One blistering hot day in June, eleven-year-old Hazel found herself waiting on the sagging front porch of her Grammy Moon’s ramshackle rambler. She’d never met the old woman. Furthermore, she hadn’t even known she had a grandmother until the week before when Hazel’s dying mother whispered, “Your father has a momma. Living up north, Ashburn way. Be sure to remember that now.”

The night after cancer stole her mother, Hazel’s drunk father skipped town. The next morning, the mailman discovered Hazel crying by the rose bushes in the yard. He drove her to Child Welfare who wasted no time tracking down Grammy Moon.

Two days later, there stood Hazel, feeling equal parts numb and glum, watching as her caseworker lifted the nicked brass knocker on Grammy’s splintery red door. The woman hadn’t made it to a second knock before a tall, skinny lady with flyaway  hair burst out. “My grandbaby! I’ve been waiting for this day!”

Hazel jumped a half step back, clutching a paper sack filled with all her worldly goods: three dingy white shirts, two pairs of patched denim shorts, ragged pajamas, a long plaid dress, and a hairbrush missing most of its bristles.

Grammy Moon drew Hazel toward her. She kissed the top of her head then gave her a bone crushing hug. “Come in. Come on in. Let me show you your room.”

Her grandmother led Hazel to the back of the house. “Your daddy stayed here.” A cotton quilt covered a twin bed.  Each square pictured an old timey cowboy riding a horse, or herding cattle, or sitting by a fire. Nothing much on the walls except a couple of black and white photos of a small boy. The child in the picture resembled her father, his prominent ears being a giveaway. Out the window, beyond scrubby bushes, she saw train tracks.

That next morning, while standing in the kitchen, Hazel discovered that when the 7:00 freight train roared by, the dishes trembled in the cupboard. When Hazel looked at the shelves with alarm, Grammy launched into a history of the plates.

“My brothers and sisters gave me and your grandfather those dishes as a wedding present.” Grammy Moon paused. “They saved up green stamps from the A & P. Then when they had enough, redeemed them for a whole set.” Her grandmother showed Hazel the plates: beige with green line drawings of American patriots, images of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other guys with pigtails.

Those first few days, Hazel held her breath, waiting for what seemed inevitable:  Grammy losing her temper or taking a swat at her or drinking herself into oblivion. Even though the inevitable never happened, Hazel kept her head low. She didn’t side-eye her grandma or back talk in any way. She also never relaxed enough to read a book in the living room or jump in any puddles just for the joy of jumping.

One August evening, after dinner, Hazel sat wide-eyed in front of a three-layered red velvet birthday cake decorated with hot pink roses, lime-green leaves and thirteen blazing candles, the thirteenth added for good luck. Grammy Moon slid the cake onto the table. “Surprise! Happy birthday! Make a wish, baby.”

 Hazel could not muster up a wish, not even a low expectation wish, because she felt unable to imagine anything good could happen to her. Hazel’s face must have reflected that emotion because her grandmother said, “Don’t live life looking at a half-empty spoon. Live big, sweetheart. Think of it as half-full.”

With great effort, Hazel did not roll her eyes. “Not a spoon, Grammy. A glass. A person sees a glass as half-full or half empty.”

“You talking about glasses? My glass is overflowing. So is yours. You just don’t know it yet.”

Every morning, Hazel started her day with hot cocoa and either eggs and crisp toast or oatmeal and blueberries served on the patriot plates. That September, when Hazel climbed onto the yellow bus, she realized it was the first time she’d ever attended school with a full stomach. That warm, satisfied sensation in her belly tempted her to feel almost happy and almost safe.

On weekends, they both slept in, then by midmorning ate pancakes, heavy on real maple syrup. They took their meals on green stamp plates but used fancy silverware from Grammy Moon’s grandmother’s silver chest. “Makes me feel as if every meal is a celebration,” Grammy told Hazel.

One day at dinner, as Grammy served Hazel a fried chicken cutlet and mashed potatoes, she said, “This was both your father and your grandfather’s favorite supper.”

Bracing herself, Hazel asked questions that had been bothering her since she’d arrived months before. “Why don’t you ever talk about my grandfather? And why didn’t I know about you until now?”

