21 Letters – #2 For Grandmother
Sunday After Sunday, the Letter
I grew up
under the watchful gaze
of saints and sorrowful mothers.
The Church wasn’t a place we visited,
it was the air we breathed.
It ruled our calendars,
our clothing,
our speech.
Every room in our home
held a crucifix,
a statue of Mary,
a candle that had burned too low
but still clung to its flame.
The Virgin was the blueprint,
and we,
girls,
were to follow -
pure, quiet, enduring.
Faith was not a feeling,
but a law.
We didn’t ask why.
We didn’t speak during Mass.
We fasted. We knelt.
We confessed sins
we were too young to understand,
our small hands trembling
in velvet-lined confessionals,
whispering guilt into shadows.
Our bodies were covered,
our doubts, more so.
There was no space
between God
and shame.
And you,
you were the high priestess of it all.
Strict in voice,
sharp in judgment,
your rosary beads clicking like warnings,
every prayer a lesson.
You kept a house of rules,
of folded hands and straight backs,
where girls were watched more closely
than the boys ever were.
You had no patience
for questions,
no tolerance
for softness.
There was a right way
and a wrong way,
and I was always
half a breath away
from the wrong,
my exhale often putting me over the edge.
At times,
I thought you loved God
more than you loved us.
I thought fear
was your native tongue.
Maybe you did. Maybe it was.
But now, I see
what fear cost you.
You, the rebel
I never recognized,
who left your village
before your wedding veil was even sewn,
who followed a man
across the sea
with no certainty but your hunger
to live differently.
You were a girl once, too,
and the weight of that
startles me now.
In a world that gave you
so few choices,
you made one:
to survive,
to start again
on foreign soil
with no map
and no soft landings.
You were alone here
long before we came.
Your English
was broken,
but your work ethic
was fluent.
You labored,
scrubbed,
prayed.
And you raised us
with what you had -
rules and rosaries,
sacrifice and silence.
You gave us the only kind of love
you knew would protect us:
discipline.
Now, I watch you,
older, smaller,
your hands shaking
as you light another candle
for someone you love.
I see the fear still tucked
beneath your skin,
but I see the love too,
quiet, desperate, enduring.
You didn’t know how
to show it gently,
so you showed it in survival.
I carry that now,
alongside the ache.
Your voice still lives
in the corners of my thoughts,
but so does your courage.
You taught me to kneel,
but more than that,
you taught me
to get up again.
With more understanding now,
I see the fullness of you -
a woman who carried so much,
who loved through the rules
and the silence,
who lived a life of survival
and sacrifice,
who, even in her toughest love,
never let us go.
Thank you,
Vovó.
For the strength you built,
the lessons you taught,
the love you gave in the only ways you knew how.
You gave us everything,
even when it was hard to see it,
and now,
I understand.