinner consisted of my Grannycago's Grilled Chicken (That's my Gardner Grandma, who lived in Chicago. She hated that name, so I loved it even more.), Nana's Rice, and Christopher's YaYa's Green Beans. My dinner was heavenly and the leftovers are even better. Doesn't this meal look divine?
About midnight, I went to sleep and had a dream about being at Nana's house with both of my parents for the last time. We were cleaning out the house to put it on the market, just as we did almost exactly 12 months ago. In my dream, we were having breakfast when in the door walks Nana. We had a lovely visit, got caught up on the last four years since her death, and then she left.
Okay, now you know the context of what I got up to today.
You should also know the following story about Nana:
About 20 years ago, when Nana was still working at NationsBank (now Bank of America), I would call her almost nightly to check in with her. Sometimes our chats were short and sometimes they were long. Nana was never a complainer, so it struck with me some concern when she began complaining in all of our calls about how much pain she was in. Every night, she would tell me how badly her feet hurt after work and she just didn't know what to do. Maybe, she would say, it was time to retire (she was almost 80). This went on for at least a couple of weeks. It was hard to hear about all the pain she was in because I was in DC and there was nothing I could do. One night, she got on the phone and just couldn't stop apologizing and telling me how embarrassed and ashamed she was, but didn't mention the pain in her feet. I didn't understand and couldn't imagine what was causing all this embarrassment and shame. Finally, she explained that as she was taking off her shoes that night, a bunch of balled up tissue paper fell out of one and she realized that both shoes had tissue paper stuffed into the toe of each shoe. Her feet were in so much pain because her size 7 triple narrow feet were essentially crammed into size 5 triple narrow shoes.
This morning, I was rushing around getting ready for work and decided that the only shoes that would work for today were some super cute black patent leather flats that also hurt my feet so badly I can barely walk by the end of the day. The things we do for fashion.
I slipped on the flats, looked down and saw what I thought was a piece of white paper towel peaking out of the top of the left shoe. I took it back off and bent down to remove the paper towel only to discover that it wasn't paper towel. It was a huge hard piece of grayish cardboard stuck in the shoes to help them keep their shape. My feet were being pinched by this cardboard.
Needless to say, I couldn't stop laughing. Like Nana, like Jessica.
Then I looked up, thanked Nana for the visit, and told her I look forward to next time.
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