I miss this.

My grandmother called you "The Pansies".  I giggled at the image of a man as a pansy, visualizing a head bobbing on a thin stem, surrounded by purple petals.

My giggles encouraged her to continue her act by flapping her wrists loosely in the air, making me laugh harder.  I knew that my grandmother was being naughty, as she was given to being, when she wasn't drunk and mean.  I was grateful to have the silly and conspiratorial grandmother right then.


I didn't know what a "pansy" was, other than a man who was girly.  As a girl, i understood that being girly was something weak and foolish, something my grandmother was not.

She was most decidedly not girly, this woman who could shoot and hunt and drink and fight and cuss.  In her presence, i shoved down the very little girly parts that were in me, knowing they were weak.