On the Eve of My Grandmother’s Birthday, I Consider

in which I am reading Patti Smith again & getting a grip on reality

Nannie (holding Tinker), Grandma E, Me — Fall 1990

Pt. 1 — Patti

“Staring at my image on the mercurial surface of the toaster, I noticed I looked young and old simultaneously.” So writes Patti Smith in her memoir Year of the Monkey, which I felt called to re-read this week. In it, she documents her travels and experiences throughout the entirety of the year 2016. She beautifully blurs the lines of dreamscapes and reality in a way that felt just right during the week of a supermoon in Aries. Now, I do have a slightly better grip on where my dreams end and reality begins than I do with Patti’s tales in her book. Nonetheless, this week my dreams have been so intense I’ve found myself in a daze at random moments of any given day, thinking about them, wondering what it all means, halfheartedly blaming it on the moon. 

The first time I read Year of the Monkey, in 2019, I remember loving her writing as always but feeling frustrated, not quite getting it. I read it again last December before going to see Patti Smith and her band perform at The Salt Shed, still not entirely sure I was getting it, yet feeling increasingly convinced that we were kindred spirits. When I pulled it off the shelf again this week, I had forgotten entirely how recently I’d read it, until I checked on Goodreads. But who cares? I felt drawn to Patti’s words again, and revisiting her adventures at the Dream Inn (or Dream Motel, as she calls it throughout the book) in Santa Cruz and visiting her buddy Sam [Shephard] in Kentucky. And there’s the moon, again:

“After dinner, I went out and sat on the front steps to look at the sky. The moon was a waning crescent, like the tattoo between Sam’s thumb and forefinger. Some kind of magic, I whispered, more a plea than anything else.” 

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with it being the eve of my grandmother’s birthday. It has nothing and everything to do with it, and that’s the point. 

Pt. 2 — Patricia 

“My mother. How I sometimes longed to hear her voice … 

On my mother’s birthday, it was reported that the swallows had indeed found their way back to Capistrano. That night I dreamt I was back in San Francisco at the Miyako Hotel. I was standing in the center of a Zen garden that was not much more than a glorified sandbox, and I heard my mother’s voice. Patricia, was all she said.”

— Patti Smith, Year of the Monkey

“With Love, Pat”

As far as I know, my grandmother’s never been called Patti, and Patti Smith’s never been called Pat, but they do of course share their full name, Patricia. I read this passage and I longed to hear my own mother’s voice and I tried to recall my great-grandmother Nannie’s voice. I heard nothing. 

Instead, a childhood memory: Nannie sitting in Grandma’s kitchen, drinking a Diet Coke; my mother sitting next to her at the little table; Grandma at the stove; me, hovering in the doorway, wanting to be near them. 

Mary, Patricia, Rexanna, Alison.

Pt. 3 — Grandma E

“I don’t know the names of the women in my family
past my great-grandmother. How will I call upon them
when it’s time? Will I call them Mary or Venus
or Yemaya? I’ve yet to burn the palo santo, the sage.
I want to leave behind a legacy of light.
I want to leave someone better.”

— Diannely Antigua, “We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers”

My other grandmother, my father’s mother, died when I was 12. Yet still, all these years later, I write in my to-do list, as if the distinction is necessary: Call Grandma E. Write to Grandma E. 

This summer, when I was visiting my aunt Kerry in North Carolina, we called Grandma and put her on speakerphone, standing next to each other in Kerry’s kitchen, updating her on our adventures of the day. I was happy, yet I became briefly distracted, daydreaming of an alternate universe where I was 40, and 50, and 60, and 70, and calling Mom on the phone every day. 

But as Patti wrote, “the trouble with dreaming is that we eventually wake up.” Awake, in reality, I do not get to call my mother on the phone, no. But tomorrow I will see her mother, and we will celebrate a wonderful woman turning 93 years old. 

A few weeks ago, I received a letter in the mail from Grandma. As I read her note, I heard her voice so clearly, as if she were speaking to me directly: “Looking forward to hugging the darling daughter of my darling daughter,” she wrote. 

And she signed it, Grandma E. 

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