David Crabb (3:38)
When I was 15 years old, my guidance counselor accidentally outed me to my father. And it was a shock to my father. I don't know how I drew Wonder Woman so much when I was little. I listened to Xanadu so many times in a row, but it was a shock. And at that point, I was a goth kid. I was liter sitting there with like black fingernails and a dog collar, like, yeah, I'm gay. And my dad, he seemed to accept it, but then he didn't. I don't know if any of you have come out, have had this. And I had to come out to him, like again and again. It was like gay Groundhog Day, which is this endless loop. Like for two years, still gay, dad not changing. Now, over the years, I told my whole family, they all know that I'm gay. But there's one person that I haven't come out to, and it's my grandmother, Saucy. Saucy's real name is Selma, but my little gay mouth morphed it into Saucy and it caught on. Everyone calls her Saucy now, and it's really fitting. She is a little tiny woman with bright snow white hair. She has these crystal blue eyes. She wears a bunch of really sort of like floral, tropical, colorful shirts, those polyester slacks that you know when she walks. And then like really comfortable, like rubber soled, like nurse's shoes, like with a thick rubber. Like you'll never get electrocuted in these fucking shoes. There's a thing about Saucy is that she's. Her mind's in a lot of places. You know, like if you go into her kitchen, she's got her advice columns like her Dear Abby that she cuts out. Cause she arranges those on the fridge. Then she has her other station. It's her stack of Globe magazines and examiners. About, like, Bat boy and stuff like that. She loves those. And then at the end of her table, she's from San Antonio, Texas, and she has a pecan tree. So then she has her shucking station where she just sort of shucks pecans all day. And then she's always baking a shitload of pumpkin breads. She bakes them in these huge batches, these tiny breads that she wraps. And then she has a freezer in the garage dedicated just to the freezing and archiving of these pumpkin breads. She defrosts them and gives them to people all the time, and they're delicious, but you never know. Like, Is this from 1993? Who can fucking say? It tastes delicious. So her mind is in a lot of places. I always remember there was one Christmas where she was wandering around the kitchen. She was making coffee and trying to keep people entertained and refreshing crackers and cheese. And pecans. And pecans. And pecans. And she walked to the table with this coffee and this big container of sugar, meaning to lay them down. But instead, as she blathered onto us about something in the Globe magazine, she poured the entire carafe of coffee into the sugar. And at that point, my aunt leaned over and she said, I love your grandmother, but she is like a fart in a hot skillet. Which I don't know what it means, but if you met Saucy, you'd be like, yeah, that's right. Just kind of like. I don't know. It's like that. And I've always felt this really strong connection with my grandmother. When my dad and my grandfather would go hunting, I would stare over at her house. She would let me watch the Golden Girls, and then we would watch, like, a buttload of Quincy. She loved Quincy's back to back. And then she would have her friend Polly come over. They would play Boggle, and she would get hammered on spiced rum and Frescas, and it was just a fun time. In spite of this feeling of connection with my grandmother, though, there's this thing about her in that she is. She's like, Texas racist in that sweet, charming way. There are people in my family who are generally. They're bigoted. For real. Bigoted. Saucy isn't saucy. I always remember, like, she says things like, I just went to Payless shoes, and the nicest chocolate woman helped me. Which is like. Sounds like you like her, but. And then, like, four years ago, she got these new neighbors, and she said, oh, David, the nicest people moved in across the street. They're Mexican, they can't help it. So. So this one trait of hers always had me sort of a little bit concerned about coming out to her. Now a few months ago, I went home to visit and my dad and I took her to Jim's, her favorite diner, where she knows all the cooks in the kitchen. And they're Mexicans who work hard. She loves those hard working Mexicans so much, she brings them just a whole bag of frozen pumpkin breads. And she gave the pumpkin breads to all the people and she sat down and she started telling this story. She tells this story over and over again about baby. That's this little deer that her mother found when she walked outside to use the bathroom. Which always reminds me how old she is. She's going to be 90. That that was just normal, you know, when mama went out in the front yard to use the bathroom. Sure. And she tripped on this little baby deer and they raised the deer and on the front porch and da, da, da. And she goes on and on. And whenever she starts telling this story, it's one of my like, go to my iPhone stories. Like when under the table, I'm like, what are people Instagramming from New York? Oh yeah, the deer. And I don't pay attention. And after this loop of telling the story over and over again, we're leaving the restaurant and she says, so, David, where are you living now? And I'm like, I live in New York. I've lived in New York since 1999 and it concerns me, but I just kind of let it go. Over the next few months, she started to get really ill and forgetful. They decided to put her in an assisted living community. And when she was there, she fell off the bed one night. She broke her back. She had to get a series of surgeries and then they put her in a full care facility. And when she got there, they said she had Alzheimer's and was deteriorating very quickly. So my dad is telling me all of this long distance and I keep telling myself that I'm prepared to visit her. I've seen away from her the horrible, terrifying Julie Christine movie that makes me sob every time. I was like, I understand Alzheimer's, I'm gonna be fine. So a couple months ago I visit Texas and my dad says, we're gonna go to the nursing home. And we drive out to Hondo, Texas, this little town. And we get there and the first thing you see