The Bohemian Love Diaries by Slash Coleman

Author:Slash Coleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2013-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

When summer rolls around, my grandmother has kicked the drugs and is living with us again. I take her to her weekly Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Every time we get in the car, she says the same thing. “But I only took zee medications dat zee doctor gaves me.” She always defends herself.

I always try to change the subject by making her laugh. “For my birthday, we should take a bath together in our bathing suits. What do you think, Grandma?”

I sit in the hallway during the meetings and then afterward I drive us to Morrison’s Cafeteria with her new friends: an ex-­con, an ex-­crackhead, and an ex-­priest. It’s like the setup for a dirty joke, except it’s not. They tell their war stories; everyone laughs and eats. Each one of them seems to feel good about having left the trenches.

My grandma’s new friends understand her.

Soon after, she moves into her own apartment. She asks my father to get her painting supplies out of storage, and she paints for the first time since the war. My father builds her an easel, a drafting table, and a cabinet for her supplies. She specializes in rowboats and houses, beautiful crooked little things set in a colorful and expansive ocean or a stark field, yet full of restitution and love. She loves the watercolor paper, the brushes, and the paints like she once loved my grandfather: passionately, overwhelmingly, and without apology.

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