Grammy spooned buttered peas onto Hazel’s plate. “Your daddy walked out at eighteen. Never came back. Didn’t call. Didn’t write. Broke my heart.” She pulled up a chair and began to eat.

Hazel waited for her grandmother to continue When she didn’t, Hazel asked, “Why?”

“I’d rather not say. It’s not right to speak ill of the dead.”

Hazel tried to keep her voice steady but didn’t succeed. “What do you mean?”

Grammy Moon sighed. “Your grandfather was a complicated man. He’d spent fifteen years in the Marine Corps before we married. Your daddy and he tangled a lot.”

Hazel understood that her grandmother couldn’t bear to think of her spoon as anything but half full, never wanted to admit any situation could be less than wonderful. However, she needed to know the truth. “Tangled?”

“Lots of shouting and fighting. My husband believed that roughing up our boy would straighten him out.” Grammy shook her head. “I should have stepped in.”

Hazel watched Grammy’s eyes brim with tears. “I begged him not to go. But on his birthday, your daddy walked out the front door and down the path, without so much as a glance back.  Two years later, your grandfather’s heart gave out.” Grammy’s face looked sad, her smile wrinkles curving downward. “Some days I miss him, but most days I don’t.”

Hazel never brought up the subject again. Instead, she eased into Grammy Moon’s comfortable and comforting daily rhythm. On Fridays, they’d rent a movie, being careful to choose films that made them both laugh and cry. Grammy would say, “A good cry at the end of a movie is like somebody giving your achy soul a hug.” On those nights, Grammy Moon would pull a stainless-steel pan of brownies out of the oven eight minutes early to preserve their inner gooey-ness. She’d scoop a high-quality vanilla bean ice cream on top. Then, they’d settle in, two silver forks and a pan of warm deliciousness between them.  

On weekdays, all the way through high school, Hazel would come home to a plate of saltine crackers smeared with chunky peanut butter and homemade blueberry jam, stacked on a TV tray. Grammy Moon sat in the front room, feet up on a lumpy, green hassock, sitting on a lumpier brown couch, looking at her shows. Hazel would snuggle up to her grandmother, first watching a soap opera, then a game show called Queen for a Day, Grammy’s favorite. They’d both cry when a contestant’s hard luck story won them a new washing machine or stove or a bus trip to see an ailing relative. On more than one occasion, in fact on many occasions, Grammy would say, “You see, life works out.”

Hazel would nod but felt torn.  She wanted to embrace her grandmother’s theory that life always worked out, but she wondered if Grammy’s optimistic view caused her to ignore reality. Maybe Grammy’s relentlessly positive spin blinded her to her husband’s meanness. Would Hazel’s father’s life have turned out better if Grammy had stood up to her husband? Regardless, each day with Grammy Moon enticed Hazel to tamp down her own pessimism and instead lean toward the belief this world might hold good.

***

At age twenty Hazel met Lonnie, some guy in her community college business math class. After their Tuesday and Thursday morning sessions, they’d sit on a wooden bench in the school lounge and eat lunch. Without varying, Lonnie brought a smelly tuna sandwich and three Hostess chocolate cupcakes, the kind with the white squiggle on the frosting. He never offered her one, which she should have taken as a bad sign but didn’t.

Often, Lonnie would pull out the class homework and point to a problem. “Hazel, I don’t get this.”

Hazel soon realized that his rudimentary questions were not a flirtatious ploy, he truly did not understand the basics of business math. She’d use parts of her lunch as visual aids. “Look here. Ten almonds, four pieces of cheese, and six grapes. You have a total of twenty items. What percentage of those items are almonds?”

A blank stare.

However, Hazel overlooked all the red and pink flags that life unfurled within plain sight. No fan of Lonnie, Grammy Moon once asked, “Do you love the man? Can you see yourself spending your life with him?”

Hazel said, “He doesn’t drink, smoke or gamble. In fact, Grammy, he reminds me of you. Lonnie feels safe. Consistent.” Not wanting to offend her grandmother, she didn’t add, “He’s the opposite of your son, my deadbeat father, who abandoned me.”

