“First, create a space.” – graffiti in restroom stall, Dublin, VA

Settling for Begonias: an untrue unlove story

When she was in her early twenties, my grandmother wore long strands of pearls and drank bathtub gin, and she looked at men when they talked to her, and when they didn’t.  One of these men was the one whose photo she’d requested we bury with her.  He had a strong jaw and eyes you could jump into and drown from the lightning and the not-talking of them.

We don’t know what happened to that man, but we do know that in 1932, she went to Dublin, VA and came back married to my grandfather.  There was a box in an upstairs closet that we always knew was there, but never mentioned.  Their wedding photo was in it: she in a modest, light-colored skirt suit, a corsage pinned to her lapel; he in a three-piece suit, patterned tie, and matching pocket square.

She looked like regret after one too many G’s with not enough T.

He looked like winning by default.

Together, they looked stuck in till-death.

Also in the box was a letter from my grandmother’s mother, dated one week after the photo was taken:

To love without the ‘in’: first, create a space.  It’s the notion of ‘in love’ that clutters up room better used to accommodate the act of loving.  Love is a verb.  Verbs—to cook, to clean, to laugh at his jokes, to ask questions you already know the answers to—need room to be performed.  Only by unobstructed loving, can ‘love’ become a person, a place, a thing, and an idea that you can be ‘in.’ 

Also, what’s done is done.

Love,

Mother

As a belated wedding gift, my grandfather had taken out the shrubs in front of the house he’d bought them and got my grandmother some begonia seeds.  It took her a year, but finally she planted them.

Once, when looking for shoe polish, my grandfather saw that letter, and realized what it meant.  He said he was pleased with himself to think that—without knowing it—in his life and in his yard he’d created a space for an act of love, and that something beautiful had eventually grown there, something they had lived in for many years.  He thought that by following the advice of my great-grandmother, my grandmother had grown to love him, and he her.   He thought these words were to live by.

I used to think they were, too.

But, when I saw the photo of the man with the deep, not-talking eyes, I knew that he was the person, place, thing, and idea that my grandmother wanted to be in.  And when she asked me to bury her with a photo of him, I knew she had settled for begonias.