Silver Apology

At ten, I was confused of my grandmother’s hatred. Perhaps she knew she was leaving me soon. Before she broke her hip, she would chase me, quickly as an eighty-some year old could I suppose. I laughed. It was a game. The game ended when she caught my butt. Smack! with the flimsy, plastic part of her rusty flyswatter. She did not laugh, she never did. God she hated me, I think she hated everyone. I felt she hated me the most. She accused me of being bad when I was sitting still, I never understood. I tried pleasing her. I even tried saving her rosebuds from the smothering ants in the spring. The only truth she saw through her milky-old blue eyes was me murdering her precious flowers. When she felt bad for being mean, she gave me gifts wrapped in paper-towels. Biscuits, clip-earrings, quarters, or sometimes she wanted to feed me to forgiveness. I would have rather been yelled at than to eat her soup. Her vegetable soup tasted like sugar. This was not my idea of an apology. I hated that soup as much as her lilac-ivory hair that seemed to reflect from her purple gowns. I hated that she hated me. Close to her death, she despised me even more. I guess she was miserable and in pain. Many weeks before she passed, she handed me a paper towel. I remember her wrinkled hands, bruised, from so many IVs. When I unwrapped her apology, a sterling silver spoon was inside—priceless.