I find Gramma in my old room, between an embroidered kaba and my favourite pair of pyjamas, a bold lilac print. I am looking for my flip-flops. Gramma stands behind net curtains in the wall niche where I used to hang my clothes from a wooden broomstick. In the living room my parents’ friends continue to fill up a league table of jobs, first degrees, babies and PhDs their children have collected since my last visit.

I have not been here to see Gramma’s bird-bright look turn vague. She knows she gets mixed up sometimes.

‘Your parents follow me around like I’m a child.’

‘We all get mixed up,’ I say.

My insides puddle. Gramma’s only sixty. We laugh open-mouthed and I see a prosthetic tooth kept in place with loops of silver wire. I miss the missing gap. Find the flip-flops by her feet. Admire her sparkly nail polish. The awkwardness passes. We sit on my old bed together. Remember, remember Gramma, remember when.
#

The morning I slipped under the mosquito net that veiled Gramma’s bed, in my hand a pair of metal framed glasses pointing two different ways. Watched her launch airborne above her mattress. Watched her turn bloated insects to red-brown stains. That day we walked the narrow lanes of Old Town market while the blacksmith joined the two broken halves. He left a lump in my glasses which, later, my mother’s nails would caress. I spotted the lilac petals blooming in a heap of fabric samples.

‘Gramma, can I?’ I asked.

She made the lilac pajamas in a day.
#

Gramma comes to me one night in student halls on Sauchiehall Street. She takes the glasses off my face and switches off my nightlight.

‘You know how hard your parents work,’ she says.

I know.
#

I get my bookbag and walk to school in my too short, too tight pajamas. The classroom door opens into my mother’s Ikea wardrobe. My parents stare, wet-faced. Soon I will be woken by their too early call.