grandma's girl

"tracing the lines in my face for, something more beautiful than is there" - that line has always always haunted me, from the day i heard the rilo kiley song years and years ago.

my grandmother lived with us, growing up.  she had the most amazing silver hair I had ever seen in my life. long, long, long, down to her knees, soft as silk. she would let me play with it and brush it sometimes, when she wasn't gardening or baking or watching the news. usually she would wind it up carefully into a soft bun at the base of her neck, and the silver would bring out the glints in her pale blue eyes.

for some reason it has just occurred to me that I am not super young anymore. i have to dye my hair every six weeks or so, and have a few stubborn wrinkles popping up that surprise me every single time I look in the mirror. and somehow this truth has managed to escape me until this point, that my grandma, in her head, was probably equally surprised to have found herself at this stage of life. she is me and i am her, soon enough. me, her, my 15 year old daughter, my baby daughter, we're all one shifting composite of woman-ness - it goes so fast, and we're supposed to somehow hold on to one identity.

I conceived my 8 year old as my grandmother's life was ending; I didn't realize I was pregnant as she lay on her deathbed. I had had a miscarriage a few months before, and she was sad for me; she deeply loved my daughter and husband, and it hurt her tremendously when it happened - I wish I had been able to tell her I was expecting again. Instead, I named the baby for her. that 8 yr old now firmly believes in reincarnation and consumes books like there is no tomorrow, much like her great-grandmother did. when i look at her, its hard for me sometimes not to see my grandmother's image reflecting in my daughter's self.

thats it. no takeaway point, sorry. just a sense of mind-boggled-ness at how time screws with our sense of self and beauty, and how weird it is that we can ever think that we are separate and constant. my grandmother, my baby, my self - just panes in a shifting collage.