December 3rd, 1995
Last night Pop Pop gave me his philosophy of life.
“God is love. Nothing else matters.”
I’m not sure how I feel about God, but I appreciated the message anyway. Not that it hasn’t been said before, only never from him to me. My deepest conversations with my grandfather can come down to two all-too-brief exchanges as we sat in the car at the South Amboy railway station waiting for the train to take me back to New York after two dentist appointments to take care of my fucked up front teeth. Pure vanity, my motivation. I was brought to melodramatic tears thinking about how he told me, “Don’t ever change, Megan Beth. Don’t ever change…”
I grudgingly got out of the car, but not before he told me that the years fly by after 18, how he could’ve been a rich businessman but put his family first instead…all these things I’ve never heard him say before because Mom Mom dominates every conversation. (Bless her, really. I’ll be just like her someday–if I’m not already.)
Mom Mom insisted on making me a grilled cheese sandwich, three fatty slices thick and browned by more butter than I have used in the past six months combined. She cut me a hunk of apple walnut cake and I washed it down with a leftover Coors light from their fridge. My most unnutritional meal in recent memory but I ate every last bite.
What else for a princess to do?
