My grandmother had a Bakelite Philco radio, model 48-250, brown with gold numerals on the dial. Its five tubes received the AM band and operated on 115 volts. I remember little about her, just that she wore black dresses with small white polka dots, pulled her white hair into a bun at the back of her head, and sat every Sunday afternoon in a wooden rocker in a corner of her living room, two massive bookcases behind her, rocking and listening to the weekly broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera. She seemed ancient, but she was the same age I am now. Style and the cultures of the times differentiate us. She never would have considered wearing slacks to work, and until recently, if anyone asked me, I would have been certain there was nothing unusual about her life. Now I am unsure.<\/p>\n
We were not allowed to interrupt her opera. From Milton Cross\u2019s opening words until he signed off at the end of the broadcast, my brother Pete and I were expected to sit on the floor quietly playing with the wooden blocks we would dump from a threadbare bag she kept in a closet on the far side of the room as she sat with her eyes closed, smiling and straining to hear tinny music coming from the tiny speaker that sat less than three feet from her ears.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so boring,\u201d Pete said to Mother one Sunday evening as we drove back to our house after a long afternoon at Gram\u2019s. \u201cWhy do we have to sit around while she listens to that stuff? She doesn\u2019t seem to know we\u2019re there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe knows,\u201d Mother said. \u201cShe believes you should be exposed to the finer things of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike those bellowing cows and bulls screeching from her radio,\u201d Pete said. Pete is older than me by seven years, and I admired his precision in summing up how we both felt every Sunday as we played with blocks on the Oriental rug in Gram\u2019s living room, hearing but not listening to the thin stream of sound coming from the corner where she rocked and smiled and listened to that old Philco.<\/p>\n
\u201cListening to the opera and knowing you\u2019re hearing it as well gives her great pleasure,\u201d Mother said.<\/p>\n
Having spent my adult life teaching music in a rural western Massachusetts high school, I have come to understand my grandmother\u2019s hope that we might eventually share her love of opera and symphonic music, as well as the disappointment she certainly felt as Pete and I tried to ignore Verdi and Puccini and Wagner as we built wooden towers and knocked them down, the blocks clattering to the rug. My students text, play video games, and mutter softly into their cell phones when they think I am not paying attention. At seventy-three, Pete is a struggling jazz saxophonist and singer, still waiting tables to pay the costs of traveling the country to play low paying gigs in small clubs and on college campuses. We never speak of it, but I am sure his frustrations when he plays a club with less than ten people in the audience reminds him in some manner of how Gram must have felt when a four foot tower of blocks crashed in the middle of an aria.<\/p>\n
Gram died in \u201968. I was having the most exciting and interesting time of my life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, working with Quechua speaking Indian families in the Comuna San Jacinto. News of her death did not reach me until two months after her funeral. Pete, I later found out, was living north of Mendocino in a hippie commune whose members were forbidden to have anything to do with the world outside the three hundred acres that had been donated to them by the parents of the commune\u2019s founder. Telephones, mail service, and visitors were taboo. Like me, for very different reasons, he knew nothing of Gram\u2019s death until months after her burial. For both of us, she became but an occasionally remembered part of our personal ancient histories.<\/p>\n
Last year, Mother fell ill. She was in her nineties and had been living in the home she and Dad had built in \u201972. Unable to care for herself, Pete and I convinced her to move into a quasi-independent living situation at Edgehill Manor, a home for the elderly in Greenfield, where I live with my husband, Harry. It was a difficult decision for her, as well as for me. Pete, ever peripatetic, was unfazed by it. Mother adjusted to the situation, although not graciously. I visited her daily, and Pete would stop by to see her whenever he had a gig in the area, or as close to the area as New York, Boston or Albany, which is three for four times a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate going into a nursing home,\u201d she said the day I moved her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an extended care facility,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
She laughed. \u201cIt\u2019s a goddamn nursing home. They ought to call this place Over the Hill Manor. That\u2019s what happens when old folks stand at the edge of a hill. They fall over. You do know, don\u2019t you, that these places are all owned by the same people who own the funeral homes? There\u2019s a hell of a term for you, funeral homes. Homes are where people live, eat, and sleep. The only people lying down in funeral homes are dead. Nursing homes are the stepping stones to funeral homes, both of them owned and run by undertakers. They keep hearses in the garage, and back them up to the delivery door every time somebody kicks the bucket.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed back. \u201cThat\u2019s bullpucky. The undertakers don\u2019t own the nursing homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey certainly do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For the most part, that was the end of her complaining, except for the first thing she always said every time I visited her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate this effing place, Linda. I effing hate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I would rest a hand on her shoulder each day. \u201cYou don\u2019t hate it enough to really say the F word; give it its full and appreciative pronunciation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each day, she would drop the subject and with a smile ask about the kids, about Harry, always the opener for any conversation we might have. We would chat for an hour, sometimes two, before I went home to the dinner Harry prepared each evening, knowing that my time with Mother was important to both of us, and that it could not last much longer.<\/p>\n
