92 Days of Summer

Life lessons from a cigarette-loving, screwdriver-drinking grandma

This week, we celebrated my mom’s birthday. As we pulled up into my parent’s driveway, my husband said what I was thinking: “I almost said, “Grandma’s not here yet.’”

As we scanned the family cars in the drive, my grandmother’s was missing. Known as Grandma Jean — so as not to confuse her among the grandkids with my mom, Grandma — she was always the first to arrive. And even this week, a little more than three months after her death, it was odd that she wasn’t around.

That wasn’t always the case. When she first moved here from Rockford, Illinois, three months before my 13-year-old was born, it was odd that she was around.

When my grandmother was in a medical crisis, I was there. When she wasn’t, the 30-mile distance between us might as well have been a continent.

This quote by Rita Rudner sums her up: “My grandmother was a tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping.”

My grandmother, my mom’s mom, was also a tough woman — tough to be very close to.

I was scared of her growing up. It seemed obvious she enjoyed her poodle more than she did me. She didn’t do anything with us or for us. We visited out of obligation, or so it felt in my younger years. I remember her visiting us once in Waxahachie and ordering a screwdriver at the Golden Corral. Who does that? (The realities of growing up in a dry county and irony of my ordering habits as an adult escaped me at that moment.)

She moved to Texas to be closer to all of us (and away from Illinois winters). Although she didn’t seem to adore us, she sure did her cigarettes. She had a harsh Rockford accent, lived in a trailer park, and prepared her entire life for complaining to be an Olympic sport. And she was an awful cook to boot.

But she also made my kids a special Halloween bag of candy every year, grinned and laughed when telling stories about them, and kept up-to-date photo albums for all of her grandchildren. She loved to come to my house and, although critical of most people in her life, thought my kids and I did little wrong.

She’s no grandmother you’d order up, but she was who she was.

In 2009, she was diagnosed with emphysema. This, of course, gave her more to complain about. But it also made her scared and more human than she had appeared to me in all my almost 46 years.

There wasn’t a lot I could do; the burden, of course, mostly fell on my mom. But I visited her in the hospital, held her hand when she cried, connected her with a pulmonologist here in Dallas, and fixed meals for her freezer so she didn’t have to cook. I tried to meet her where she was, which is not my nature. But she was in her 80s. She wasn’t going to change and had a terminal illness.

Within the past year, I hugged her every time I saw her. I told her I loved her, really before I actually did.

So I listened. And I cooked.

And then she got better. And our connection, though softened, went back to where it was. I looked for her car in the driveway on family events. I called her on her birthday. I sent her postcards when we traveled.

This back and forth went on for several years. When she was in a medical crisis, I was there. When she wasn’t, the 30-mile distance between us might as well have been a continent.

Then my mom got sick. She’s on the road to recovery and one of the healthiest people I know, but it stopped us all in our tracks. When I told the kids Grandma was sick, they had little response. It took me a few seconds to realize their confusion. “Not Grandma Jean. Grandma,” I told them.

Instant concern.

Which I got. But I realized they felt the same way about her as I had for all of those years. And still pretty much did. She was a family obligation. Something to check off my list. I hated they felt that way too, but she’d made her bed, I knew.

When mom got sick, my role in my grandmother’s life increased. And I was fine with that. I really was. Nothing about her had changed. She didn’t get my life at all. In many vital ways, we were radically different. I had faith, deep friendships, traveled to third-world countries to build houses. My glass — and not just my wine glass — generally is half full.

I had busy, indulged (in her opinion — and not entirely wrong) kids to raise. She had Westerns to watch and neighbors to spy on from the corners of the heavy curtains in her living room.

My grandmother inadvertently taught me not to write people off and to show love even before you might feel it.

At some point in the last few years, I hugged her. It was awkward. She didn’t seem to know what to do. Within the past year, I hugged her every time I saw her. I told her I loved her, really before I actually did. She never said it back. But one day she had my baby album out for us to go through.

One day this past January, I decided just to go hang out with her on a Saturday. Instead of the usual obligations that took me to visit her, I said we could just do whatever she wanted.

We went to Burger King and Walmart. I’m usually more of an Emeralds to Coconuts and Rusty Taco kinda girl, but whatever. We tried on funny hats, and she laughed and laughed. We went to eat frozen yogurt at Merry Toppins. (Yep, that’s the name). She was almost giddy.

