Anna Grace Murphy: 2008
I read a poem once that said
"every thing you ever wanted is written in cursive"
And as it happens when you read poems sometimes, my mind spun back to a place with my own grandmother, my little pale legs hanging off the chair at the kitchen table, a pad of big lined paper in front of me where the placemat had been, I can see Nannie now clearing the space for me, and scooting back into the kitchen while I worked to perfect my cursive handwriting. The phone rang. Nannie asked aloud, now who would that be? As she often did, her hands on her hips, aghast, as if a phone call were such a disturbance to her daily agenda, almost as if she were offended by someone calling, and she huffed to the phone, answered, and found her spot in the chair in her bedroom, crossed her legs, twisted her fingers on the cord, that irritated face disappearing and wrote on the notepad by the phone. She would chatter on and laugh, giggle with a big ha, and write more on that page. I left my spot at the table, I adjusted myself at her feet and looked at the notepad, and there, my jealousy rose. My face reddened. I found these neat little notes, all in perfect swoops of S's and rolls of L's and even the dreaded cursive Q that I couldn't master and all I wanted was to be her, I wanted to have a neat little pad with neat little notes, everything I wanted written in cursive. I wanted to have her house with all its intriguing nooks and crannies, and books, the stash of records in the chest under the phone-There was Johnny Cash and Lawrence Welk, all the big bands, my mother explained matter-of-factly later "mary, when we were little there was always music in our house" I wanted a cavalier man around, someone just as atticus finch as my grandfather, coming in with his rolled up sleeves and cardigans and dress pants. I wanted that kind of romance, the kind I observed where they nipped at each other, his winks and her sighs. I wanted to take my pen and make the same story that she did.
My mother bought Nannie a journal every year for Christmas. When I was an angsty teenager, I thought this gift was a little old hat, but now I revel in it. When my grandmother got sick, I went to her house on a day I was home from college, it was quiet there, the loneliest house in the world, it seemed. I padded around quietly from room to room, looking at things, picking up books, I was as stupidified as I was when I was a child at her feet on the phone. I found a pile of her journals, I opened them, I shut them back, I argued with myself, I opened them again, and read. There on those pages, the same cursive met me again, neat, every day, every single day, up to clouds, up to sunshine, up to snow, the words were there. For a moment, I felt as if she was talking directly to me, like she was whispering to me in the booth at the Chinese restaurant in Danville that my mother took us to, or leaning over the counter to Vicki and us kids in the insurance office, Vicki of course in the desk chair, while Derek and Josh and Kelcie and I scaled the filing cabinet. Kelcie was always the littlest, so little. It was like these pages were telling me all the things I was too young to remember, or too busy being young to appreciate. I read on, "Kept Mary Elizabeth, Sissy sick, got nothing done today, but baby" "Must pick up blouse, study my Sunday School lesson" "Cara and Lee in Hawaii" "BABY! with big letters on my brother's birthday" "Patria coming" and a smile drawn beside it, with an arrow to the date she'd arrive. "Windy out" "Gene sick, worried about him. Mark's Birthday. Leeann's Birthday. Gary's Birthday. Snow, snow. Rain, rain. Hot Summer." It was all there. Everything you ever wanted it written in cursive.It was a rollercoaster of emotion reading, crawling over her notations like I was in a cave, like I would find her at the end of the tunnel, like she would hop out of these diaries and hug me and know it was me, a luxury that I had lost. I got carried away. I tore through all the rest of the books around. Skimming through newspapers she kept under the bookshelf, pouring over hardbacks in the hallway, I wanted her handwriting, I wanted her to speak to me in those indentions, in those doodles, because she couldn't speak to me herself. I found a paper near the couch, stapled at the corner, the front said "The Big Apple Fight. Lee Murphy. March 25, 1975." The teacher had written on the front, "This is not an expository essay, its narrative, but its so good I won't count off, A." Everything you ever wanted is written in cursive.
And I had a new realization, Lee with his what do you know joe and my mother with her dramatic hand gestures. Anna Grace, a mother. And then an avalanche, Patria, Pert, Everett. Anna Grace , A sister And then more. The United Methodist Women. The Homemakers. Her Sunday school class. Anna Grace, A friend A member of a community, a member of a congregation. The pages kept flying by. "it been a year since gene's been gone, and I miss him everyday" she wrote. , Anna Grace, a Wife, a Love. The tears came, alone in that house slumped in the floor by the stained glass front door, I cried and cried. It was an epiphany to think that my grandmother was more than just mine, more than the chatty, smart, stiking put-together woman that talked on the phone and I swooned over, loved, admired, adored. How is it that a single person's existence can effect so many? How can a woman have it all? How did she? Even with the journals to guide me, her notes, her books, I don't have an answer to the question how. Everything I want is written in cursive, but I still admit to not quite knowing how to get it. That's the magic of it all for me, the magic of my grandmother, my fascination with her will always remain with me, its the magic of all family, it is what she taught me, that's whats really written in those pages isn't it? That essay of Lee's she has kept over the years? His story is her story. Patria's visits in the journals? Her story is my grandmother's story. We're all woven in together. My story is her's just as her's is mine. And it will always be that family, love and life shining from her life that guides me like she is a perfect novel, the sweetest words. I will never forget that, I will never forget her. It aches, but I know that with life, as she has taught me and all of us by stunning example, everything you've ever wanted is written in cursive, you just have to know to be up everyday and fill and fulfill every page.