MY GRANDMOTHER TOLD ME fragmented mythologies in lieu of bedtime stories.
After Halloween, she described Theseus’ Minotaur with the same tender words she used to describe her old, speckled mare. Subsequently, the monster’s burning eyes took on cataracts, its shaggy body became mottled brown, and its glossy mane was obviously brushed daily. In my version of the myth, the Minotaur limped through its maze.
My grandparents dwelled in the Albertan countryside on a spacious acreage. I remember my grandfather shaving the lawn of their property and snoring on the couch against the white noise of the Masters Tournament on TV. I don’t believe he ever stepped foot in the stable.
“Horses need horseshoes, because humans need roads,” my Grandmother told me, months or years later. I sat on an upturned bucket in the stable, while she stroked a thick brush through Aria’s mane. “Asphalt streets and compact dirt roads unnaturally wear down the hoof. But old Aria, she’s earned her rest. She deserves to put her feet up.”
My Grandmother filled my head with other stories too—I learned Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis and Bible stories by the bucketful.
Meanwhile, my Grandmother filled her house—I always thought of it as her house, though my grandparents never divorced—with succulence. Borscht bubbled on the stove, ham and cherries simmered in the oven, sugar cookies cooled on the counter. She made half of her masterpieces in the kitchen. I devoured them all—except for the cabbage soup.
The other half of her masterpieces lay drying in the living room. Still-life paintings leaned against the fireplace, lay stacked atop the coffee table, and sat propped against the sofa. The smell of oil-based paint overwhelmed the food smells from the next room.
And god was omnipresent. An antique Bible took pride of place on the mantelpiece. A crucifix hung on every wall. And even as she cooked and painted, she filled the air with Sunday morning’s hymns. My Grandmother insisted that Jesus suited the everyday the same way cabbage paired perfectly with every meal.
But most of all, my Grandmother filled her home with owls. My Grandmother was a fervent traveller and she commemorated each new, exotic locale she graced by buying souvenirs—souvenirs that always featured owls.
Brazil yielded a set of four mugs, each carved from fragrant rosewood into the likenesses of burrowing owls. A needlepoint tapestry featuring two Australian barking owls hung on her living room wall. A stuffed eagle-owl from India was even shoehorned onto the dinner table as a disconcerting centrepiece. Its eyes judged me whenever I let the borscht cool and coagulate, untouched.
Even the bathroom, bedecked in Target’s Awesome Owls Bath Collection, wasn’t immune to her obsession. And, while most of the house featured an uninspired wallpaper of blue vines and leaves creeping up the wall, the “kids’ room,” where I slept, featured a white wallpaper polka dotted with different owls and their common names.
I remember lying in bed, studying those birds, while the morning light seeped through my window blinds. I listened to my Grandmother down the hall, as she completed her morning ritual of smoothing out her wrinkles and moisturizing her drying flesh. She fought Father Time with everything at her disposal.
Around the house, my Grandmother wore colourful sundresses and jewelry. Nine rings emblazoned with birthstones sparkled on her fingers, and her earlobes sagged beneath the weight of silver earrings. In the garden or the stable, she dressed more practically, with overalls and triple-padded gloves.
At that time, she almost looked like a young woman. Her cheeks were flushed with rouge. Her hair, bleached blonde, glowed golden in the sunlight. Her nails, one-inch long and immaculate, gleamed cucumber green or tomato red. The bright colours worked to distract me from the folds of her neck and the wrinkles that lined her mouth.
But I also remember tears tracing those lines, one clean furrow down each cheek. Tears that dripped down her neck and onto the silver crucifix at her throat, just catching the hallway light, despite the darkness of my room.
She’d been humming that day, when she walked out into the field with a rifle on her shoulder. She didn’t know that I could see her from my bedroom window on the second-storey or that I watched her lift the barrel to old Aria’s head.
And so I had the ending to my myth. Enter Theseus: not a brute, but a sympathizer. He holds the Minotaur’s muzzle in one hand, his sword in the other. He whispers soft comforts in the monster’s ear. A tear slips down his cheek. Then Theseus sheathes his sword between the Minotaur’s eyes.
A little older, I asked my Grandmother if my myth was true. “I suppose it might be,” she said, her voice breaking. “Now isn’t that sad?”