Lonnie took Hazel bowling on Saturday nights, they’d hug (chastely) when he dropped her home. One night, instead of bowling, he took her to Applebee’s where, after a barbequed pork chop dinner with two sides, he asked, “Will you marry me?”

She said, “Why not?” Later, she decided she should have explored her own question more thoroughly.

Lonnie came home from his line supervisor job at a ball bearing factory by 5:19 pm every night. He never smiled, laughed, or veered from his daily routine: work, wordless supper and then an hour of building Civil War models in the basement. Hazel realized she hadn’t married for love; she’d married Lonnie for his predictability, which, after six months of marriage, she loathed.

Their passionless union produced Hazel’s one child, Jonah. Lonnie hated that the baby’s presence meant they lived on a roller coast of uncontrollable events, croup, spit up, sleepless nights, and blown out diapers.

One morning, after eating his whole wheat toast (no butter, no jam), he said, “I am not a good fit for fatherhood.”

He left town that day, heading to his mother’s house and another factory job in his hometown, five hundred miles away. Hazel agreed with his assessment and didn’t miss him a bit. Instead, she felt grateful that he had the minimal decency to travel by bus, leaving her their beater Pontiac Tempest. Hazel and baby Jonah moved into her old room at Grammy Moon’s, then she quickly found good paying work as a bookkeeper for several small businesses in town. Over the next four years, Hazel became a certified accountant. Unlike Lonnie, she proved to have excellent business math skills.

The significant bump in salary enabled Hazel to take out a low-interest mortgage and build an addition to the house: a wing for Grammy that included a spacious bedroom and bathroom, large bay windows on all sides and large skylights over her bed and bathtub. At night, Grammy could watch the movement of the constellations and the next morning would report her sightings. At breakfast one day, she told five-year-old Jonah, “Baby boy, I saw a shower of shooting stars last night! I made a wish on every one—blessings abound, blessings all around!”

***

When Grammy turned ninety and her arthritis set in, knees and hips giving out, Hazel renovated the kitchen, added another bedroom and bath, then built a wrap-around deck across the back of the house. French doors from Grammy’s room opened to the deck and to a view of the loblolly pines, yellow poplars and red maple trees that had grown over the tracks after the freight trains stopped running. Evenings, Hazel and Jonah, who was now in high school, would hear the bird report of the day: “A Carolina wren, fisher crow, mourning dove and one HERON sitting at the top of a loblolly pine for most of the morning—me staring at her and her staring at me!” From spring through fall, over the next two years, that heron or one of her heron buddies, spent mornings perched in the pine, communing with Grammy Moon.

At ninety-two, the summer after Jonah’s high school graduation, Grammy Moon’s aging body betrayed her in earnest. Within weeks, she went from using a walker to a wheelchair, until, near the end, she took her meals in bed. Hazel watched with panic as Grammy shed weight, losing muscle mass and strength. One evening, hoping that Grammy would be able to eat the soft, nourishing food, Hazel made a shepherd’s pie with ground beef, mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas. Her grandmother barely touched the plate. Before she drifted off, she looked up, her brown eyes shining bright, “Baby girl, I cried myself an ocean when I thought I’d never get to meet you. Hazel Moon, you were a gift dropped down from heaven, the best blessing God ever gave me.”

Hazel could only say, “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.” Hazel slept in a chair by the bed that night. The next morning when Hazel woke, she saw Grammy Moon, looking upward and smiling.

 “While you were sleeping, my heron visited me, up there in the skylight. She said she’d hatched three chicks. Three chicks! Life marches on, my dear Hazel.”

Hazel glanced up. No heron. Given the pitch of the roof, the heron would have had to have been a stellar acrobat to perch for even a second.

The next morning, when Hazel walked into her room with a tray of hot oatmeal sprinkled with blueberries and a heavy glug of real Vermont maple syrup, her grandmother had passed, her face tilted toward the skylight. Grammy Moon’s only granddaughter curled up at the foot of the old woman’s bed and wept hard.

