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outdated) game station.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.
