Grandma Bruni

(From Born Round)

Grandma with me at my Columbia graduation. She's not standing in a hole. She was simply that short.

Some cooks recall landscape artists at their easels, pausing to ruminate as they apply dabs of paint to a brilliant canvas. Grandma recalled a mechanic under the hood of a car, clanging and huffing and covered in gunk. Cooking was steamy, sweaty drudgery for which she didn’t just roll up her sleeves. She wore something ratty and sleeveless --- the less obstructions to movement, the better --- along with comfortable slippers or flip-flops, even though she preferred heels in other circumstances, because she stood just 4-feet, 10-inches tall, not counting her hair, which got her up all the way up to 5 feet, 2 inches if she’d just come from the beauty parlor.