I’m wasn’t feeling too inspired today, so I decided to comb Pastor Swank’s archives for one of his “I Believe in Miracles” columns.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Pastor’s “Miracles” series, I’ll recap the highlights for you:

–“The Jacket”: Pastor Swank steals a coat from his church’s goodwill store. He gets into trouble when he makes a missionary visit to a local jail and the guards find a dimebag in the jacket pocket. Pastor Swank gets banned from the jail, but he considers it “a miracle” that he wasn’t arrested for drug possession.

-“The Suitcase” (this one is mysteriously absent from the archives, but I swear I’m not making it up): Pastor Swank adopts of a member of the Crips, and becomes convinced that the young man is out to “do him in.” The kid winds up in jail, but it’s a “miracle” that he never tried to kill Pastor Swank.

–“Faith Survived”: Demons infest Pastor Swank’s church and convince his parishioners that he is “of the devil.” Pastor Swank eventually gets kicked out of his parish, but the story has a happy ending, since the people who conspired against him wind up dead.

Now that you’re all caught up, here’s the Pastor’s latest miracle: “Carolyn!”

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES: CAROLYN
J. Grant Swank, Jr.

Carolyn was my mother’s mother.

Or “grandmother,” as we say in English.

She came to live with us when I was but a child. In fact, I don’t recall exactly when life was without Carolyn. She made the best raisin-filled cookies. I mean the best. They were plump and the raisins were juicy.

“Plump” and “juicy”… doesn’t this remind you guys of a song from the early ’90s? Something like this:

“I like cookies and I cannot lie
You other Pastors can’t deny
When Grandma bakes those oatmeal flakes
And raisins in the dough you get sprung
Wanna pull up tough cuz you noticed them cookies was stuck
Deep in the oven they’re bakin’
Watery mouths they’re makin’
Oooh cookies, I wanna caress ya,
And then digest ya.”

And now, back to Swank-Mix-a-Lot:

There was no skimping when Grandma made cookies. The whole house smelled of newly baked surprises when Grandma set her hands and heart to it.

“But when she sat around, the house smelled like old people. So we liked to keep her active.”

I remember her white hair piled high atop her head. I don’t recall Grandma with anything but white hair ? lots of it.

Pastor Swank makes his Grandma sound like an older version of Cousin It.

“Joseph Grant Swank! Get in here and eat Grandma’s cookies! I made ’em just like you like- real thick and juicy, so find that juicy double, when Pastor Swank’s in trouble, I beat ‘im with a Bible cudgel…”

And her housedresses. Well, Grandma only had housedresses as far as I could tell. She wasn’t one for “making herself up.” There was no cosmetic drawer in Grandma’s bedroom. She was a very tidy, clean woman; but as for rouge and all that sort of thing, Grandma didn’t “do.”

In other words, Grandma wasn’t no ho.

Grandma wore a hearing aid. That bothered other people a lot because it squealed. It made loud sounds in the most inopportune places and times, especially when I had friends over for a visit.

But since the Pastor’s friends were all imaginary, her hearing aid didn’t bother them that much.

Or when we were entertaining company for dinner. Squeal. Squeal. Squeal. That burst-forth took over the air and our ears so that everyone looked at one another as if some grand discourtesy had hit.

Yeah. I fuckin’ hate it when that happens.

Grandma sat in her rocking chair a lot. That chair was in the corner of the dining room near two large floor-to-ceiling windows. She rocked and rocked and rocked. I often wondered what she thought about when sitting there with no book, no magazine. I don’t recall her reading much. She did like to rock, however.

I know the feeling:

“Big Raisins!
Big Raisins!
Talkin’ ’bout the cookies that Grandma’s bakin’!”

(And yes, I’m obsessed with turning songs about big asses into songs about raisin cookies. It’s the least I can do to keep young minds pure.)

One fault that Grandma had was her tongue. She gossiped a lot. There weren’t that many people to talk to for she didn’t go out. Like I mean that she wasn’t playing bridge or bowling or cruising around the Mediterranean.

I can’t imagine people on Mediterranean cruises being very interested in Grandma Swank’s gossip.

But there were neighbors. And so she’d gossip to them ? about us.

And you would too if you lived with someone who talked about demonic possession all the time.

That didn’t set well with my mother and father. They found out how Grandma made up some really outrageous lies. And we were Christian folk. We went to church, had family devotions, sang hymns with friends around the living room piano and that kind of life. So what Grandma told our neighbors was just a bad set of tongue-and-teeth located right inside her mean mouth.

I can’t think of anything clever to say here- it’s just too ridiculous. Anyone else wanna try?

Finally, at one point, my parents had Grandma go to an “old folks? home” to stay. It was in the same town as where we lived; but they simply could not have her ruin our home any more. So they had her change living quarters. I recall visiting her. She’d cry and want to come back to us. But my parents had put up with too much of her wily tongue for Carolyn to return.

However, one day my parents changed their minds. Grandma was back home ? but this time with stipulations. I think she got the message, but not quite.

It took a stroke really to get the message to her heart. And with that stroke, Grandma landed in her own bed ? night and day. The one side of her body did not look healthy and it showed especially in her face. I felt sorry for Grandma, no matter what tongue she had.

It was then, when having a stroke, that her soul was changed. At least that’s the way my parents would put it. Grandma got “saved.”

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the miracle- Grandma had a stroke and stopped being a mean old bitch.

Well, whatever it was, Grandma was a completely different creature than pre-stroke. After that, for a year she lived to be the sweetest Grandma a boy could have. I loved her so much. She seemed like Jesus. She was very nice and friendly and kind.

It was exactly a year after her stroke that Jesus took her home to be with Him. Now as I look back, that’s the year that I remember most about Grandma Carolyn. That was my smiling, endearing, understanding Grandma whom I had hoped for all those years before the stroke.

“My only regret was she didn’t have the stroke sooner.”

“It was a miracle,” my mother would say when we’d sit around to talk about the change in Grandma. And I truly believe it was just that.

So if you have crabby old people living in your home, ask God to give them a stroke- that’ll teach the old coots to be appreciative…