The Meaning of Skin

This afternoon, I was changing Althea, my little firecracker. She was doing her thing, twisting her back and legs to flip herself over, making me curse a few times in laughter and frustration. After some goofing around, she flipped onto her back and I managed to get a diaper under her. Her happy cheeks round with a smile, she grabbed the fat — er, skin on my forearm with her strong little fingers.

In that moment, an otherwise insignificant moment captured in time, I remembered my grandma.

Grama had a lingering Boston accent and enjoyed a cold beer on a hot day. She smoked. She laughed. She read voraciously and snacked on Spam with crackers, taking careful nibbles with her front teeth while flipping the pages of another Agatha Christie mystery. She took clogging lessons.

Grama was buddies with the Lord and didn’t care which church she found him in (she, an alabaster Irish woman, once attended an all-African American gospel church — even purchased traditional African garb — and found that the Lord there was the same Lord she prayed to anywhere else, goddammit).

When I was a little girl, Grama would drive me to the 99-cent store in her long, white Oldsmobile. On our walk through the parking lot, I would stroke Grama’s arms, the sagging, loose skin so soft under my fingertips. I would explore the thick veins in her hands and caress her freckled arms.

This skin was different from mine. I delighted at this discovery, the soft skin loose and saggy with age. I would rub at it with my fingers and tell her how soft she was.

When I grew up, I wanted to have soft skin like Grama.

Now that I’m an adult, I realize she probably cursed all that loose and sagging skin, probably thought it was disgusting and unattractive, a reminder of how not-young she was. But to me, it was human silk, a touchy-feel that represented all that was comforting and right with the world.

My Grama’s skin.

Althea’s fingers digging into my forearm, I slid the diaper under her tiny little bum. Those big, bright eyes. Those apple-round cheeks. The gummy grin. Grabbing at my skin with exuberance and innocence.