I look at my grandmother
Long and hard
And I see things I never saw in another
With each glance I break through that popular façade

She is not a woman who narrates false fables and fairy tales
She tells stories of how she survived life
She talks of wars she won, in all its details
Not of struggles of great heroes, but struggles of a lonely wife

When she regrets how she wasn’t allowed to work, allowed to think
She regrets a lifetime of a better life someone else made her miss
When she talks of the school friends she left behind, she mourns her lost link
The link to her childhood, her place of bliss

When she talks of the love letters she would get
She talks of choices she never considered
When she reminisces about great people she never met
She thinks of how she had wanted to be one of them, how her life had altered

When she is proud of her children
She is proud of the fights she won
She is proud of the odds she had beaten
Because they had to go to the best schools, her daughter and son

When she cooks for everyone, family and friends
She feeds not their hunger but hers
To the world her creativity she lends
For that’s the only way she can share, the only way she conquers

When she talks of places she wants to see, fantasies she frequents
She talks of dreams that remained dreams
When she sees her children become parents
The world just can’t surprise her enough it seems

When she refuses to share food with her husband
She refuses to give up any more for him
All those nights she waited, all those mistakes she pardoned
Her love was never lost, but her memories of those days never dim

When she confidently says that she will be on her feet in her last years
Casually on the dinner table she talks of her last wish
She was the best athlete in school, one of her childhood careers
And now she awaits her death active and fit , never god forbid sluggish

And so under layers of my grandmother
I see a woman like any other
She lived, she loved, she lost she mourned
She learned what life is, and now she craves freedom she earned