Recently, just as I finished my ten o\u2019clock sophomore music appreciation class, I got a call from the nursing station at Edgehill Manor. Mother was unconscious; her breathing was shallow, and she was unresponsive. It looked as though she might not live through the day. An hour later, after making arrangements with the school to cover my classes, I drove to Edgehill. Walking through the door of Mother\u2019s room I saw her sitting in her chair, a copy of the New York Times<\/em> opened to the editorial pages on her lap.<\/p>\n She was pale and frail looking, wearing only her pajamas and a robe. Always before when I visited her, she would be dressed and wearing make-up, her thin white hair brushed and carefully arranged. Still, she managed a smile and shook her head. \u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019re here dear. I have things to tell you that can\u2019t wait.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell here I am, Mommy.\u201d I kissed her cheek.<\/p>\n \u201cYou haven\u2019t called me that in a long time.\u201d She reached up and touched my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a way of telling you I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n Her smile was brief, but it lit up her face. \u201cYou look haggard, dear.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI rushed from a class to get here. They said you weren\u2019t well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not, but that can\u2019t be all they said to get you to drop everything and come here in the middle of a school day. They told you I was dying, didn\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t lie to you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou never could, not even when you\u2019d sneak out your bedroom window and climb down from the porch roof to go meet that awful boy, Danny Patch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFlatch,\u201d I said, surprised that she knew about my sneaking around at night and had never before mentioned it. \u201cVinnie Flatch. And he wasn\u2019t awful. He\u2019s a state representative now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s not awful?\u201d We both laughed, a touch of color rising back into her face. \u201cI am dying, you know, not quickly or dramatically, but a little bit at a time. It\u2019s like I\u2019ve got a slow leak and there\u2019s this constant loss of air and there\u2019s nothing that can patch it.\u201d<\/p>\n I started to say something, but she shook her head, raising her open hand, and I knew from a lifetime of experience to bite back my words. I pulled a folding metal chair across the room and sat facing her and reached for her hands. She rested them in mine and patted my fingers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not so terrible, Linda. Like Dr. Ross said to me this morning, I\u2019m old old.\u201d She giggled. \u201cOf course I told him he was an unconscionable bastard, talking to me like that. He\u2019s only eighty, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n I held her hands tight in mine. \u201cIs this the way it was for you with Gram? I\u2019m so sorry I wasn\u2019t here with you for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Dropping my hands, she fell back in her chair, laughing hard, tears rolling down her cheeks. \u201cNothing my mother did was like the way anybody else would do the same thing, even dying, and it\u2019s fine that you weren\u2019t there. You were doing important things and living your life, just like Gram wanted for you and Peter both.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a piece of work, wasn\u2019t she?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike nobody else, and that\u2019s what I need to talk to you about.\u201d Mother sat forward, and reaching again for my hands, she looked around the room as if to be certain that we were alone. She spoke in a near whisper. \u201cYour grandmother, my mother, once grew a pair of wings. She told me that she woke up the morning of her twenty-second birthday with a terrible backache. The pain was so severe that she had to struggle to get out of bed. When she managed to get up and started to take off her pajamas the top caught on something. Tugging at it as she tried to slip it over her head caused her shoulder blades to hurt terribly, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw a small pair of wings growing from them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, right,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s when Gram discovered that she was an angel.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYour grandmother was certainly no angel,\u201d Mother said. \u201cBut she swore to me on her love for her children that she grew wings on her twenty-second birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n Mother\u2019s hands were smooth and soft, not rough from work as they had been when I was a girl, and she gardened, harvested, and chopped wood with my father, raised chickens, and did all the things a woman on a farm had to do to keep things running and food on the table. I rubbed her palms with my fingers. \u201cOkay, Ma. So Gram was a demon with wings.\u201d<\/p>\n She pulled her hands away. \u201cI don\u2019t appreciate your sarcasm. I never did. My mother was neither an angel nor a demon. She was a person like any other.\u201d<\/p>\n I rolled my eyes. \u201cExcept that she grew a pair of wings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI saw you do that thing with your eyes, Linda Ann Miller. I don\u2019t like that anymore than I do your sarcasm. Your grandmother had wings for a time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you see them?\u201d<\/p>\n She scoffed. \u201cOf course not. I wasn\u2019t born until she was twenty-five.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe wings were gone by then?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe said they were gone by the time she was twenty-four.