my favorite

It was no secret that I was my grandmother’s favorite. This was partly because I was adopted less than a month after her husband died suddenly of a heart attack — a tragedy for which my grandmother blamed herself because the nitroglycerin tablets were in her purse — and also because both of my parents had jobs and were otherwise busy caring for their terminally ill son, whose very life might have been threatened by the common childhood illnesses I occasionally contracted. This meant that I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house.

It was no secret that my grandmother was my favorite, too. On overnight trips, she would let me sleep clung to her back like a baby koala. She would often brag to anyone who would listen that out of all of her grandchildren, I was the only one who was not embarrassed to hold her hand in public. There was something about the softness of her skin — and the depth of her loneliness — that made her seem delicate, like a thing in need of protection, and by holding her hand I hoped to ensure her safe transit from  here to there.