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Nov. 3rd, 2008 10:47 amAutumn leaves
[email sent to everyone on Baileigh's mailing list.]
When I was little, my grandmother would help me make paper marigolds for the ofrenda she'd put up in our home for the Day of the Dead. She had allergies, you see. The pollen from the real flowers would make her sneeze.
So every year we'd get tissue paper and craft scissors and little green pipe cleaners, and we'd sit in the living room floor and make as many cempasúchitl as we could before our fingers started to ache. We'd buy sugar skulls and take the catrinas down from the attic. We'd go to my grandfather's grave and clean up the leaves and the gravestone and build an alter. We'd sit in the grass and she'd tell me stories about the man who died before I was born. My grandmother would make pan de muerto and between all of this and the haul of Halloween candy I'd obtained the night before I'd usually get sick from the sugar. Which was okay, because I didn't have to go to school.
It was fun when I was little. Just like Christmas and birthdays and Easter are all so fun when you're little and hunting for eggs and blowing out candles and straining your ears on Christmas Eve trying so hard to hear the clip-clop of reindeer hooves.
Then we grow up. I stopped helping so much with the alter and the marigolds because all I really wanted to do was sleep in and go to the boardwalk to rollerblade with my friends and watch the cute boys skateboard.
It used to upset her and I'd guilt myself into participating. But you just don't enjoy the repetitive stories as a teenager like you did as a kid, and all the traditions just seemed...stupid, to me. Morbid and pointless. The dead don't come back. Dead is dead.
That was before I knew better. Which isn't really the point, I guess. I'm not sure what the point is. Even after she died and I had two graves to care for, it didn't make me feel closer to her spirit or any of that nonsense. I stopped making the marigolds out of paper and bought real ones. I took the easier way out. Maybe that was the difference. She took so much care and put so much time into it, where I went through the motions.
Coming back here is kind of like finding an old baby blanket stuck back in a closet. There's this sense of familiarity and comfort, but you know you've outgrown it, and it's not enough to keep you warm anymore.
I miss her so much.
[email sent to everyone on Baileigh's mailing list.]
When I was little, my grandmother would help me make paper marigolds for the ofrenda she'd put up in our home for the Day of the Dead. She had allergies, you see. The pollen from the real flowers would make her sneeze.
So every year we'd get tissue paper and craft scissors and little green pipe cleaners, and we'd sit in the living room floor and make as many cempasúchitl as we could before our fingers started to ache. We'd buy sugar skulls and take the catrinas down from the attic. We'd go to my grandfather's grave and clean up the leaves and the gravestone and build an alter. We'd sit in the grass and she'd tell me stories about the man who died before I was born. My grandmother would make pan de muerto and between all of this and the haul of Halloween candy I'd obtained the night before I'd usually get sick from the sugar. Which was okay, because I didn't have to go to school.
It was fun when I was little. Just like Christmas and birthdays and Easter are all so fun when you're little and hunting for eggs and blowing out candles and straining your ears on Christmas Eve trying so hard to hear the clip-clop of reindeer hooves.
Then we grow up. I stopped helping so much with the alter and the marigolds because all I really wanted to do was sleep in and go to the boardwalk to rollerblade with my friends and watch the cute boys skateboard.
It used to upset her and I'd guilt myself into participating. But you just don't enjoy the repetitive stories as a teenager like you did as a kid, and all the traditions just seemed...stupid, to me. Morbid and pointless. The dead don't come back. Dead is dead.
That was before I knew better. Which isn't really the point, I guess. I'm not sure what the point is. Even after she died and I had two graves to care for, it didn't make me feel closer to her spirit or any of that nonsense. I stopped making the marigolds out of paper and bought real ones. I took the easier way out. Maybe that was the difference. She took so much care and put so much time into it, where I went through the motions.
Coming back here is kind of like finding an old baby blanket stuck back in a closet. There's this sense of familiarity and comfort, but you know you've outgrown it, and it's not enough to keep you warm anymore.
I miss her so much.
