Great-grandma Brown

When I was five, I lived in a trailer house behind my Grandma and Grandpa Sorensen’s house. We were living there because my dad’s job had brought us to Boise and because, at the time, my family didn’t have a lot of money and my grandparents let us rent the trailer for a low price. Although living in a trailer wasn’t ideal, living next to Grandma and Grandpa’s place was. They had a garden. They had a shop. They had a huge six-foot deep swimming pool. They had two acres of land with cows and a barn that we could run around on. They had fruit trees. They had an upstairs and a downstairs. They had a pool table. They had an (extremely outdated) game station. But out of all the cool things they had, one of the coolest things was their TV. My family has never had TV, or at least, what most people think of when they think of TV. We've always had the screen and the VHS/DVD player, but beyond that, our bunny ears brought us the wonderful world of PBS and that was about it. No dish. No cable. Just normal, free TV.

But Grandma and Grandpa had TV at their place.

This was quite the awesome little detail to my five-year-old little self. Unable to let such an opportune situation go to waste, I frequented their downstairs living room. I'm fairly certain that, had they redone the upholstery at that time, they would have replaced it with something with my name on it. If their living room had been an airplane, I would have been a frequent flyer. This was serious stuff. So serious, in fact, that I often didn't even take the time to put on shoes before running across the gravel driveway to get to my grandparents' backdoor. That's right—I was willing to induce myself to physical pain in order to make it in time for the latest episode of "The Rugrats" or "Even Stevens." After a while, the sharp rocks didn't even hurt my feet because I was so used to running across them.

Every day on my way to the downstairs TV I ran past my Great-Grandma Brown. Great-grandma Brown was Grandma Sorensen’s mother and she had lived at their house for several years. She was very old and didn't ever say much. She usually just sat there in her chair, watching something too boring for five-year-old me, on the upstairs TV. Many times I paused in my mad-dash to the downstairs TV and considered joining her, but upon surveying whatever she was watching, I always considered the wonders of the Disney Channel to be more fascinating and then continued down the stairs. Except for once. One time, for a reason I don't recall, I did stop and join her. My Grandma Sorensen, seeing that I had joined Great-Grandma Brown, came over and asked her if it was okay if she changed the channel to something that I would like. She consented, and soon the latest "PB&J Otter" episode was on the screen. I sat down on the sofa next to Grandma Brown's chair and rested my head on the armrest. Somewhere within that thirty-minute episode of cartoon galore, Grandma Brown started stroking my hair. And I sat there, somewhat awe-struck as I realized that what was happening outside of the screen was probably more important than what was happening on it.

The moment ended, and a year later, so did my Great-grandma Brown's life. Though I never got to know her as the thriving, brilliant, beautiful woman that she was for most of her life, I do have this one sweet memory to hold close. It makes me think that even there at the end, when most sense and reason in the world was gone for her, she still held on enough to stroke my hair while I indulged in my five-year-old TV watching habits. She cared enough to give me that, and even though it's all just a faint shadow in my memory now, it makes me excited to get to know the "real" her someday.

Ask me to recall the TV episodes from my five-year-old TV-watching glory days, and I'll barely be able to sputter out a sentence or two. Ask me to tell you about my Great-grandma Brown, and I won't be able to tell you much more. All I have to offer is this one memory. But to me, this one memory is worth more than all the "Rugrats" and "PB&J Otter" episodes in the world. It was the moment when I realized that the important moments in life don’t happen on Hollywood’s dazzling screen. They happen, I realized, in the quiet closet of the heart.