Day 26 of Blogtober fest. The fun isn’t over yet. We got a few more exciting days of Dani rants and a new month of new blog beginnings. So cozy up this Tuesday with your favorite beverage and read on!

Yesterday I was sent an intriguingly odd message through Facebook… a lady messaged me privately and asked if I was Pam _____________’s granddaughter. I said I was. She said oh good I am glad I didn’t message someone who wasn’t you. She went on and on about how her mother and my nana were best friends at Northwestern University and in each other’s weddings. I felt that was oddly specific if this were to be a scam.

I asked my mom and she said it was legit and that she knew the lady well. She was a few years older than my mom so she had to be in her early seventies. I guess she lives outside of L.A. and invited me and my family to reminisce about my grandmother and “catch up”.

I guess it struck me odd because the way she wrote her messages made her seem holier than thou and like she was this profound writer and she wrote some really nice things about my nana but that’s not how I remembered her. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

She wrote how my nana was this great outdoors woman, a good fisher person, loved Oregon where she moved and retired to from Houston. She sent some cool pictures of her mother and my nana that I had never seen before. I guess my nana was her Godmother and became the Godmother to this lady’s daughter who I imagine is in her forties now.

She kind of asked me what I thought about it all so I told her my memories of my nana. I began with the fact that her eyesight was so poor before she passed away that she couldn’t get around super well. I asked for a pair of red mittens for Christmas the year before she passed. She only had pink, like salmon pink yarn so she knitted together pink mittens and I told her they were pink and not red and she said she could have sworn she thought they were red but she couldn’t tell the difference.

So to this day I have these hole-y mittens that are pink. Then I told her how I remembered her having Brandy with Fresca with dinner every night because she was an alcoholic. The lady asked about her great cooking and I said that my nana was diabetic all my life so her meals were rather basic and plain; still good but not like she had described.

Then I mentioned the more she would drink, we would get out the cards, dominos, and poker chips and any spare change we would all have and place bets on our games. She and my mom would buy my sister and I scratchers at like 15 and 13, respectively. But yeah, nana loved to gamble and probably stems to why I got such the itch to gamble once I turned of age.

The lady said I had an..interesting view of my grandmother. She didn’t message me for a while after that.

In hindsight, I wasn’t trying to upset her. I literally said near the end of the message that I wasn’t terribly close to nana because we didn’t mesh. The person to talk to about fond memories is to my sister because nana and my sister were closer than anything. I didn’t dislike her but if I was visiting, my sister would spend all her time with my nana and I barely got any quality time with her. I’m not mad or resentful; that’s just how it was.

The lady mentioned that my grandmother always thought of herself as “not a nice person”. She said how she thought it was the opposite of that. I told the lady that I resonated with what my nana said because she wasn’t very nice. She didn’t care if she hurt your feelings and if she did, she would yell, “Tough!” If I began to cry about it, she never apologized and just ignored me.

I agreed with the lady’s sentiments that she was a successful business person at Coca Cola in Houston in the sixties and seventies. But I do agree that my nana was very self oriented.

I find it fascinating how there are so many viewpoints of the same person about the same things that have happened in life. My memories definitely did not align with hers and that’s okay. I hope she reached out to my sister and they could give each other some closure after her death.

All I do know is that I refuse to let other people change or effect how I view someone else. For example, my mother did not like her in laws so I never had a relationship with my paternal grandparents until I was an adult and I could start a relationship with them. Even though she had negative views about them, I am not letting those affect my views on my mother or my grandparents. I am making my own memories and determinations for myself.

It is one thing in life to not like how people talk to you, but it is another thing when people start shit talking your loved ones. One of my family members, my Godmother, did just that. My Godmother is my Nana’s other best friend. This lady is very crotchety and still alive. She worked with Nana at Coke and they bought a townhouse together in Oregon. She moved back to Houston after a while. She mailed me some graduation money when I graduated high school and gave me her contact info and said to never give it to my mother for she despised my mother for no good reason.

I emailed her and she called me fat “like your own mother” and then I told her to go fuck herself. I probably wrote myself out of her will for that comment, but you’re not gonna disrespect me let alone my mother whether I like her or not (and I love her to death by the way), she is still my mom and you don’t disrespect anyone’s mom.

She emailed to apologize a couple of days later but I don’t think I ever responded back. This may be jarring to some of you, and it kind of is to me too because I don’t disrespect my elders, no matter how ignorant they are. However, when you are being malicious on purpose to me and my family, I am gonna call you out on it.

I told my mom about that tonight and when she heard I called her out to defend my mom’s honor, my mom gave me a fist bump lol. She said “you go girl” and walked away.

I am not one to hold onto resentments, mostly because I am too forgetful to remember why I was angry in the first place. But that one really got to me. It’s a free country and I can talk to whomever I please, whenever I please and my time is valuable. I don’t wan to waste my time on things and people that don’t serve to my greater purpose in life.

I am still growing as a person and I have come a long ways, but I still have a ways to go. I may think I should have handled things differently in the future, but right now? I am happy where things are at and I hope to continue on.

Much love,

Dani