"Jerry, grandma is coming to stay with us," Teri informed her 19-year-old son at dinner that evening.
"She hasn't visited us in a while," Jerry replied.
"She's not coming to visit, Jerry, she's coming to live with us," Teri explained, inwardly wincing as she saw the look on her son's face.
"But why?" Jerry asked.
"Because she's almost 60," Teri explained. "She's alone. And she's my mother. I love her."
"Grandma doesn't need other people," Jerry snorted. "She lives in her own strange world."
"Yes, she does," Teri agreed. "But she wouldn't hurt a fly and she's a lot of fun. It's not her fault that she's old. I don't even want to contemplate the alternative."
"I know," Jerry sighed. "It's not that I don't like her, I do, it's just that...well, I guess I've gotten used to it just being you and me, and she is strange."
"She's a good kind of strange," Teri laughed. "Just think, you'll have two of us to wait on you hand and foot."
"I'm sure it'll be okay," Jerry said.
Teri sighed as she watched her son leave after eating. At 6'5" and 220lbs., he was an inch taller than his father with the same blonde hair and blue eyes, a testament to his Nordic heritage. It had been terrible when Kevin had been killed in an accident with a drunk driver almost 5 years ago. Her greatest and best friend, her partner, the love and lust of her life, her soul mate, the father of her son, was gone, for nothing, and she couldn't even grieve properly because she had had to be strong for Jerry, then already in the confusion that accompanied the transition of puberty.
Teri cursed herself for feeling grateful that Kevin had insisted on the expensive life insurance policy. The $5 million had paid off the house, cleared their debts, and left them in a position to not worry about surviving.
Jerry's grades in high school were good enough to make admission to the university of his choice a real possibility, but he hadn't wanted to leave home, opting instead to study physics at the local college with his ultimate goal to be an astrophysicist. She was pleased that in spite of fitting the definition of being a nerd, Jerry dated fairly regularly, though never with the same girl for long, like herself, she reflected. She had begun dating after a couple of years, but never more than a few times with the same guy, never wanting to build that kind of a relationship, investing her entire emotional self in her son.
"Well, that's certainly not the look I expected from my grandson," Gloria said when Jerry entered the kitchen later that day as she sat and caught up with her daughter.
"Grandma!" Jerry said, smiling as he came and lifted her from her seat to hug her, feeling her tiny body -- she was only 5' tall -- which seemed so frail to him. "I was just surprised is all," he explained. "I'd never really noticed how much you and mom were alike.
"Well, your mother's a couple of inches taller than me," Gloria laughed, reaching up to pat her grandson's cheek.
"But her hair will never be as long as yours," Jerry said, admiring the red braid which hung down to her ass, something which had fascinated him his whole life, while his mother's red cap of curls settled evenly around her head to go with her flashing green eyes, the same as her mother's.
"You don't mind that I've come to live with you?" Gloria asked.
"No, of course not," Jerry replied. "We've got plenty of room. I'm sure it will work out."
"I hope so," Gloria said with a smile. "I'm not sure if I'm capable of living with other people anymore."
"Nonsense, mom," Teri said. "It's going to be fine. You'll see."
They put Gloria in the guest room which shared a bathroom with Jerry's room, each of them having a private entrance from the bedroom. There was a nice patio with a Japanese garden and a koi pond outside the two rooms, while the swimming pool was just outside of Teri's room across the hall.
"Your mother tells me that you're a star student at college," Gloria said as they ate dinner that evening.
"I don't know about that," Jerry demurred. "I enjoy the classes. The professors are good."
"And you're interested in astrophysics?" Gloria asked.
"Yeah," Jerry replied with a sigh. "My head feels like it's going to explode sometimes as I try to picture the things that I'm learning."
"For example?" Gloria asked.
"Well, today we talked about redshift," Jerry replied.
"Doppler or Hubble?" Gloria asked.
"You know about redshift?" Jerry asked, the astonishment in his voice and on his face obvious.
"I've been around for quite a while," Gloria laughed. "Many things interest me."
"We were discussing Hubble," Jerry said.
"So you're dealing with light, not sound," Gloria said, nodding.
"You really understand?" Jerry asked, shocked.
"Not the mathematics, but the ideas, the theory," Gloria replied. "You're surprised?"
"Well, yeah," Jerry admitted.
"Why, because I'm old?" Gloria asked, a glint in her eyes.
"No, no, it's just that, well, I never thought of you being interested in anything..." Jerry replied.
"So normal, not weird?" Gloria asked, bursting into laughter at the red-faced, chagrined look on his face. "You need to always remember, Jerry, that old people were young once, too. If you're very lucky, you will also get to be an old man and one thing you're going to discover, if you're lucky, is that while your body gets older and older, your mind will stay young. Sometimes it's very hard to reconcile the physical reality of life with the mental picture you have of it."
"I agree, even at my comparatively young age," Teri said with a smile. "It's easy to forget that your body isn't as young as your thoughts sometimes."