True Love Grows In Brooklyn

2015 – The Present

Gloria was sitting in her favorite chair crocheting a baby blanket, which was one of her favorite hobbies. She made so many blankets and lap pads for seniors that she lost count as to how many she made through the years. Everyone she shared her work with loved receiving what she created.
She was pleased with this blanket and thought, “What could be better than creating something I love, then having the people I share my creations with, love them as much as I do.”
Her granddaughter Toniann was coming to visit in a few days. She was doing a term paper for college, and sent an e-mail asking many questions about the olden days. Questions about what life was like when Gloria was a child, a teenager, married and why she never married again. Toniann had a whole list of other questions, which were too many to ask over the phone or by computer so they agreed on a date to do it in person.
Gloria smiled as she remembered how her grandchildren loved her homemade chocolate chip cookies and used any excuse to come over for some samples.
Toniann was turning into a wonderful young woman, almost five feet, six inches tall, with dark brown hair and even darker bedroom eyes. She was going to turn the heads of many young men. Gloria hoped that she’d find someone as wonderful as her Nicky.
Gloria was thankful for every second she was able to spend with any of her grandchildren since their lives were so busy with school, work and friends.
She never stopped thanking God for her grandchildren and knows they are among the greatest blessings in her life. She also surmised there’d be many requests for help doing reports comparing the differences between generations.
She realized that her grandchildren will even belong to two different generations since ideas and values changed every twenty-five years as well as our environments and the people we associate with, which also influences our way of thinking. Thus, the older ones will be part of one way of thinking and the younger ones would grow up with another way of thinking.
Why even she and Nicky didn’t agree on everything and there was only fives years between them. As for me and my children, dear Lord, we never stopped disagreeing on certain issues.
Gloria found herself reminiscing about her life since Toniann had asked her for help on her report. So many memories entered her mind, both happy and sad.
She was glad she started typing notes in her computer, because her memory wasn’t as quick as it had been a few years ago when she helped Nikki with a similar project. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of typing the info down last time.
She also wondered why Nikki didn’t give Toniann her notes so she could copy from them. Then again, it’s better if Toniann asked her own questions, as similar as they thoughts were on some issues, on others they were like night and day.
Nikki was now an intern at Metropolitan Hospital, Gloria hoped she had the stamina to survive the long hours the medical profession required. She also prayed that Nikki never lost her compassion for her patients. Nikki was about the same height as Gloria was, five feet four inches. She had her grandfather’s puppy dog brown eyes that could melt your heart when she was sad. She had Gloria’s build, and some of the insecurities always thinking she was fat, instead of realizing she was voluptuous and sexy.
At least Nikki lived near the hospital, which would make it easier to raise a family, when and if she married. That was a big difference between the generations, when Gloria was young if girls weren’t married when they were in their early twenties, people called them old maids or spinsters.
Now age made no difference at all, people married at any age or remained single and no one thought anything about it.
Gloria wasn’t aware that Nikki was also coming to visit; it was to be a big surprise. Toniann would be very glad that Nikki was with her. Lately there were many times when Gloria started to repeat herself and of course her grandchildren would say “You already said that Ma” as young people tend to do, but she could associate with that behavior. After all, didn’t she do the same to Nanny years ago?
Here it was 2015, and at the age of seventy-eight, Gloria knew that she loved her husband more now than she did before he passed. The song “After the Loving” by Engelbert Humperdink entered her head. How true those words were. Actually, every love song was special to her and Nicky and belonged to their love story, as neither of them really had any other serious relationships in their lives.
She then remembered that in 1982, at the age of forty-four, she didn’t think she’d survive twenty-four hours without Nicky and here it was over thirty-three years later. She thought, “How quickly time passes when looking back.”
Whenever she tried to look forward she found it too difficult to do. She still couldn’t imagine living another ten or more years without Nicky any more than she could imagine living without him in 1982. To survive, she had to learn to take each second of her life as it came and she will continue to take each second of her life as it comes for the rest of her time here on Earth.
As she sat there, her thoughts returned to 2007, that was one of her saddest years and she still remembered so much of that year as if it happened yesterday.
She marveled at the fact that the human mind was able to remember past years so vividly.
2007 like 1982 was another year we should have been planning parties. Instead it was filled with brokenness, unhappiness and thoughts of how different their lives might have been had Nicky not passed.
She continued typing on the computer as the memories passed through her mind, knowing it would be easier to organize her thoughts when she was done, especially since her mind started to roam back and forth. She or Toniann could copy and paste from one section to another. She remembered when she used a typewriter, if she made a mistake, or wanted to insert a paragraph, she had to type everything over again.
Gloria thought, “What a blessing computers are when used for the good of mankind