I was thinking of my grandmother over the last few days and remembering the times I had with her when she was still on this earth. She died fairly young. Well compared to today's standard life span anyway. She was only 62 when she passed over and I was 15 years old at the time and living with her. My grandmother was probably the best person in my life growing up and the closest thing I had to a mother figure. She was not always able to protect me, yet she did the very best she could do. I appreciate that and her.
One of my most fondest memories of her was when I was very young around two or three years old. She used to have this old wooden rocking chair that she loved. It sat right by the window and she would look out and just rock her cares away. In the evening before bedtime, my favorite thing to do was to crawl up in her lap and she would sing to me or read me my favorite story which was "The Three Little Kittens". She would hold me and rock while singing "Bye baby bunting, Daddy's gone a hunting, to get a rabbit skin, to wrap my baby in." I would snuggle in and hide my face in her arms and pretend to fall asleep so she would carry me to bed and tuck me in. I didn't have a bed of my own so when I would visit and stay overnight with her, I would sleep with her.
As I got older I remember laying in bed with her and we would just talk for a long time about all kinds of things. I would always ask her to tell me stories of when she was a little girl. My grandmother had been burned badly when she was a child and her right arm was fused to her side from her armpit to her elbow. She could not raise her right arm and somehow that fascinated me as a child and I wanted to know how it happened. She told me when she was a little girl her mother had eight children and they all had a lot of chores to do to help out on the farm. My grandmother was the middle girl having two sisters and she had five brothers, one younger and the rest all older than her. The boys all had to work the fields with her father planting the crops, while the girls had to do chores inside the house.
One of my grandmother's many chores was to help with the cooking. I think she told me she was about 11 years old at the time. Back then they had old wood burning stoves they cooked on where you had to open up the door and slide in the cast iron skillets. My grandmother was putting cornbread in the stove when a flame from the wood fire caught the material of her dress. In an instant her dress was in flames and she was screaming in pain and on fire. Her mother came running and knocked her to the ground throwing a blanket over her. It put the fire out yet she had been burned badly in the incident. Back in those days you lived so far out in the woods that you couldn't go to the doctor like we do today. The doctor was notified to come and he arrived the next day by horse and wagon. By then the skin that had been so badly burned had already fused together. The only thing they could do was give her medicine to try to keep infection out of it. It was a story she told over and over each time I asked.
I would ask her to tell me more stories about her growing up. She told me about my great grandmother and how all the kids were gathered around her bedside when she was getting ready to pass over. Apparently she became very sick the last few years of her life. She was very weak and bed ridden and they knew she didn't have long to live. She called all the children to gather around the bed one day to say goodbye. My grandmother remembers her mother's last words were "I can see the streets of gold, they are so beautiful. I'm going home."
I never knew the age my great grandmother lived to nor what she died of. I never heard too much about my great grandfather. He wasn't talked about much and maybe because he was so involved in trying to provide for his family and being a farmer. I have a picture of my great grandmother and my grandmother used to say I was a lot like her. For one we both do not like the taste of fresh tomatoes. I am built more like my great grandmother too as far as height and bone structure. I think I would have loved knowing her.
My grandmother used to tell me about walking down the old dirt path road to sneak visits with a boy she liked. Her father didn't like that much and made the boy come to their house and they were only allowed to sit on the swing on the front porch to talk to one another. I gathered that her parents had been really strict with all the children and there wasn't alot of time for nonsense back in those days. I have a picture of my grandmother when she was about 16 or 17 posing for the camera on that old dirt road she used to talk about. It is funny to see the different styles from back then in clothing and hairstyles. I will see if I can scan and post it.-(Update- Yep I did- it is the picture above)
My grandmother married young and over the course of time had five sons. Her last child did not survive long and he died when he was a baby. That made my father the youngest child then. She divorced and the boys ended up being raised by her older sister. She remarried and it did not last very long either, so she divorced again. Both of my grandfathers were raging alcoholics so that attributed to the marriages not lasting. My 2nd grandfather was a boxer. He won all kinds of fights in the ring. I have an old love letter he wrote to my grandmother early in their marriage and it is sweet reading it. He really did love her.
By the time I came along, I was her first grandchild and a GIRL! My grandmother was so happy I was a girl, although she would tell me later she knew nothing about raising a girl because she only had boys. I am sure the times I lived on and off with her that it was difficult at times and she was at a loss of how to deal with girl things. My grandmother did not have much but she did her best to spoil me. She would give me a handful of change and let me go get a bag of penny candy at the local pony keg down at the corner. She didn't buy me a lot but when she could she did.
