?

Yesterday my grandma showed up in my dream, as a dark, tall, "heavy" figure, just looking under her brow at me from kinda afar. I have NOT dreamed of her for a long time, maybe never.

This is the gradma whom I admired. She was totally cool and under control, invincible, strong, tough, proud, she didn't need anyone. Well, that was a fake front, I realize after all these years. At least she had a fathful audience in the gullible me. I never connected the dots that my prim and proper grandma had long flowing hair, thin stilleto heels, and bright red lipstick. She was a blonde bombshell, and right under my nose, pretending to be a prude good girl. Bolongney - grandma actually had a lover. I learned later, from my brother, whom she had no troubles telling such things. I suppose she never told me - why should she - her own daughter came home as a pregnant teenager, then took off and left the kid behind, and grandma raised the kid. On the other side, my aunt also took off and had to come back home. Seems like on both sides the lines are full of very beautiful, strong and healthy women - just like myself. My mom was lucky she was crippled, so she never got into trouble. I was lucky? or not lucky? that they brainwashed me in order to prevent the same thing happening to me. Well, it didn't really work.

I had too many troubles. After all these years I kinda realize why grandma's "lone ranger riding into the sunset" show was so enticing to me - she was invincible, and nothing could hurt her nor get to her. She was closed and protected, like an armored fort. I tried to emulate her, and of course, failed miserably.

The longer I live, the more I realize how life is really about something else - about being open, flexible, soft.

My grandma had little other choice but to put that front up. Her husband was killed in WWII and she had to raise and support 3 kids and her own mother on her own, during the WWII, in a "foreign" country to her. Her life was very very difficult, from early age, when she was an orphan.

Looking at my life today, how I react to things and what it takes to get to me, I can see that I probably would have not even lived if I were in her shoes. Yes, she had to survive somehow, and she choose the tough way, and it worked. I suppose there are other ways, like being Open and Surrendering. But for whatever reason, she didn't do it that way. Maybe she did and I never learned about it. Only God knows.