“What’s so funny, Granny?” Shanice asks, after coming in with the mail and slamming that screen door.

“What’s ‘a fruitful trip’ mean, and how many times have I asked you not to slam that door?”

“Sorry, Granny. It means productive, good, something happened that you wanted to happen.”

“Where you learn such a big word and you ain’t but in the eighth grade?”

“It’s not a big word, Granny.”

“And sorry my behind. Slam that door one more time and I’ma make you go get a switch off one of them trees out there I ain’t got. Any good news?”

She’s laughing now. “This big envelope’s from Dingus.”

“Open it, would you? And hurry up, hurry up!”

“What’s the rush, Granny?”

“I wanna see! I just wanna see! He promised to send me a picture of him at his junior prom and some of them college letters he been getting. I just wanna see some for myself ’cause I ain’t never seen no letter from no college asking nobody to come to their school. I’m so proud of that boy I don’t know what to do.”

“What about my mom and Auntie Paris?”

“I don’t mean them kinda letters. These colleges is begging Dingus to come. Hurry up, Shanice!”

After taking her sweet time and finally getting the envelope open, she holds up what I know from the back is a picture. “She’s cute,” is all Shanice says, and then hands it to me. “Dingus might look a whole lot better when he gets all that metal out of his mouth, and he may not know it, but Clearasil and Oxy Pads could help his cause. Nice tux, though.”

“Be quiet, girl.” I turn that picture over and see my handsome grandson, who don’t look like he got no pimples on his face, standing with his arm around this pretty little chocolate cupcake of a girl, and it’s written all over her that she come from good stock. Paris said her daddy’s a preacher, so that mean she been raised right and probably ain’t fast like a lot of ’em is these days. “He sho’ know how to pick ’em, is all I gotta say,” and then I start flipping through what looks like eight or nine different letters Shanice just handed me. “Would you get Granny’s glasses for her, baby? Please?”

“I don’t know what you’d do without me, Granny. Don’t you want me to stay and be your private maid?”

I’m nodding my head yes, chuckling, and getting teary-eyed at the same time when I start reading the names of the schools written in big colorful letters across the top of each piece of paper that I don’t need no glasses to read: Stanford University and the University of Southern California and Michigan State University and Ohio State University and the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Miami, and I stop right there, ’cause it’s enough. My grandson is going to college all right. And he got choices. And they asking him do he wanna come to their school. Times have sure changed, thank you, Jesus.