An Ode to Miriam

A new Richmond family tradition.

Everyone has a favorite grandmother. My Grandma Anne was a whole bag of win. She had long silver hair resembling handspun silk that was always neatly pinned back in a bun. She would sing silly songs with us before bed and let us drink the sugar water she’d prepared for her hummingbirds. Whenever we’d visit her at the lake, we’d sleep on foldable canvas cots and play with old metal cars she stored in a purple Crown Royal bag… I was convinced she knew the queen. I remember her brushing my hair after my bath and sitting with us on the deck while eating Skittles and ice cream and watching for deer at dusk. She was simply a magical woman.

My Grandma Miriam, on the other hand, was a bit harder for me to connect with. Don’t get me wrong, she definitely had her strengths. She introduced us to musicals like Annie, The Music Man, and The Sound of Music. She let Twinner and I drink Squirt whenever we’d come visit, and she’d pay us a dollar to pick up apples in her backyard. I remember she had plastic covers on her couch and tassels on her lamp shades— which I never dare touched. She drove us around in her champagne colored Cadillac and would take us to McDonald’s for Happy Meals, to the mall to buy Swatch watches, and to the country club to play Bingo. Her hair was always perfectly shaped (see photos below), which made me question if she ever slept since she only went to the beauty shop once a week.

But there were some hard memories with Miriam, too. I remember being scolded in the driveway for getting my new shoes dirty. My 6-year-old self thought, “But I picked these shoes because they’d make me jump higher, and there’s no better place to test them out than to jump over this puddle.” Another time I made her a collage with real bird feathers I had found in her yard. When I gave it to her, she told me it was diseased and put it in the garage. I was crushed.

All that to say, when we were cleaning out my mom’s apartment after she passed, I did not intend on keeping this photo of my Grandma Miriam. Seeing it stung like a pair of dirty Keds, but I liked the frame. It sat in a box in our garage for a year until we pulled it out and set it above our stove in the kitchen... healing work I told myself.

Before long, my dad mailed us a piece of plexiglass to fit the frame. I always thought Miriam looked so sad in the photo, so we borrowed some of Brave’s markers and started drawing. First, there was Easter…