My grandmother, Betty Evans, is a wonderful, talented woman, and I love her very very much. Look how beautiful she is. She turned 90 last month.
She's always been amazing. One of my earliest memories is walking with her on the beach, and I have countless others of walks we took in our woods on our mountain. I rember her telling me the names of the flowers, and how to tell what poison oak looked like. I remember skinnydipping in swimming holes, and using the old outhouse, and sleeping outside on a mattress under the stars. I remember listening to the range cows in the morning, and eating millet and carob and so many peaches my stomach hurt. I remember driving up to Oregon to see Shakespeare with her and Papa after I graduated from high school, and driving her and Papa through the lashing rain on the Great Ocean Highway in Australia, on the wrong side of the road with a cliff just feet away.
She's got her foibles - she couldn't find a decent cup of coffee in the whole country of Australia- but don't those make us all more interesting, anyway?
She has an extensive collection of old books, some really old, some just the old cloth-covered kind you remember from your school library when you were a kid. She's the one who understands why I always liked Little Men much more than Little Women, and why my favorite Louisa May Alcott book is Eight Cousins. She's the one who owns Eight Cousins so that I could read it. When I told her I really like Albert Terhune (old-time pre-Lassie collie stories) she found me a copy of one of them. She reads poetry and fiction and histories and just about everything you can think of. She ate health food and grew organic vegetables and composted and practiced yoga way before any of that was cool. Now she mostly does Tai Chi. She's good at it, too.
My grandma. Old-school California girl, from way way back. I love her. My daughters love her. And every time I get sad that my girls never got to meet my papa, I thank the stars that they are getting to know my grandma. Because she is incredible.
