Sestina: My Grandmother Laughs
Linda Eisenstein
The one thing she knew best, my Grandma
Stella -- her gift -- was how to laugh.
To her dancing eyes, life
was a merry theater of the absurd, a good
joke, and nothing was funnier than people
and their troubles.
Ah, poor chick, so much trouble!
she'd nod and cluck like a brood hen. Grandma
could get anything out of people,
covering them with her warm laugh,
nudging them out of their shells. She was a good
listener, too -- nothing in your life
ever shocked her. She loved her own life,
hard as it was, never letting trouble
rob her of her enduring good
humor. When you stumbled, my grandma
offered sympathy, never pity; her Olympian laugh
cushioned your pratfall. The only people
who bothered her were Puritans, those dangerous people
without an appetite. She urged second helpings at life's
buffet, opened beer bottles with her teeth, belly-laughed
at teetotallers. The skinny made trouble
for the rest of us. Grandma
had no use for do-gooders.
Under her breath she'd hiss: Keep your good
to yourself. She preferred people
who raised hell to those who preached against it. Grandma
was more subversive than Lenin, her whole life
a cheerful revolt. Have you made enough trouble
today, Lindali? she'd murmur, and her sly laugh
could topple a tyrant like weeds cracking concrete, a peasant laugh
that sang of survival, one that could conjure a good
soup from scraps of carrots and the odd bone, put up with Trouble
like a bothersome in-law you're stuck with. When I see people
with clenched teeth, sleepwalking through their life,
I wish they'd known you, Grandma.
People, believe it: at 97, wheelchair bound, troubled
with blind eyes, she still clings to life, still finds it good.
Hear her song breathe its heart into my own: Grandma, laughing.
Copyright 1995 Linda Eisenstein
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