***

            After six years, Hazel had finally gotten to where she didn’t wake up thinking about Grammy Moon. Although Hazel still missed her, the sharpness of that pain had eased into gratitude when a memory of Grammy came to mind.

That didn’t mean that life had settled out for Hazel. No such luck. Jonah managed to present her with challenges on a daily basis. She loved her son. At the same time, she felt acutely aware of his deficiencies and had been for a while.

When the going got rough, Jonah quit—left the cross-country team, dropped Spanish, even quit his caddying job at the golf course. Her boy lacked grit. Would it have made a difference if she’d forced him to do more chores? Probably not.

One fall evening, Hazel stood by her gas stove stirring a pot of stew she’d made for dinner. Jonah had just finished a two-year degree at the community college. As far as she could figure, he majored in Nothing. He claimed he had a degree in communication, but after two years of his occasionally going to class, she saw no improvement in that area.

            As she placed two chipped patriot plates on the table, Jonah burst in with a young girl in tow. “Mom, look who I just met at the car wash. This is Ariel.”

            At first glance, Hazel thought the small person was a child. But no, Ariel, with her strands of purple hair, eyebrow ring and heavy mascara, happened to be a grown woman who just hadn’t grown much.

            Hands in constant motion, Ariel breathlessly flung words into the air. “Pleasure to meet you, Miz Moon. Thanks for having me to dinner at the last minute. We should of called. I love your boy. He’s such a gentleman—helped me with the vacuum machine at the car wash. Got the vacuum head stuck under the back of the passenger seat—you know in those little metal bars that let the seat to go back and forth? Jonah got right under there …”

            At this point, Hazel interrupted, “Let me set another plate.”

            Ariel continued her word blizzard for the next hour. Although Hazel lost the thread several times, she gleaned that an aunt raised Ariel and when that aunt died, she started renting a room in the neighbor’s house downtown. She’d finished high school, barely. Selling burner phones to possible criminals made her want to become an officer of the law someday, maybe a detective.

For the next week, Jonah did not come home for dinner. On Sunday, Hazel asked Jonah’s intentions regarding Ariel. Her son replied, “He who hesitates is lost.”

Hazel wished that he’d said, “Look before you leap,” but he didn’t. One month after the two met, a justice of the peace married them in Hazel’s backyard. 

Apparently, Jonah and Ariel also did not believe in hesitating when it came to producing children; two sons, Ben and Wally, arrived within three years. During that time, Jonah never kept a job more than a few months; his defeatist attitude sabotaged him at every turn. Hazel could predict the outcome of each venture, but each loss blindsided Jonah. Afterward, her son would spend months languishing in tide pools of paralyzing melancholy.

Now, Jonah and Ariel had reached a breaking point. The night before, Jonah called her, wailing into his cellphone, “Ariel left me. Packed up the Hyundai. Said it was over. I’ve got a four o’clock appointment at unemployment. Can you pick up the kids at daycare?”

Today, on her way to the daycare, Hazel sat under a red light, listening to a country song on her car radio. One verse grabbed her:  Hope is the very last leaf on that twisted tree called love. The singer’s voice carried the grit of Johnny Cash and the smooth soulfulness of Elvis—a mournful tune that filled her heart with yearning, a yearning that life would stop throwing her curveballs.

Hazel imagined that Ariel got fed up with all the drama. She didn’t blame her. Regardless, she felt a mother should stay with her children. Just as her own father should have stayed with her. Tears pooled, then slipped down her cheeks. She didn’t have the energy to deal with this new disaster. No Kleenex in the car, so she blew her nose on the blue paper towels left over from washing her windshield at the Exxon. Maybe she no longer had the ability to be resilient, to bounce back. She wondered if one last leaf of hope still hung on her twisted tree of love.

Her thoughts turned to her grandkids, Ben and Wally, two urchins with haircuts that looked like they were rendered by a half-blind hairdresser swinging a scythe. Her son, Jonah, with Ariel in full agreement, always went for the cheapest option, whether it be re-tread tires, day-old bread or haircuts given by subpar trainees at the local beauty school.

Now, as she pulled up to a tiny rancher in Hog Waller, she shuddered. A huge, rusted oil tank sat in the front yard. Scratched into the rust were the words, “Lollypop Daycare.”

