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The state of my bathroom sink is a metaphor for everything right now. Weeks ago, rushing out for an early-morning appointment, I dropped one of my grandmother’s earrings down the drain. Too busy to disassemble the P-trap and deal with it, the faucet’s been draped in a hand towel like its veiled in mourning. Really, it’s a reminder not to run the water. It can be saved. I just need the time and the tools. 

But the longer I wait, the more I forget … The more I adapt to just using what works, what’s available, what’s easiest. I’ve got to shake that off, errant earrings or otherwise.
 

Today’s 2-Minute Tale

The week-and-a-half leading up to last month’s gallbladder surgery had a punishing gig schedule I was pretty public about, along with a lot of other emotional debris I kept private. There were uncomfortable parallels; I was practicing the program for a long-time fan’s memorial service as my own grandmother entered hospice. 

I was terrified her death would be my first news coming out of anesthesia, but my grandmother – ever thoughtful of others - died the Wednesday before. I performed the fan’s memorial on Sunday, my ninth gig in 10 days. After a dinner to honor my grandmother, I came home and laid out my will, my car keys, and a binder of passwords and documents. Tuesday morning was surgery. There were too many distractions to think, let alone to grieve.

As I clawed my way back to clarity, like some Russian nesting doll conscious a few concentric canisters deep inside, I kept coming upon it anew: “I have no more grandmothers.”

But in my drawn and weary face, I saw them both all the more. Grandma Lloyd’s nose. Grandma Reich’s cheekbones. Even more beautiful as they aged, which is perhaps the unique view of a grandchild. Having only ever known them as “old,” their youthful pictures feel somehow less them. 

My aunt gave me some of my grandmother’s jewelry, and as I grew strong enough to venture out, I chose a piece to wear each day. Her earrings to my anniversary dinner. Her broach to one of my first gigs back.

I looked down at my hands one day and realized I’d wrapped the maternal lines around my fingers, donning their baubles like brass knuckles to fight my way back into the world. Grandma Lloyd’s silver and turquoise she probably picked up at the beach. The picture jasper ring I stole from my mother. Even the diamonds of my own wedding band were borrowed from my mother’s mother’s rings (one, a family stone from even further back, my great-great-grandmother’s in the 1890s). I was particular about my wedding band. The diamonds would be MY OWN, and two of them in the setting, symbolic of the maintained unique identity of individuals in a partnership. 

Why am I like this? Probably because of my grandmothers. 

I couldn’t help but notice that as we memorialized my Grandma Lloyd, all our stories came back to the character my grandfather was. Even at her own memorial dinner, she was defined by her ability roll with the comical whims and legendary adventures of the man she married. She is now cremated and buried above him in the same plot. Not for emotional reasons but practical ones (that also memorialize the kind of people my grandparents were). They gave her plot away to neighbors who could not afford to bury their own child. It seems my grandparents never stopped welcoming the homeless. But be it an extra plate on the table or a shared plot in the earth, in the end, it is my grandmother who adapts. 

I am descended from long lines of adaptive women, and it’s a worthy skill I’ve inherited along with the raven hair, the cheekbones, the low blood pressure and the slim fingers. But as I armor myself in their adornments, there are certain loops I hope to break, or at least to better understand. In the meantime, I’ll wear them into my own legendary adventures.

Rest in peace, Jeanette Lloyd, who brought food to the hungry and company to the lonely so often that as a child I thought Lutherans must be some special service-based sect of Christianity. If anyone ever deserved to meet Jesus and Elvis, it’s you. 

PS: I promise to get your earring out of my sink drain.

* * *

I've been living life to the fullest of late - hard to believe it's barely been a month since the surgery. My mini-tour last week was wild, and I came home from that collab-show with Matt Nakoa and a wowza house concert to sing the featured performance at a lute workshop in D.C. just last night. This week, it's all about Maryland before a Shakespearean send-off in Richmond, VA, and a June tour of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut:

Write me. Add me to your mailing list. Thank your Grandma.
 

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