\u201d<\/p>\n I laughed and kissed her cheek. \u201cWhen did you start telling stories, Ma?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a story. I\u2019m telling you something very important, very illuminating about my mother, your grandmother.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy now? Why didn\u2019t you tell us years ago?\u201d I asked the question to humor her, to allow her mind to run free with the fantasy it was constructing. I did not want to challenge her and risk upsetting her in the fragile condition that had brought me racing to Edgehill.<\/p>\n \u201cI never told Peter because I knew he wouldn\u2019t understand it, let alone believe me. I never told you because you were always busy and practical, helping build water systems in Ecuador, studying to be a teacher and then teaching, then you became a mother, a wife, a member of the town planning board. I was sure that someone as grounded as you would think I had gone around the bend if I told you about my mother\u2019s wings.\u201d<\/p>\n I was sure she was either pulling my leg\u2014or Gram had pulled hers\u2014or she was suffering from some form of dementia. She read my doubt it in my expression.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not crazy, so wipe that look off your face, young lady.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not young, and you haven\u2019t said that to me since I was a teenager.\u201d<\/p>\n Mother grunted. \u201cJust listen. Your grandmother\u2019s wings grew a little each day. After a week, they were a foot long and had brilliant blue-green feathers. Two weeks later, they had grown to three feet in length. She said they were resplendent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike a quetzal\u2019s feathers.\u201d I surprised myself by speaking suddenly, without thinking.<\/p>\n She arched her eyebrows, a silent question.<\/p>\n \u201cA bird,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cI assumed it was a bird, since we\u2019re talking about feathers. I never heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was considered divine by the Aztecs<\/a> and Maya<\/a> who believed it was associated with Quetzalcoatl, a god who could appear as a feathered serpent or a human warrior.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGram was no god,\u201d she said. \u201cOr goddess for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the son of the earth and he somehow mediated between the two. It was never clear to me just how that worked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSounds as ridiculous as any religious clap-trap. It probably didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are you telling me all this, especially now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I\u2019m dying. I almost died this morning. Now I feel,\u201d she paused and looked at me, her eyes red-rimmed, her voice weak. \u201cI feel adequately well enough to tell you all of this. I don\u2019t want it to be forgotten, and if I don\u2019t tell you now and I die tonight, the story of my mother\u2019s, your grandmother\u2019s wings will be forgotten forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople must have known at the time,\u201d I said, wondering as I did why I was trying to make sense of my mother\u2019s story about her mother.<\/p>\n She shook her head. \u201cNobody knew. Mother took to wearing loose clothing in order to hide them. She said her friends thought she was getting fat, and her mother was afraid for a while that she was pregnant, but she managed to keep the wings a secret. When they were fully developed, she would go flying at first light. Being careful to keep away from towns and cities where people would be most likely to see her, she confined her flights to the least populated areas of the western hills. The times she said she most cherished came when she was gliding over snow covered fields, a full moon reflecting from her feathers, their iridescent green changing the color of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The poetry of her description was unlike Mother, and realizing she must have been quoting Gram\u2019s words as she remembered them, I suspended my disbelief. \u201cThat would be lovely,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n She began to cough and small droplets of blood appeared on her lips. Fetching a glass of water from the small bathroom attached to her room, I dampened the corner of a wash cloth and wiped the blood away.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m thirsty,\u201d she said. I handed her the glass, and as she raised it to drink, it slipped from her fingers and spilled over her knees and the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me help you change out of those wet clothes,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n She shook her head, and there was a note of urgency in her voice. \u201cI\u2019m terribly tired, dear. Let me finish my story and then I\u2019m going to go back to bed. I have to tell you everything I can remember of what Mother told me.\u201d<\/p>\n I nodded, worried that she was so tired. In all the years I had known her she had always been the first person in the house to be up and dressed. This also had been true since she moved to Edgehill Manor. The staff nick-named her Early Bird, and often remarked about how she would be dressed and in the common room reading her New York Times<\/em> and Greenfield Recorder<\/em> hours before the night shift gave way to the day workers. Now she seemed to be growing weaker as she spoke, as if she were marshaling the last of her strength to tell me Gram\u2019s story.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wings lasted two years,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd in that time Mother flew as much as she could, ever careful that no one would see her. The second summer of her wings, she and several friends took a trip to Europe. Once the boat landed, they visited Paris and Rome, and spent a week in Venice and another in Florence. Then she parted ways with them and took a train down to a little town in Tuscany, Rada, I think she said, and she spent the rest of the summer and into the first weeks of September living with a family there. She told me she had made the arrangements through mutual friends.