My Crazy Family: Grandmother Read

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Let's get one thing straight before I go any further down this road. When I write the adjective "crazy" in the phrase "My Crazy Family," I am in fact speaking only of my nuclear family: my parents and siblings. However, I am not going to start a separate column called "My Extended Family" just to illustrate the finer points of the family tree. My grandmother is family, but she is not crazy, nor is the grandmother I mentioned in the previous blog column. They have played their roles in the raising of my parents, but I am largely unaware of the precise details of their influence. Bottom line, they're family, so they get lumped up with all the rest of us nuts.
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Today, my parents and I drove up to Austin to visit my grandmother, uncle, and aunt from the DFW area. They met us halfway. In a few days, my grandmother will turn 95, and the family is both thrilled and impressed. I bet she is, too.
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Grandmother Read is still entirely self-sufficient. She lives alone and takes care of her basic needs, such as cooking, cleaning, and paying the bills. She drives to the store and to church, though I do wonder about her behind the wheel. Her car which she purchased in the 1980s barely has 30,000 miles on it.
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Grandmother doesn't talk a whole lot. The conversation at the lunch table passed mainly between the two husband-wife pairs and me. When the food came out, it was entertaining to see my dad and uncle fuss over my grandma's food, making sure she had what she wanted on her plate and a little extra. She ate for the most part in silence.
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Our visit lasted just over two hours. The above picture was taken while things were winding down, and we were smiling and laughing about little nothings. I caught her in a quirky pre-smile pose, about to laugh but perhaps holding it back for the seriousness of the photo shoot. So often, my grandma is reserved, quiet, almost invisible to the hubbub of family action, but this is how I prefer to think of her, as a woman who occasionally lets the little girl of her youth bubble to the surface and spill over for the world to see.
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Happy Birthday, Grandma.

My Crazy Family: Grandmother's Change

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With the exception of my sister, my family is naturally disorganized. Oh, sure, we know where things are, but to the unaccustomed eye, our living area (be it in Corpus or anywhere else we have dominion) is a sea of clutter - paper, books, and junk, stacks of gonna-woulda-shoulda-didn't. It's a lifestyle choice as much as anything else.
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I am a messy person, but even I have my limits. I went crazy in my parents' den, eliminating needless piles of books and trying to make sure that most books were vertical and actually in the bookcase. Then I attacked a cupboard with duplicate cinnamon and sage, empty salt shakers, and a whole bunch of miniature metal pans, the purpose of which has yet to be satisfactorily explained to me. Finally, I turned my attention to the pantry.
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Several months ago before my Texas hike, I stared in fascination as my brother Charlie emptied my parents' fridge on the kitchen table and painstakingly organized it and cleaned it up. He was a maniacal, unreasonable tyrant, throwing out outdated salad dressing, mustard, anything that threatened his vision of perfect organization. Looking at the fridge today, you wouldn't suspect he'd done anything at all.
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Starting in on the pantry, I felt a wave of empathy for my fool of a brother. He spent a good amount of time pushing the boulder of my parents' mess up the mountain of cleanliness but to no avail. I knew I'd be doing the same, but for the moment, it felt good to push.
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This was no simple job as I learned two seconds into the dusty ordeal. There was an exploded can of fruit on one shelf and related cockroach droppings all over the place. There were bottles and bottles of medications mixed in with the jello packages and tea. There was a Santa cake mold way in the back, plastic still on, something I'm sure my mom smiled at upon reception. Then there was the change.
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My mom took out a little Clabber Girl Baking Powder container filled with quarters, dimes, and nickels. She told me that it had belonged to her mother, my Grandmother Bonilla. "It's a habit she picked up from the Great Depression," she told me. "She was determined never to be caught unawares again."
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My grandfather lost his job, as so many others did, during the 1930s. Living out in Central Texas, the opportunities to recover through one's own hard work were slim. There was a time when both my grandmother and grandfather scoured the house in search of misplaced money and didn't find a single penny.
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My mom dug up another container, this one filled with pennies. She gave them both to me.
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Grandmother Bonilla had squirreled away $24.22 in mixed change. In a few months, it will be twenty years since my mom helped clean out her home, inadvertently hanging on to a can and jar of coins which would one day give a young man pause. This home harbors chaos like a blanket harbors dog hairs, but in looking closely, I can find the occasional family story hidden in its folds.
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This is history, the stuff of real value, these echos of chinking coins made by a woman afraid of not being able to feed her family, the saving of a woman driven by love.

Welcome to The Corpus Blog

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My name is S.Matt Read, and I was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas. Most people just called me Matt growing up, though Steven Matthew, Mateo, and Jean-Pierre were all used at one time or another. The above picture is a family portrait. There's my sister Maria sitting, then my brother Nick with a moustache that would turn into a small creature by the time he turned thirteen, my mom Esther also sitting, my dad Nolan during his last few years with a solid head of hair, and my brother Charlie in the Tom Hanks "Big" suit.

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That's me in the lower left, a separate picture pushed into the frame. I was alive at the time, deemed too incorrigible to take to whatever outing the family attended. My mom, later embarrassed by the thought of an incomplete family picture, tried to make amends by adding the photo. It's been hanging in my sister's old room ever since.

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I left Corpus at eighteen to attend college at UT Austin and got a worthless degree in English (shame on UT for charging me). Afterwards, I joined the Peace Corps in West Africa, hiked the Appalachian Trail, became a bookseller, managed a game store, revisited Africa, and was a baker for a year. After having hiked the outline of Texas (read more at texasperimeterhike.blogspot.com), I find myself living, once again, at home with my folks in the sparkling city by the sea.

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Living in Corpus (or anywhere for that matter) is all about the details. For my lifestyle, there's not a lot to do here, but that's not to say there isn't anything to do. I hang out with family and friends, walk the dog, visit the local coffeeshop to play chess, and have most recently been pestering a Frenchman for a job at his bakery. I have at best a vague routine, but in its rhythm I find comfort.
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The Corpus Blog is all about the little things which make living in this town interesting, fun, or wacky. My goal is to put to words some of these glimpses of life to stand as a testament that my family and I were here. For better or worse.
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Each column will be straightforward: one picture, one story. Given the short list of time-killers, you can expect several themes to take shape, and perhaps an overall narrative will emerge. Then again, if this is blog is as random as my family, you might brace yourselves for an exercise in chaos.

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Enjoy.