Nana

I really didn't create this blog to be an outlet for my grief, but I have more bad news.

My great grandmother recently passed away. I'm glad I got to visit her this winter when I was home in America.

My Nana was an AMAZING woman. She was a talented crafter, liked to gamble, and was bitingly sarcastic (and I loved her all the more for that). She would call me a spoiled brat and a cheat and I knew that just meant that she loved me too.

This picture was taken the night before I left for Shanghai in August. It's the last picture of me and Nana together. I really like this picture.
I wrote this poem about her years ago when I was still in high school after she spent a day teaching me, my mother and a friend of mine how to make pasta.

Nana
Her skin is like pale pink leather
Stretched over the knobby joints of age
And blue veins crisscross her flesh
Like spider webs caught in the sunlight
Thin as paper to the touch, her hands
Working deep within the powdery mass
Manipulating the dough into fleeting shapes
She kneads it in a rhythm like the ticking
Of a clock, as years pass over us like birds
And leave sorrowful shadows on her face
The words pass between us like dry leaves
Falling gently in the chilling autumn wind
She is a bent old woman with an iron core
And her voice rasps the air as she laughs
Below her thinning snow white hair
White clouds rise up from the table
The flour encasing us in a breath and a moment
And she turns to me, her eyes encased in wrinkles
Lips drawn back showing teeth stained by cigarettes
And I smile, but don’t say the words
She already knows what I would say