Sentences with phrase «grandma em»

She doesn't tell me all the details of how she came to be mothering 10 children at 88, only that when their parents died or found themselves crippled with disease, Grandma Em found herself holding another child, another swaddled babe.

Grandma Em slaps my knee hard, like my own grandmother always did, like she can jar me awake, and then the words she says next are like a bolt from the other side:

Outside of her house with so many children laughing like light and playing with hope, Grandma Em and I know exactly what to do: we hold on to each other, enfold and encircle each other, and we keep turning to see each other.

Grandma Em doesn't tell me about the birth of her own 7 children — only that she has buried 3 of them and 4 remain.

Grandma Em sits tall in front of me, her eyes reading mine, mine reading hers.

When I dance under that rising sky with Grandma Em and her brood of 10, words come and those words feel like a revolution:

And then Grandma Em says, «I'd rather have them here...» She pats her chest, there over her own defiant heartbeat.

Grandma Em's an 88 year - old woman who had 10 children living under her roof, 10 children around her table looking for food for empty tummies, 10 children looking for a pillow and place to sleep, 10 children needing shoes and clothes and school fees and books, all under Grandma Em's care alone.

I lean in and ask Grandma Em, «What gives you the courage with each of these children — to say yes?

Grandma Em was a refugee for 50 years, driven out of the country of her birth by bloody machetes hungry for her people.

«I never could have words that would stop a child running toward me,» Grandma Em takes her hand and holds it to her heart.

Grandma Em is looking at her clutch of little ones.

«There are definitely days I have completely nothing,» Grandma Em nods towards the door «and on those days, I cook greens from the garden.