Dear Lord.

But she had to admit, at the end of the day, the boys rushed out the door, happy as could be. On this day, thrilled to see her, both tackled her legs, chanting, “Hazey, Hazey!” She felt like a rock star.

While fastening three-year-old Wally into a car seat and five-year-old Ben into a booster, she glanced at the two boys, curly brown hair, deep brown eyes, and olive skin. Their looks favored Grammy Moon so much, she wondered if Grammy’s DNA had overwhelmed Ariel’s in utero.

Hazel couldn’t count on there being any nourishing food back at Jonah’s apartment, so she headed to her home, the place she still thought of as Grammy Moon’s house. When they arrived, she phoned Jonah, told him she’d keep the kids, that he could take the evening to sort himself out.

Then she turned her attention to the boys. They smelled like dirt, maple syrup and wet cardboard. Hazel drew water for a bath, then tossed in plastic spoons and measuring cups for the boys to play with. She gave them a good scrub down, including scraping grime from under their fingernails, then dressed them in clean pajamas, from her collection of yard sale kids’ clothes that she always kept on hand. As she brushed Wally’s hair, she caught the fragrance of baby shampoo. The scent calmed her in a way she could not name. She felt a deep, albeit fleeting, sense of peace, despite all evidence to the contrary. She hugged the boys and sent them on their way to the kitchen.

She fed the kids sliced cucumbers, mac and cheese, leftover baked chicken, and warm brownies, with a dollop of ice cream on the top. Afterward, worn out and fighting the blues, Hazel sat in an overstuffed easy chair, watching the boys play with Jonah’s Legos. She’d deconstructed all the sets and stored them in one big tub. Ben created a scene including a cowboy, knight, dragon, and two astronauts. Wally loaded a tiny brown table with bits of plastic food to feed them all.

Hazel sighed, a deep shuddering sigh. She wondered how these boys would do without a mother, even a mother as flakey as Ariel, who routinely forgot to pick them up from school, fed them junk food, and often neglected to get them to bed at a reasonable hour. That thought reminded Hazel that a reasonable hour for bedtime had arrived. “Okay, one book, then off to bed.”

Hazel picked Noah’s Ark, by Pieter Spier, a book from Jonah’s childhood. The children loved to name the animals. Of course, naming the animals, also included calling out the animal sounds.

Hazel: “What did the lions say?”

Ben and Wally: “ROAR!”

Hazel: “What did the monkeys say?”

Ben and Wally: “Ooo, eee, ooo, ah, ah!”

Hazel: “What did the giraffes say?”

Pregnant pause.

Then lots of giggling.

Ben and Wally: “The giraffes said NOTHING!”

The lovely images of Noah on the ark feeding the animals settled the boys, neither of whom seemed overly concerned about the terrible flood that loomed ahead. As the three of them gazed at the last page, a gorgeous image of Noah planting a vineyard under a sky-spanning rainbow, Ben nuzzled against her shoulder, and said, “My Hazey.” Within seconds, Wally snuggled up on the other side and said, “No, my Hazey,” both smiling and laughing.

After tucking in the boys on the new set of twin beds in her childhood room, she placed sofa cushions on the floor to give the boys a soft landing should they roll out. She sighed, kissed each boy on the forehead and whispered, “Blessings around, blessings abound,” then slipped out to the kitchen.

Hazel microwaved a large brownie. After making sure it had reached optimum gooey-ness, she added a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. She headed to the back deck, where she settled into her cushioned rocker. In the distance, beyond the treetops, she could see five power lines stretching across the horizon.

As Hazel gently rocked, the low murmur of frogs provided a bluesy back-up to a pair of hoot owls, crooning their admiration for one another. She looked upward, hoping to get a glimpse of the birds, but instead spotted a fat, yellow moon positioned like a whole note on the music staff of the five power lines. With an old silver tablespoon, one that had belonged to her great-great-grandmother, she dug into ice cream-laden brownie. In her first spoonful, she found an extra-large chunk of goopy fudge. She let the ice cream melt away in her mouth but left that chocolate on her tongue to savor for a while.

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