My grandmother

           My grandmother, Raquel Estrada Gonzalez, has been an important part of my life since I was born. She has always been there for me, and goes out of the way to help me and my cousins in any way possible. Her love for me is a thing that I could never doubt, but she has always had a tendency to overreact to most situations, with results that vary from either being hilarious, or extremely frustrating. From what my father has told me, she has always been like this in every aspect of her life, and will continue to be like that for the foreseeable future.

            One of my first experiences with my grandmother’s overreactions was when my grandfather and I went to buy pool supplies. We had been tinkering with the filter motor, and headed out to buy a part that we needed, accidentally leaving the motor to start up on a timer. We were in Guaynabo when grandma calls my grandfather, screaming hysterically that water was flooding the outdoor patio and running into the street, at least that’s what we managed to understand after a few minutes of her babbling/screaming. The solution to this was simple, you turn off a small switch directly on top of the motor and it stops the flow of water, but between her anxiousness and trademarked tendency to overreact, she either couldn’t find it, or wouldn’t even attempt to. My grandfather was furious, yelling at the top of his lungs that she had to turn it off, but this continued all the way to Bayamon, and when we got to the house water was still rushing into the street. We got out of the car, and walked into my grandmother calling my uncle asking for help, while grandpa went straight to turn off the motor. Literally hundreds of gallons of water were wasted due to her overreaction that time.

While the previous example is slightly understandable for people that can’t handle high stress situations, her overreactions weren’t restricted to just serious events. A few years ago my father got a tattoo of an owl covering his chest and shoulders. Obviously my grandmother would disapprove since she’s very religious and doesn’t approve of tattoos, but her reaction at the time when my father showed her was to start crying uncontrollably all day. She would not stop crying, telling my father to get it removed, how he was going to hell, etc. This maybe would have been understandable if my cousin or I had gotten a similar tattoo, but my father is 40 years old, has his own job and family, and to top it off, has other tattoos. That’s what made it even less understandable for me, he already had about 5 other tattoos, why react like this to another?

But all of us know that her actions come from a place of love, if at times not rational thought. My grandmother might not react well to some situations, but that is usually because she cares very deeply about the people around her and wants them to do what she thinks is good. Usually she apologizes for an outburst after thinking clearly for a while, but we all know that’s the person that she is, and we love and accept her as such.