My grandmother liked dawn better than dusk.
I didn't understand that when I was twelve. I wanted to sleep in, wanted the long summer evenings that felt like they'd never end. But she was already outside by the time the sky turned gray, working in a garden three sizes too big for one person. I asked her once why she planted so much when it was just her. She said the tomatoes didn't know that.
(pause)
The summer I was eleven, she let me drive her old tractor in the back field. I was so proud. I lasted about ten minutes before I crashed it straight into a hay bale. I waited for her to yell, to tell me I was careless, to say I couldn't be trusted. She didn't. She walked back to the house and made lunch. We ate sandwiches at the kitchen table and she asked me what I wanted to do that afternoon. That was it. No lecture. No disappointment. Just lunch, and the afternoon ahead.
(pause)
She used to say, "Don't argue with the weather." What she meant was: stop sulking when it rains on something you'd planned. What she meant was: some things just are. What she meant was: you can't control everything, so do what you can with what you have.
We found out last week that she'd been volunteering at the literacy center every Wednesday morning for twenty-six years. She never told us. The librarian did. That's who she was—she just did the work and came home.
(pause)
I lived with her for two summers, then visited every Sunday after that until last year. Every book in her house was already underlined when she bought it. She liked them that way, she said. Liked seeing what someone else had thought was important.
Every time I see fog on the river, I'll think of her. Every time I make tea with too much honey. Every time I walk into a room before someone asks me to—which she always did, appearing right when you needed her, as if she'd known all along.
She taught me to be up before the day decides what it's going to be. To keep going after the crash. To stop arguing with what I can't change.
She taught me that the best kind of love is quiet, constant, and asks for nothing back.