My three bubbes (grandmas)

"If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people."
Thich Nhat Hanh
Vietnamese Buddhist monk

"Omigosh. They look so Jewish."
That was the son's immediate reaction the other night when I dug out pictures of my grandparents for his geneology paper.
"Well, honey," I told him. "That's what we are."
Here in Little Norway — a.k.a. South Dakota — you just don't see people like my people.
Above, Exhibit A, from left: Grandma Molly, Grandma Esther, and Great-Grandma Frieda. You're not going to find ladies like these on the prairie.
Esther, my mom's mom, was in a league of her own ... a quality I would not come to appreciate until too many years too late.
She'd burst into the house after running errands, drop her bags on the floor and dash for the bathroom in full grandma sprint.
"Oy vey!" she'd yell over her shoulder. "I gotta pish."
Contemplating the wisdom of this Buddhist monk, I can't quite wrap my brain around the concept. I fully get the connection to my past, but I'm not sure where I'm supposed to go with it. I am so far removed, from both the people and the place, that some days it seems as though my grasp is slipping.
In February, it will be 26 years since my mom died. For nearly three years, I have been alive longer without her than with her. Why I can't fully process this thought and put it to rest escapes me.
At once, it was a lifetime ago and it was yesterday. The kids pull me forward. The pictures pull me back.
If Esther was around, she'd probably just shrug her shoulders and wave me off, and say it was a bunch of mishegas, which in Yiddish means craziness or insanity.
Then again, this is the woman, who with cigarette dangling from her mouth, told me that putting artificial sweetner in my iced tea was going to kill me.
But, maybe that's exactly the point. The memories, the laughter, the tears. The good times and the sadness. The presence and the loss. What makes sense and what is senseless.
Life is what it is. Mishegas.