My Nana

My Nana will always be the funniest, sweetest, and strongest grandma I know. If you look at her, you may only catch a glimpse of what kind of person she is. Though her wardrobe isn’t out of the ordinary as far as grandmothers go, her personality sure is. Nana never has gray hair. She is always dying it a different color. Her motto for why she doesn’t want gray hair? “I may be old, but that don’t mean I have to be gray”. She always has on a nice top, capris, and sandals or tennis shoes. If you look closely, however, you’ll usually notice that she either has on two different shoes, or that she has her shirt inside out. When we point these things out to her, instead of being embarrassed, she cracks up like it was a joke that she already knew about.
Nana is very care-free. She just goes with the flow and doesn’t really care when plans get mixed up. Nana is most known in Evansville for her Tweety Bird car. It’s a little yellow Tracker, and everything inside is Tweety Bird. The tire cover is Tweety Bird saying “I go where I’m towed”. Everyone she meets finds it hilarious, and that’s usually how people know her. Anytime she sees someone she knows, she honks the horn really loud, laughs, and waves. I always get embarrassed, but I know it’s funny at the same time. We always get a kick out of Nana. Just the little things she says and the jokes she makes are funny just because she says them.
She loves music. She sings in the church choir and loves it. She mostly loves Christian music, and old school stuff, especially Elvis. Anytime a song of his comes on that she likes she yells “Oh, sing it Elvis!” This is true of any song she likes. It happens at least five times a day, and it never gets old because after she says that, she sings along to the song. It’s probably one of the better parts of the day.
Nana is one of the strongest people I know, mentally and physically. The first time I found out how mentally strong she is was when I was in 8th grade. My Poppy had suffered a stroke, and he was alive on life-support, but brain-dead. The doctors told us that if they kept him alive, he would be a vegetable the rest of his life. Nana had to be the one to decide what to do. She decided that he wouldn’t have wanted to live as a vegetable, so she decided to let him go peacefully. For me, I had no idea how she did that. We all knew how incredibly sad and heart-broken she was, but she was able to stay strong around all of us to make it seem like she was okay. Even to this day, when things about Poppy are brought up, you can see the sadness in her eyes, but she always puts a smile on her face before we are able to ask how she is.
And, of course, Nana is strong physically. She is very fit for her age. It hurts when she gives us a loving pat on the back. I used to think it was just me that thought so, until my friend Amy received one of these pats and told me later how bad it hurt. When we would tell Nana she was hurting us, she would just laugh, tell us we were funny, and pat us again. She is seventy years old, but she is always still out in her garden. One of the best memories I have of Nana to show how strong she is would be her trip home from Florida. It was the year after my Poppy died, and they usually drove to and from Florida together in their motor home. Nana decided to make the trip by herself. The day before she came back, she hurt her right leg pretty bad. She wrapped it up and decided to wait to get back to see a doctor. We warned her to not drive the motor home and that we would be down there to get her in a couple days. The next day, we see the motor home pull up to our house. It was Nana. She limped out of the car. She had wrapped up her right leg and driven the whole way home with just the left leg. My mother was furious, of course, but you’ve got to love Nana’s strength.
Needless to say, my Nana is a hoot. I know that she’s there for me no matter what situation, and that’s what I love most about her. She is the best grandmother a girl could ask for.