"Grandma" By: Bethany Morrison She sits alone in her old fashioned farmhouse in the depths of the Irish countryside. A typical Miss Havisham that Time had forgotten drawing deeply on her long menthol cigarette. Her bottled blonde hair is scraped off her face by a white hair band that I could easily believe was glued to her forehead because in all of the years I have known her I have never seen her without it, the rest of her hair that used to sweep down her back luxuriously now hangs with hair sprayed definition at her shoulders. Whether early in the morning or late at night her lips are a painted pink and her eyes are drowned in Elizabeth Arden's, 'Blue Magic' eye shadow. Mascara clots on her eye lashes like raindrops on a spider's web yet her face holds a radiance and beauty that shines through her flawless complexion. Expensive gold ear rings hang heavily from her ear lobes, rings adorn her fingers and gold bracelets dangle from her arms like shiny extensions of her wrinkled skin. When visitors enter the room she waves regally from her throne, the grand armchair in her living room and her jewellery clinks together like the sound of Christmas bells. As she motions them to sit down I am ordered to pour the respective gentleman or lady a stiff drink or cup of tea instructed to use only the finest cut glass or china teacup. A log of peat is then thrown on her open fire that is lit even on the hottest of days and the room becomes hazy from the billows of tobacco smoke rolling lazily through the nostrils of my grandmother as she gives me the teethy grin that she is renowned for in our family. She derives all of her education from the Daily Mail and Belfast Telegraph delivered to her door each morning in life. We talk politics and religion as she unearths the deep rooted prejudice of her generation; our debates are mostly centred on the way things were in her day and what a downward spiral the youth of today are caught up in. She tries to indoctrinate me with her old fashioned ideas of how women should accept their subordinate position in life under the rule of men and how in her day marriage was for life not for love. We talk for hours in her little room cluttered with expensive crockery and antique farmhouse equipment as I smother her talon shaped nails with, 'passionate pink' polish to cover the tobacco stains underneath. Her jokes are mostly crude and her little colloquial sayings give me enough amusement to keep me coming back night after night. Her skin creases like an unironed shirt when she laughs and I have never known her to cry or admit defeat. She is my grandmother and her snobby idiosyncrasies make her the most interesting and loveable person I know. Now she sits in a residential home in a spotlessly clean room with fashionable furniture and colourful carpets. Her nails are cut short by the nurses and her earrings and other pieces of jewellery have been deemed a health risk and sit rejected on the bedside table. She sits hunched on her chair, with none of her aristocratic airs and graces left to boast of. Her fingers twitch nervously in need of a cigarette and her freshly scrubbed cheeks look bare without makeup. She will live for many years but her spirit haunts the cracked tiles and threadbare rugs of the farmhouse where she existed outside of time and social law (c)opyright 2002 by Bethany Morrison