Published in Edition Three (2024) as part of the On Walks column

Grandma always wore shoes that weren’t fit for walking.

The ones with a little heel that would get stuck in the mushy soil of the forest. The purple ones that would be dirty from the muddy road. The same ones that would squeeze the calluses on her feet.

She put on hats that never fully covered her ears. Dusty-pink berets. Ones that looked like kitchen pots. As a kid, I would open the kitchen drawer and put the metal hats on my head, parade around - like Grandma and Mum, putting on their high heels that would snugly fit my feet and leave space for childlike confidence.

Click, clack, click, clack.

Sometimes she wore gloves. Not the big, ugly ones I wore for skiing, but the leather ones. They made her hands look sleek, elegant. There would be traces of lipstick seeping into wrinkled crevices around her lips, and we would only be going to the forest. 

We walked the most in winter, as grandma spent the warmer days in her summer house, warming up her bones. In the cold months, as the world hibernated, she made strong coffees in the morning, plujka, and watched the news and bad Turkish melodramas.

The TV schedule made her day. There was the time before an episode and the time after. The time of her show - sacred. We usually left after three, and that way we always made it back before five, when it started.

I would hold the leash when we walked, the dog in front of us - its tail flapping left and right like an antenna. From our house to the forest, it was a straight road, only about a 7-minute walk. As we got deeper and deeper into the forest, more snow would settle on our shoulders.

When the winter was cold, snow would form little mountains that wouldn’t crumble. For in the forest, some things were still.

When the winter was warmer than it should be, it was small puddles. Snowflakes would break the glass-like surface of the water. 

Grandma always knew where to go. She was smaller than me, yet her presence among

the trees was big. Her steps seemed to leave marks on the snow larger than mine, and if I closed my eyes, I could follow her trail simply by listening. 

While the snow cracked under our feet, she would start talking. She’d always start by asking about me, but I knew she just wanted to talk about herself. Not in a selfish way, but in a, “I just want you to listen to me” way. In a, “would you care to know about me?” way.

So, tell me about school.

That’s how the talks would start. Already then, I knew the story she would build from the question. We would turn right at that moment, soon seeing the place where we built a hut from sticks back when I was in scouts.

Grandma left home when she was 16 to move to Warsaw. Back then, it was normal to stay with your extended family, so she stayed with her aunt. That would be called stancja, she would mention. 

She would stop the conversation to look for our dog - technically mine, but much more hers -  and shout its name into the white coat over the forest, and when we would see the brown outline of her, she would resume talking. 

She would describe her room to me. Small, with a few personal details. A bed, a closet, a few trinkets, but nothing more that wouldn’t fit in a bag she brought with her.

But I didn’t spend much time in it. 

She worked -  standing for long hours, cutting people’s hair. Surrounded by the smell of hairspray. One, that now reminded me of childhood. In all my bathrooms I would put just a bit too much - hair clumped up, yet the air heavy with hairspray sat on my body in a familiar way, like a shell. She put colorful curlers in women’s hair and closed the lid of the machine that had always fascinated me as a kid. Strong, unbreakable helmets from hair. One for this lady and one for the other.

You moved there when you were just 16? - I would ask, despite hearing the

story millions of times, I still wanted to hear it again. More for her than for my sake. She nodded, and when I asked her about meeting Grandpa, she would smile in a way kindergarteners would when asked about who they like.

She would tell me that they met at a dance held in her hometown. Then, naturally, they married, built their house, and made sure to leave enough space for a hair salon.

When she mentioned Grandpa, the snowflakes would fall down harder and hit the ground with a sound. A thud. A thousand little bombs. We would walk in silence again. I was scared to say anything, and I felt that it was unfair.

To say something would be to bring back memories. Mum’s legs breaking in pieces from crying during the funeral.

Crack, crack. Crack, crack.

Eating kebabs - all eleven of us - after they took him somewhere to dress him up and bury him in all his nice clothes. But to not say something would undermine the pain.

Is it okay to die if you’re 70? 

So spagjetki for dinner? - she would close the silence and bury Grandpa once again, this time under the snow.

Yes - I would smile. 

After all the years of teaching Grandma how you say spaghetti, she would still say it in her own, wrong way. She would also say nugetsi, and had this weird way of referring to a group of girls as boys (which cannot be translated to English, but in Polish it stings your ears) 

But it was Grandma. 

We would look for the brown shape of the dog again, and finish our full circle in the forest by walking down a little raft over a frozen brook. The snow would carry our steps, the conversations, the things unsaid, but soon it would snow again.

And soon we would walk again.