When I was in third grade around seven years old, my grandmother was in a terrible accident. She worked at a vegetable packing plant in the downtown area and while on her lunch break she was walking back to work. A truck wrecked and came crashing down over the highway overpass to below and where she was walking. Huge chucks of metal and debris went flying everywhere. Unfortunately, a lot of it came crashing down on my grandmother severely injuring her. She was rushed to the hospital in a coma with both of her hips broken, and large rods that went through her leg and head. She was lucky to even be alive and it required several serious surgeries to try to fix her broken bones. She came out of the coma, but was hospitalized for months. I was not able to see her when this was going on because I was too young and they wouldn't let me in.
One of the other things that makes me laugh regarding my grandmother was when she had her accident, the policeman came to the hospital with some of her possessions like her purse. He had an important question to ask. He wanted to know why my grandmother had a gun in her purse! I am smiling as I remember this. It was all quite innocent but it is funny because the policeman didn't know what to think. My grandmother rode the bus everyday to work. Earlier in the year, she had been mugged while waiting for the bus in the early morning hours. Her solution was to get a gun and keep it in her purse. Now I have no idea whether she knew how to even shoot a gun but it gave her comfort. I used to think it was funny that granny was packing a pistol!
When she was finally able to come home, she was still in a full body cast and there was a hospital bed set up in her living room of her apartment. I remember crawling up in the bed with her helping her do her daily therapy. I probably was in the way more than helping but I loved being with her. I used to say I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up so I could help people do their therapy. A nurse came in daily to help her and she was never able to work again because of her injuries. After a very long time she was able to use a wheelchair, then progressed to a walker and then a cane much later in years.
A lot of things were going on with me during that time as far as being moved around a lot, so when I was eight while my grandmother was still in her wheelchair I went to live with her for what would be the next seven years, until her death. She was not able to do a lot however I was just so happy to be living with my grandmother. We made it work.
One of the things I loved best about my grandmother was she was a great country cook. I was rather a skinny little kid until I went to live with her. That good home cooking fattened me right up! My grandmother would make a pot of strong coffee on top of the stove every single morning. I used to say that coffee was so strong that it could get up and walk right off the table. A day did not go by without making a cast iron skillet of cornbread. My grandmother loved to crumble up her cornbread in a glass of buttermilk. I say yuck to the buttermilk but I loved the cornbread!
Fried potatoes, collared greens, pigs feet and beans was cooked often at her house. Talk about fried foods! I don't think she hardly cooked it any other way, except when she pulled out her pressure cooker for a big pot of beans. My grandmother salted everything! Her blood pressure had to be through the roof with the way she used that salt shaker. Another thing I get from my grandmother was her love of hot spicy foods. She would eat jalapenos peppers like it was candy. She would just pop them in her mouth and she loved em!
This is me at age 13 with my grandmother. We were headed to church ..see my Bible in my hand? How about that lovely hairstyle with them bobby pins?
I was a bit mouthy when I was a teenager. Typical I suppose. Don't laugh.... it got me in trouble a lot back in the day.
One memory that makes me laugh right out loud is the time I thought I was going to be a smart aleck and mouth off to her about something she was fussing at me about. She was in the bedroom doing chores sweeping the floor. She never liked vacuum cleaners so she always used a broom even on the carpets. Anyway she was yelling at me about something I didn't do but was supposed to do and I smarted off to her thinking I was hot stuff. Well my grandmother didn't like what I had to say so she just took that broom and walloped me right over the head with it!!
I was so shocked by it that we both just turned and looked at one another then busted out laughing. I think I apologized and did whatever it was that she was after me for, but I never forgot her hitting over the head with the broom. It is moments and memories like this that make me miss her. I really wish she had lived to see me grown up and I wished I had been able to help her and give back to her as much as she gave me.
She may not have been able to get around much but she always tried to raise me to the best of her ability. She could not always protect me, yet I know she did the very best she could do. We didn't have much and near the end, she was trying to get some kind of assistance for me because we only lived on her social security which wasn't much. We may not have had money but she made up for it in her love for me.
I am so thankful she was part of my life. Thank you for taking a stroll with me down memory lane.
PolarB ;)
