MY NAN

My first day after the fast; I got up ran to Dunkin’ Donuts barefoot in my nightgown and bought a mixed dozen. A minute later I was laying on my back in the parking lot happily unconscious in a sugar coma.


NO! I actually was so nervous about eating that I basically kept to the same diet and added a morning coffee with soymilk and later a hand full of almonds. I need to make a food plan so I know that I am eating enough calories, protein, dairy, and all of those other things that keep me feeling great and prevent me from looking like a Weeble. I am going to follow a micronutrient eating plan. I can have lean protein. I have to make a plan and a grocery list. Then I have to actually go to the expensive grocery store, and my local farms. Being unhealthy and lazy is so much easier. Maybe all of those healthy eaters are thin because they burn hundreds of calories a day hunting down and preparing all of this healthy food? But, opening a box of processed chemical powdered cheese and macaroni is so easy….


Nan is a firm slender fashion plate. This picture is just for fun.

Anyway while I have you here I want to tell you about Nan. Nan is my birth-mother’s mom. She is 96 years old. I call her Nan because she doesn’t want to be a grandmother. Nan is much hipper, like an older cool friend. When my cool older friend Nan was 91 years old she and I had a misunderstanding and being the stubborn Old Portuguese goat that she is; she stayed mad at me for 5 years. She sent me a birthday card telling me that she was done being mad. Of course I went down to Westport to see her. She is my only birth-family member who lives in Massachusetts. I drove down bringing her a dozen yellow and red marbled roses. I parked across the street at her old house. Her 200 year-old house that had been neglected for half of it’s life. When I first visited the house in 1998 she had cold water running to the kitchen sink but no bathroom. Well no bathroom in the house. There was an outhouse behind the house. I am not kidding. The house had no modern indoor plumbing and was heated by an antique iron wood cooking stove.

Needless to say finally the house just gave up on being fixed up and fell in. In the card Nan told me that she was now living across the street with friends. When I pulled into her property I saw that the house’s roof had caved in. There was a huge gaping wound open to the rain, snow, and to the many critters that lived in the plush overgrown forest that surrounded the house. I looked around for a bit then crossed the street and got to the front door without being eaten by the two chained hungry looking pitbulls. I rang the doorbell, I knocked, I yelled “Nan? It’s Lydia! Are you in there?”

Then I drove to the senior center to see if she was there. I could picture her playing BINGO and stuffing cheese Danish and jelly packets in her purse. She wasn’t there but the manager told me that they knew of my Nan. That she was living in the house after the roof caved in. She had someone throw a tarp over the whole and she went about living her life. The senior center had to call the state and they had no choice but to remove her and condemn the house. I laughed. My Nan is 5” tall and weighs about 90 pounds and I know she must have gone ballistic and terrified them all. I forced a straight face and asked how Nan took the news. The woman’s face went serious. “Oh, not well. She had a few…um…choice words for us and then she tried to hit the police officer with her cane.” I smiled. “That’s my Nan.”

The woman cracked a smile. “Your grandmother sure is something.”

“I know” I said. “She can kick my ass.” The woman laughed. “I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it.”

More about Nan tomorrow!