is a gate. And outside of the gate there is like a silver number pad, like from an 80s payphone written on it. 0429. Like the password to get in. And even from the inside, you would be able to look through the bars and just reach and push the buttons. And I'm like, if this is the thing that keeps the people that live here inside, we're about to really deal with some special people. Do you know what I'm saying? We walk inside and my dad immediately says, I have to go to the bathroom. If you just walk, it's a U shaped hallway and follow it around. Now, I don't know if the people that designed these places designed them intentionally to be like increasingly harrowing, like halls of horrors, but it was like that. Because when I walked in, the first people I saw were the charming older women with walkers and chili pepper earrings saying, it's a beautiful morning. You know, like those women, they're all there, just happy to be alive. And then a little bit further and there's a guy in a wheelchair smiling. He has an eyepatch. I think he winks at me. It's hard to tell. I get the feeling he is. And then a little bit further, there's some people in wheelchairs, but they're not really activated. They're sort of in park, just parked against the wall. And then you hit the people that are just in gowns, sort of pacing around. And at the end of this hallway, I see Saucy. But then when I get closer to her, I realize it's not sassy because this woman has sort of yellowed hair, she's wearing this tan shirt, and she's actually in a wheelchair. And as I get close, she looks up at me and she has these twinkling blue eyes, and she just grabs from my shirt and she pulls it and she says, please get me out of here, David. I've been here since yesterday. And she'd been there for a few months at that point. And then she tells me that she needs to get home to papa, who is my grandfather, who died in 1997. So at this point, there is a Grand Prix exercise wheelchair team that literally like tears around in their wheelchairs racing, and they need Bye. And I am struggling to A, not cry, and B, figure out how to get a wheelchair out of park. And I finally get out of park and I take Saucy into her room and she starts just crying, saying, please get me out of here, please get me out of here. I need to get out of here. And right at that moment, my dad comes in and I say, dad, I have to go to the bathroom, which is code For I need to go out in the front yard and cry for just a little while alone. I tear through the hall of horrors in reverse. And I get out into the front yard of this old age home and I like ugly cry, like Julianne Moore cry, like really mucus y, like pinch face, like full on sob. And I take out my phone and I call my fiance and I want to tell him something, but I just say, in a wheelchair, and there's words in there somewhere, maybe. And he lets me cry it out and he says, david, calm down. Just go inside, be with Sasi. You're going to be fine. So I hang up the phone and I walk back through. And the minute I walk into Sasi's room, my dad sees me and says, I need to use the bathroom, which I think is code. I want to be like, just go cry in the front yard. It'll make you feel a little bit better. And he leaves. And as I'm with Sassy, she's still muttering and she's grinding this comb against her leg in her wheelchair. And you know, people talk about being in car accidents and how there's that moment of pure terror where it's like a whiteout and everything's like really calm and serene and slow motion. And I think I had that emotionally because all of a sudden I had this thought, this is the perfect time to come out to Saucy. Now hear me out. There's two options, all right? One, saucy, I'm gay. The rest of the family knows, and I think that it's time that I tell you. And she says, you are a sinner, and I can't believe you would do that. And you need to go to church and repent and get out of my room. At which point I get out of her room and then I come back in five minutes later and she says, david, it's so good to see you, honey. Just dry erase it away. And then option two, Saucy, I think you should know I'm gay. The rest of my family knows. My dad knows. My friend from New York, who you like so much, is actually my fiance. And we're getting married next year. And she says, oh, sweetie, I love you so much. I'm so happy for you. Give me a hug. At which point I realize that I get to give her that experience again and again and again. It's like the best gay Groundhog Day a woman could ever ask for, you know? So I turn and I look at her and I approach the bed and I sit down beside her, and I'm going to tell her. And for just a moment, it's silent. There's a man across the hall that stopped moaning. There's no sort of heartbeat emergency machine going off anywhere. It's just silent. And I look at her and she's really grinding this comb into her leg. And as I go to speak, I realize that she's muttering. She's been saying something really quietly this whole time. And it occurs to me that at this point, Sasi is really not a vessel waiting to be filled with more information. Do you know what I mean? Like, she does not need anything else. She is not a sounding. She needs to say something. So I take the comb and I put it down and I take her hand and I say, saucy, tell me about baby. And she says, oh, baby. One morning when I was six, my mama went out in the front yard and she tripped over a rock. But then she looked back and it wasn't a rock at all. It was a little baby deer. And you know those little baby animals, once humans touch them, their parents reject them. So we knew we had to take this little baby in. So we raised this little deer on our porch. And she got bigger and bigger. She was just like a little dog. I remember curling up with her in the summertime. And then when she got really, really big, she could put her head through the kitchen window and I would feed her scraps when my mama wasn't looking. Oh, it would make my mama so mad. I love that, dear. And in that moment, listening to her tell that story, I thought about all the times I used it as an excuse to check my phone. And I felt really bad, because in that moment, I think I could have heard her tell that story again and again in a loop, forever and ever. Thank you.
