The second of my grandmothers is Eleanor Starr. Gramma Starr. She is my namesake, I am Mackenzie Starr. Her father was an Anglican priest, and as a child she moved to 17 different states. Out of all my grandmothers, she is the one that they write about in stories. The round, soft one with whispy grey curls. The one who has warm cookies ready whenever you pay her a visit. The one who collects porcelain tea sets and had weekly tea parties with you as a child. The one who lives in a house with a white picket fence and a hand-planted garden. Everybody loves Gramma Starr. Everyone. At Christmastime, she bakes hundreds of Christmas cookies and packages them up into beautiful little parcels. She gives one to everyone in town. The bag boys at the supermarket, the assistants at the post office, the guy in the ferry control tower (she lives on an island off of Washington). During Thanksgiving, when we are all together she has us play the thankfulness game. We each receive a cup holding brown, yellow, red, and orange m&m's. Each time we eat one, we have to say something we're thankful for. I receive monthly letters from her, each with a Bible verse on it; each with a life lesson for me to gain. She says, "If I do one of these each month for you, by the time you're my age you could write your own Bible!" Out of all my grandmothers, she is the most cliché. And although we normally use the word "cliché" with a negative spin, it works for Gramma Starr. It's who she is.
The last of my grandmothers is Deborah. That's what I call her, Deborah. After Gramma Starr and my grandpa got divorced, my grandpa married Deborah. They got married when I was four, so virtually she she has been my grandmother for my entire life. I call her Deborah, well, because the rest of my family calls her Deborah. And until recently, the formality of it did have an effect on our relationship. She is from the deep South; she grew up surrounded by peach trees and horse farms, and everyday she would help her dad with the tractor. She adores horses. Absolutely adores them. Growing up, she had several of them. I asked her whether she rode English or Western style, and she laughed. "Sweet pea, I rode bareback! No saddle, no bridle! It's the only real way to ride a horse." That's what Deborah is, wild. She will gladly point out your wrongs in that thick Southern twang, and her wit is sharper than a knife. She's one of those people who has done everything. And I mean everything. She has worked as a crop-dusting pilot, an accountant, a horse trainer, a "house mother" at a home for troubled girls, a counselor, a banker, a sales person. She has even crashed a plane, and clearly she survived.
Before this year, my relationship with Deborah was nearly non-existent. We were always very friendly and could have a good laugh, but there was no depth or meaning to our relationship. And then she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It was devastatingly true, you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. A fear that I didn't know my own grandmother gripped me and shook me to my senses. My next visit with Deborah, I poured myself into loving on her and spending quality time with her. We watched movies, baked cookies, read together. But mostly we talked about horses. It's a common love for us; both of us have been riding for our entire lives. We watched horse movies, looked at horse pictures, we even went out riding a few times. This Spring I begged my mom to send me out to South Carolina to spend my Spring Break with Deborah and my grandpa. This time I could see the effects of her sickness a little bit more. She would get flustered with driving directions, would sometimes put her oatmeal in the microwave three or four times, forgetting that she had done it before. I decided that I wanted to conduct my grandmother interview with Deborah. I wanted to preserve every last memory that I had of her. That Spring Break was one of the best of my entire life. Sometimes, Deborah would tell me to get in her truck and we would just drive. We would drive for miles on the highway, not knowing where we were going, stopping to get Dairy Queen on the way. This grandmother assignment could not have come at a better time for me, because without it, I do not think I would have taken advantage of getting to know this wonderful woman who has been my "background grandmother" for my entire life. I could not be more thankful.
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