Her health went downhill quickly shortly thereafter. A few days before she died, on a morphine high I’d like to re-create on my deathbed, I walked in to visit. She reached for me to hug me. The hug lasted for a full minute. She said she’d missed me. She said she was so glad to see me. Clearly, she’d just needed some good drugs to take the edge off all these years.

She was my last living grandparent. For a variety of reasons, I didn’t go to the funerals of the other three. And Grandma didn’t want one. Her ashes are scattered up in Illinois.

We’re headed out west this week on a family road trip, going through Arizona and Vegas, two places she loved. I feel a family talk along the way about Grandma and how she inadvertently taught me not to write people off and to show love even before you might feel it.

Because, in the last few months, I did feel it. When I told her I was going to miss her, unexpected tears and all, I meant it. She said, "I know."

Until just a few weeks before she died, she thought she had years to live (suddenly, she’s Mary Sunshine). I thought we at least had the summer.

Grandma, my sister, me and my mom.

Photo courtesy of Dawn McMullan

Grandma, my sister, me and my mom.

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cattle concerns

Flesh-eating screwworm fly detected in Texas for first time since 1966

Photo courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife

This little fly can do a lot of damage

The New World screwworm fly has reached south Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed June 3, the first time in decades that the parasite with flesh-eating larvae has threatened the nation's cattle industry and only the third time it's appeared in the U.S. in that time.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the case was in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, about 50 miles from the Mexico border. Texas State Veterinarian Bud Dinges said he has established a 12-mile quarantine zone, prohibiting the movement of any warm-blooded animal — including pets — outside that zone without an inspection.

Rollins said there have been no other detections of the fly in the U.S., and officials were quick to say that while the fly’s larvae are a threat to livestock production, they don’t infest food. Properly treated, even the infested calf should recover, Rollins said.

Rollins, U.S. and Texas agriculture officials, and cattle industry leaders have been sounding public alarms about the fly’s movement across Mexico for more than a year, spurred on by memories of it causing tens of millions of dollars of losses — potentially billions in today’s dollars — before its eradication in the 1970s.

It is the first case confirmed in Texas since 1966, Rollins said.

The months of effort to keep the fly out of the U.S. have included dropping millions of sterile screwworm flies in the area to mate with wild females — the same method used successfully before the fly was eradicated. Rollins said the USDA is confident enough in its preparations that it believes “there is no threat of mass infestation.”

“There is no reason to believe this incursion will result in establishment of the pest in our country," Rollins said.

The announcement of the suspected case comes only a day after Rollins had an online news conference to highlight the nearness of the threat, with cases being confirmed in Mexico as close as 25 miles from the border — and to outline the USDA's efforts to combat it.

The New World Screwworm fly is a tropical species that decades ago infested cattle in warm weather across the southern United States, but it was contained in Panama until late in 2024.

The female fly lays its eggs in open wounds or mucous membranes and they hatch into larvae that eat flesh — making them unlike most fly species — and can infest livestock, wild mammals, household pets and even humans. Infestations can lead to death if left untreated.

In August 2025, federal health officials confirmed a case in a Maryland resident who had traveled to El Salvador, but the victim recovered and officials found no transmission of the parasite. Before that, the last outbreak was in the Florida Keys in September 2016, mostly among wild deer, and it was contained early the next year without spreading further.

The female flies mate once in their monthslong lives, and if they do so with a sterile fly, their eggs would not hatch — and the population would die out over time. Past eradication efforts were so successful that the U.S. shut down facilities for breeding sterile flies, leaving only one in Panama for decades.

That is changing. The USDA dedicated $21 million to convert a fruit-fly breeding facility in southern Mexico into one for breeding screwworm flies, opened a new center for dispersing sterile flies bred elsewhere in southern Texas and has started construction on a $750 million screwworm fly factory there. The breeding facility in Mexico should be operating next month, Rollins said.

Officials also deployed 8,000 fly traps along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Rollins said the USDA has tested more than 58,000 fly samples, along with 19,000 wild animals.

Rollins also closed the U.S.-Mexico border last year to livestock imports from Mexico, a decision she defended during her news conference Tuesday. The fly also can travel with people and their pets and with wild animals, officials noted, but Rollins stressed Wednesday evening that it doesn't fly great distances on its own.

Dinges said ranchers and pet owners need to understand that it's important to respect the quarantine zone.

“Please help us prevent any further movement of this pest by staying put,” he said.

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