Love Is As Love Does

This is the world of Grandma Minnie, the Brooklyn of my youth so full of unknown wonders and windows as far as I could see, out of which countless heads would lean and call for children I didn’t really know. But the open windows everywhere made me feel we were all connected, made me feel that each living room washed into the next. I would sit on the cement stoop and watch one drama waft into the street and mix with another two brick houses down and on up to the roof where pigeons would be pecking at something unseen. I loved that stoop. Grandma would always come out to sit with me. Just when I would be drifting away into all the unknown life, just as I felt the street turn to a clear stream that started in some other country, just as I was squinting to see where it would lead, Grandma would appear in her apron, her big warm forearms, hot from baking. She would sit beside me, drape me in those arms, and smile a smile that seemed to know what I was doing. How I loved those mornings. And how I loved Grandma…