<\/p>\n \u201cShe flew every day. No one said anything about it, and she was never absolutely sure whether anyone saw her flying over the Tuscan hills. If they did, perhaps the Italians were more accepting of such miracles than Americans would have been. Here men would have tried to shoot her down, and preachers would have railed against demons and dragons. In Tuscany that year there was a spurt in reported sightings of angels and the Virgin Mary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a hell of a tale, Ma.\u201d<\/p>\n She narrowed her lips and eyes. \u201cI told you once, this is not a story, dear. I don\u2019t tell stories. This is true.\u201d<\/p>\n I half smiled. Mother never was one to tell us stories. Our father was the spinner of wild and imaginary events. \u201cThere\u2019s always a first time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the scars.\u201d Her voiced was hushed and terribly serious. \u201cMinute scars on each shoulder blade where the wings had been. She showed them to me a few days before she died, and said that it was important for me to know what had happened to her. She also made me promise to tell you before I died.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened when she came home from Europe?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe married your grandfather.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWings and all?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe wings were gone. She met my father on the voyage back. He was returning from Rome where he had been studying architecture for a year. I\u2019ve seen their pictures from the trip. He was quite dashing and she was radiant and beautiful, even in the bulky clothes she wore to hide her wings. They fell in love, and when they were one day out from New York, he proposed. She told him she\u2019d think about it and write him with her answer. He pleaded for her to say yes immediately, but Mother had to think about how to handle the problems presented by her wings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut she said yes. We know that.\u201d<\/p>\n Mother dabbed at her wet knees with the dry part of washcloth. \u201cShe did, but only after the wings were gone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened to them?\u201d I was surprised by the sense of loss I felt.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the next several weeks they became smaller and smaller, their color fading even faster until they were a dingy gray. One morning, she woke up and they were gone. She looked carefully through the bed covers and all she found were two small pieces of gristle, like something you\u2019d spit out while chewing a chicken drumstick. That morning, she sent Father a telegram with a single word. Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does this mean, this story?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean a damn thing, Linda Ann Miller. It\u2019s what happened. Things that happen don\u2019t mean anything more than what we make them mean.\u201d She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, her breathing shallow and rapid. \u201cI could use another drink.\u201d<\/p>\n I refilled the glass with water from the bathroom sink and holding the back of her head with one hand, helped her take a sip.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d rather have a pint of vodka,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know about a full pint at one time, but I\u2019ll sneak you in a bottle of good potato vodka tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat would be wonderful.\u201d She opened her eyes wide. \u201cYou\u2019re coming back tonight? You never come back at night when you\u2019ve been here in the day. Should I be worried? Did they tell you something they haven\u2019t told me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey told you I was dying?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou told me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey told me. I\u2019m dying.\u201d She sighed and gave me an air kiss. \u201cIt\u2019s about time. The damned undertakers that own this place are getting impatient. They can make money on my funeral and rent the room to somebody else at a higher rate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo really believe that undertakers own nursing homes?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cExtended care facility. Edgehill is an extended care facility, not a nursing home. You told me that, and no, I don\u2019t believe undertakers really own it. That\u2019s just a metaphor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd yet you say the story about Gram\u2019s wings is true.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe swore to me it that really happened. Your grandmother always spoke the truth, and now I\u2019ve told you. You must be sure to tell Eva when the time comes, and convince her to make sure she passes it on to Wendy when she believes it\u2019s the right time. It\u2019s an important part of our family history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy not tell Wendy while she\u2019s still young?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be the right time. It\u2019s too tragic for the young.\u201d<\/p>\n I bought a large bottle of Luksusowa vodka on my way home from Edgehill, but I never took it to Mother. Less than half an hour after walking through my front door, the phone rang. It was Mynah Forsythe, the day nurse on Mother\u2019s floor. We had gone to high school together.<\/p>\n \u201cShe died,\u201d Mynah said. \u201cI went in to check on her, and she was sitting in her chair dead.\u201d<\/p>\n My heart thumped, but all I could think of to say was, \u201cHow did she look?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLook? She was dead, Lin. She looked dead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOther than looking dead, how did she appear? Pained? Frightened? Ghastly? I want to know how my mother died, not physically what killed her. She was old old, just like Dr. Ross said to her this morning. How did she face death, and was it a good death?