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Yes, I get it.
It hurts her that she can’t prep her garden, but I’m working on finding a little comfortable chair she can sit in to prune her petunias. Preferably one made for rolling through the soft earth of the yard.
She’s too stubborn to consider a wheelchair, but if I call it a gardening chair, I might make some headway.
By lunch, my migraine slithers back into the hole it crawled out of.
Gran knows better than anyone that a gently lit, low-stimulus environment helps keep them at bay—and she’d already stocked the fridge with the protein drinks that help keep my anemia from knocking me flat too.
When I was a kid, I used to feel like an old grandma myself, drinking protein formulas and popping iron and B12 pills every day just to keep myself baseline.
But now a lot of brands make light, refreshing fruit-flavored drinks. A few of them paired with cold chicken salad sandwiches have me feeling better in a heartbeat.
I even decide to make the trip to grab my luggage today.
I fuss Gran into staying home while I borrow her cute little light-green Audi to make the run back to SeaTac, where I navigate to the baggage claim with much less difficulty than yesterday. The lack of staff and airline delays work in my favor.
I’m able to grab the bags with an agent just before they fall deeper into the chasm of lost property claims.
Overall, it’s a pleasant day.
It feels good to be with Gran again.
Later, I feel at home, making tortellini with her special vodka cream sauce before we curl up in front of the fireplace to eat dinner together and catch up with our lives.
I go to bed content with my belly full, my head clear, and the sound of late-winter rain pattering against the window of my childhood bedroom.
I wake up to my phone shrieking and the doorbell ringing so many times it sounds like a whooping ambulance.
I fumble for my phone first because that’s the first sound I can make stop.
My foggy brain thinks it’s my alarm, but then I remember I fell asleep without setting one. I guess the bright side here is that whatever’s making that racket has kept me from sleeping too late.
Groggily, I look at my screen as I punch the volume down.
What the hell?
I have over seven thousand Twitter notifications—and twice as many on TikTok?
But I have less than three hundred Twitter followers. Mostly all people I met through school or work, or a few art comments.
And I don’t even post to my TikTok account; I just use it to follow creators I like.
What gives?
I don’t have time to read the notifications and find out, though.
Not when I hear Gran’s crutch thumping against the hardwood floors. I need to get down there ASAP and answer the door before she overexerts herself.
I fling myself out of bed, grab the robe I dug out of one of my suitcases last night, drag it around myself, and drop my still-buzzing phone into my pocket as I dash downstairs.
I slip past her on the landing with a quick smile.
“Don’t worry, Gran, I’ve got it!”
“I’ve got a bad knee, girl, I’m not dead!” Her voice drifts after me with playful irritation.
But I’m already to the door, pulling it open.
