By Samantha Woods
@samwritespoetry

I’m sitting in the basement of a house I know very well, but that somehow still feels foreign. I spent so much time here growing up, but not much since she died. And now, it feels different. Off. It’s messier. She’d be pissed. It smells wrong, like someone swapped out the air. I recognize everything, but everything has been pressed through a filter I didn’t choose. Like the house misses her too.

When I find it, I’m alone, thank god. I take a picture of a picture almost immediately and send it to my sister, with some emoji meant to express astonishment and embarrassment. Then I just stare at it.

My grandmother was a beautiful woman. Was always a beautiful woman, I think, even at the end. But when she was young…well, she was a real stunner. I’m not sure if it’s because so many of the photos from her youth are in black and white—and those always feel kind of glamorous to me—but she looked like a movie star in an old Hollywood film. (Actually, I’m not sure why there were so many black and white photos. She wasn’t that old.) She always had this half-smirk on her face, like she had a secret tucked behind her teeth.

I love photographs, especially old ones. As a kid, I loved going through the family albums. I remember having friends over for playdates and pulling out photo books like they were something other kids would want to see. Our history. I don’t think anyone cared, but I don’t really remember their reactions either. I was happy to look, regardless. So I’m not sure why it took me so long to get to the boxes in the basement. Nan had died years ago by that point.

Thinking about it now, I guess I didn’t know they existed. After she died, there was a blur of movement before memory settled again, and once it did, there was just so much to do. Papa was still in the house, and no one wanted to overstep by going through her things. Death is a strange, delicate thing for the living. It took a while before we got around to cleaning her things.

Mostly the family did it in small teams. (Truth be told, the job still isn’t done, even all these years later.) But I preferred to be alone. It’s strange, going through her things. I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s…sort of exciting. I miss her, and I cry, but it also feels like I get to meet her again. I’ve gotten to meet all the different versions of her through photographs and little notes she left behind.

And on this day, I guess I met a much younger, sexier, nakeder version of my grandmother than I’d ever known. It was in a stack of mostly Polaroids, and there were some incredible shots in there. She and her sister in bikinis, climbing some kind of scaffolding I can’t place. An old car with a picnic set up in front of it, and my nana with a man I didn’t recognize, sitting on the blanket. My grandmother, as young and as beautiful as I’ve ever seen her, kissing a man at a time, and place (and with a father), who probably wouldn’t have looked kindly on it. And then: my grandmother, topless, on a couch. It’s clear she wasn’t my grandmother in the photo, not yet, but probably already a mother. She’s looking straight at the camera, still with that same half-moon secret in her mouth.

I had this habit, then, of slipping photographs into my pocket while I cleaned. I don’t know why. I’m sure my family would have scanned them all and given me access. But there were a few I just…stole? That’s probably not the right word, but I kept them. They don’t all make sense. One is a slightly ajar barn door with sunlight peeking from behind it. One is my grandmother on her wedding day. One is my sister as a teenager, on my grandmother’s back, both of them smirking that same knowing smirk at the camera. And this one: a nude Polaroid of my grandmother, taken for a man I’ll never know, long before I even existed.

I’ve given back, or made copies of, most of those pictures by now. I even left one nudie for Papa to find, if he cares. (Ew. I just puked in my mouth a bit.) But I kept one tucked away. For my sister and me.

Maybe I wasn’t supposed to see her like that. Topless. Grinning. Young. But I’m glad I did. Grief does strange things. It makes you a thief, a curator, a kid again. I keep the photo like a secret in my own mouth. I don’t know why. I just want to remember she lived. Really lived. Before she was mine. Before she was anyone’s. I just want the opportunity to keep getting to know her.

I want to know everything about her. Every ugly scar, every lover she kept, every drunken fight, her life before Canada. I know I never will. Some of her stories died with her, and some were never meant to be told out loud. But I also know I’ll keep looking anyway. It’s like some part of me believes it might unlock something in my own brain.

She wasn’t perfect. She drank. She could be cruel, especially to my dad. But she was also beautiful. So funny. She cooked for all my friends without ever being asked. Let me stay out too late. Took me shopping for things I didn’t need. Maybe she spent too much money. Maybe she loved and drank too much. But I want to know why.

I loved her. Fiercely. I still do. And I keep turning her life over like I’m looking for the thread that connects us. Like if I find the right piece, I’ll understand something about myself too.

Oh, and P.S., I’ve never told my dad. He doesn’t need to know all this. (In case he ever reads this: I’m Sorry, Dad. And on the topic of apologies, sorry Nana- whenever you are. I hope you’re proud. And maybe a little scandalized.)

Sam Woods is a Toronto-based writer, a daughter, and a granddaughter who’s still learning from the ghosts of the women who came before her. She believes grief makes you a historian, a thief, and occasionally, a little weird.

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