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDeath is never good, Lin. Death sucks. I\u2019ve seen enough of it working here. Death truly sucks. I can\u2019t tell you exactly what hers was like since nobody was with her when she went, but when I saw her afterwards your mother was smiling. Her face was turned toward the window, and her head was tilted up as if she\u2019d been looking at the sky. Her eyes were open, and she was smiling. A big smile. A generous smile.\u201d<\/p>\n That was on a Wednesday. We buried her on Saturday. It was a warm and sunny day in the middle of May. The trees were in full bud, their soft colors like those of autumn, but filled with the promise of life\u2019s breadth and richness. Lilacs were in bloom, their scent heavy in the air as we stood around the grave and listened to a Unitarian minister who had never met Mother, and whom we had met for the first time the day before because my daughter Eva, weeping, told me that she wanted words to be said at Mother\u2019s internment.<\/p>\n He was very nice, and his words were kind and appropriate, based on the notes he had carefully taken when we hired him to speak. He didn\u2019t pray. He didn\u2019t preach. He didn\u2019t offer homilies about death, nor did he read from the Bible. He talked about Mother, referencing the many things Eva and I had told him about her, and he talked about love and family and what he called the ineffable mystery of human existence. He concluded with the final lines of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 73, \u201cThis thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong; to love that well which thou must leave ere long.\u201d<\/p>\n We stood there, each of us with a hand on the coffin for several long minutes after the graveside service ended and everyone else had gone, leaving us alone for our final moments with what remained of Mother. A small, orange Kubota backhoe idled with a soft thrum thirty feet away inside the tree line at the edge of the cemetery property. Alongside it, three men with shovels and rakes stood quietly in the shadows.<\/p>\n \u201cI like that, the ineffable mystery of human existence,\u201d Eva said.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it trite,\u201d Harry said. \u201cNo one should try to wrap words around the chaos and meaninglessness of this crawl across the dirt that we call life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou just did,\u201d Eva said. \u201cThe difference is that you did it ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n Harry wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and drew her into a tight sideways hug. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t love you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know. You\u2019re just being the dad.\u201d<\/p>\n The moment was broken. Harry\u2019s hand had been the first to move from the coffin lid, and moments later, the rest of us followed. We walked across the spring green grass to the far side of the cemetery where the cars were parked. Behind us, I heard the Kubota\u2019s motor rev up, and when I turned to look, I saw three men walking slowly toward the gravesite, shovels over their shoulders.<\/p>\n We went to our house where we sat around telling family stories. I did not mention my grandmother\u2019s wings. Later that evening, we ordered pizza from the Village Pizza shop, which John insists makes the best pizza in New England, if not the entire northeast. I opened the Luksusowa, and we drained the bottle. The evening was funny and sad, filled with silly songs and tears. It was after eleven when Eva and her family left. Harry stayed up with me talking for another hour, and I stayed up long after Harry had gone to bed.<\/p>\n I could still hear Mother\u2019s voice. The dead leave us slowly, but I knew the day would come when I would have trouble remembering how she looked, exactly; how she laughed, exactly; how she moved around the house, exactly. That night, I sat and let her phantom voice waft through the room, hearing again the story of my grandmother\u2019s wings as Mother remembered her telling it. I found a half a bottle of pinot grigio in the refrigerator and drank it as I listened. When the wine was gone, the story ended. I climbed the stairs toward the bedroom Harry and I have shared for forty-five years. I put my hand on the door knob and stood outside the room for at least five minutes before letting it drop to my side, opting instead for one of the guest rooms, just this one night. I stripped off my clothes, and took a long shower, hot water pouring deliciously over me.<\/p>\n Twenty minutes later, clean and dry, I stood naked in front of the hall mirror, six feet high, two feet wide with a simulated ormolu oak leaf and acorn frame. Holding a hand mirror up to my eyes, I studied my back and saw the shoulder blades of a sixty-six year old woman, skin mottled by a lifetime of careless sunning. Stepping closer to the large mirror, I looked painstakingly at my skin, trying to see what I feared could not be there and what, if they were there, had long since been lost to memory. I saw what anyone, with the exception of my grandmother, would see on their back; certainly not the tiny tell-tale scars I had fancied I might find, indications that I too could once have sprouted wings and soared above the hills of western Massachusetts and looked down on farms and woodlands, flown over villages and towns like my marvelous and inexplicable grandmother, free for a moment of gravity\u2019s most demanding ties, becoming for a brief moment of life a miraculous being flying, flying, flying on resplendent green and iridescent human wings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My grandmother had a Bakelite Philco radio, model 48-250, brown with gold numerals on the dial. Its five tubes received the AM band and operated on 115 volts. I remember little about her, just that she wore black dresses with small white polka dots, pulled her white hair into a bun at the back of … Continue reading My Grandmother’s Wings<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3604,"featured_media":950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6854],"tags":[],"issue":[6874],"class_list":["post-894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","issue-6874"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-24 08:45:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}