The 1412 Birthday Cards for Grandma

When I got to the part about the Sears catalog, Larry put his hand over his eyes.

When I finished, nobody said anything. The clock over the stove ticked. Glenda had her apron up to her face.

“I didn’t know any of this,” Larry said. “Mom. I didn’t know any of this.”

“You never asked,” Grandma said. Not unkind. Just true. “You were busy, honey. You had a farm and two kids and your brother’s funeral and me. I know you were busy.”

By noon there was one envelope left on the table. The one Dennis had set apart. It sat by her elbow where I had put it at nine.

Grandma reached over and found my wrist with her fingers. “Now that one,” she said.

I picked it up. I turned it over in my hands to open it.

And I knew the handwriting before I saw the return address, because I had seen it on every check that had paid her bills for six years.

Tight, square capital letters. The L’s made with a little hook at the bottom, the way she had taught every child in that school to make them.

I looked at Larry. Larry looked at the table. “Go on,” Grandma said. “I can wait all day, but I’d rather not.”

I slid my thumb under the flap. It was a plain drugstore card with roses on it, the kind you buy at the rack by the pharmacy counter without reading the verse. The verse was printed inside. Under it, he had written in pencil, pressing hard.

I read it out loud.

“Mom. I mailed this from the post office on Thursday. I didn’t know how to say it in the kitchen so I am saying it here. I was wrong about what I said. You know everybody. I am the one who has been forgetting. I am scared of losing you and I took it out on the wrong thing.

“I am sorry. I love you. Happy 100th birthday. Your son, Larry.”

Grandma held out her hand. I put the card in it. She ran her thumb over the pencil marks like she could read them that way.

“You still make your L’s the way I taught you,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Larry said.

“Thirty years,” she said. “Do you know that? The last card you wrote me yourself was the year your father died. Glenda’s signed them all since then. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

Glenda laughed into her apron. Larry let out a breath that was almost a laugh too.

“I noticed,” Grandma said again. “I was waiting. I’m a patient woman, Larry. I taught country school.”

He got up out of his chair and came around the table and knelt down on the linoleum by her chair, which is not easy for a seventy-two-year-old man with two bad knees and forty years of working cattle in them.

She put her hand on the back of his head, the way you would with a little boy.

“Card one thousand four hundred and twelve,” she said. “Out of all of them, that’s the one I was waiting for.”

I got up and went to stand by the sink for a minute. There has been a lot of standing by the sink in our family this month.

At about one-thirty, there was a knock at the front door. Nobody uses the front door except the pastor and the census.

Glenda went. I heard her say “Oh my,” and then “Oh my goodness,” and then she came back into the kitchen with her eyes wide.