I'm thinking of my grandmother today as I always do on this last day of the year. December 31st was her birthday and when I was a child, for some reason, I thought it was remarkable that anyone might actually be born on the last day of the year. Of course, my fascinations with that idea have worn off as I have grown older but my thoughts of her on this day every year have not.
Looking back, I am keenly aware that some of the highlights of my early childhood took place during the one or two weeks I spent with my grandparents each summer. What a gift it is now to whimsically return, in my mind's eye, and experience those little pleasures almost as vividly as when I was living it. The perpetually full cookie jar...the back porch swing...the vegetable garden with Japanese lanterns along the edge...the stained glass windows in the hall...noon-time radio soap operas...Cupcake, the yellow canary who sang with the piano (ah, yes, the piano with the peculiar twang that survived my eras of Turkey in the Straw, my memorization of The Isle of Capri, as well as my delight in playing Schubert’s Serenade as musically inexpressive and as Vivacissimo as I could.)
My grandmother also sang. She sang as she went about her daily routine; hymns, old plantation songs and turn of the century ditties. I always listened to the words and the stories they told. A toddler favorite was ‘Lo Little Lottle Lee,’ the many verses of which portrayed the saga of Frog and Mouse, Uncle Rat, and finally…a Snake! A little violent? Perhaps. But then…so was the book of fairy tales my grandmother owned when she was ten.
- This is totally an aside that I just can’t resist including at this point: While perusing a book store recently, for a version of The Three Little Pigs that had (hard to find) good quality art work, I was aghast to discover that, not only was the artwork sub-sub-standard but one of the pigs had changed gender! Come on, just write a new state of the art story, people! Don’t mess with the old one! And, for goodness sake, let that wolf eat the first two pigs (it happens every day on Animal Planet.) Then, go ahead and let that wolf plunge into a pot of boiling water! What do you think happens to those cute, pink lobsters you see imprisoned in glass cases in the grocery store?
Okay, now where did I leave off? Oh, yes – the stories I learned from my grandmother’s songs. She also shared stories about her childhood memories and I cherish those that I remember, realizing now that I have heard, first-hand, little pieces of history. Bessie Edith was born on December 31st, 1890, and she saw the world change dramatically during her lifetime (a few years short of a century.) She was one of the younger children in a typically large family. There was a picture of her homestead on the wall in her dining room and I can remember losing myself into it as I gazed at it while she made it come to life with her recollections. I saw where she played…the shed roof they used to jump from…and the pond where her little brother, Wheeler, drowned when he was two years old and she was four. I wonder whatever became of his little blond curl that she always kept tucked away among old photos? She would always let me see that lock of hair when I asked and let me hold it in my hand and touch it. I cannot describe the spiritual connection those moments brought to a little girl’s heart. Maybe it’s because I was hearing the story from the heart of another little girl – my grandmother. Her parents had gone to town and as was the custom, an older sister – a teen-ager, was left in charge. The older sister was, as my grandmother put it, “primping” to get ready for a date and passed the babysitting duty on to four-year-old Bessie. She told of her parents coming home, of seeing her father run to the pond and then try to breathe life into her little brother. Later, her mother gave each of his siblings a lock of his hair. My own compassion, although never changing in intensity, has channeled itself in various directions over the years as I identify from the perspective of the age of each person involved in that tragic event.
Another favorite story: Horse-drawn sleigh rides into town, under a blanket, warmed by a hot rock. Especially at night, watching the sparks fly from the horse shoes (and maybe sleigh runners?) when they came in contact with stones.
The walks to school through fields and woods sounded like an adventure compared to my walk from one part of town to the other, on sidewalks. It seemed to me that the winter walks were the most fun, and faster, because they consisted of sliding down a long hill. “What a way to walk to school,” I thought!
I love the story of how my grandparents met. One lived on Tarbell Hill, the other on Shaver Hill and in those days I suppose they may have been practically two different worlds. But there were dances that most everybody attended – square dances. The story goes: While Bessie was square-dancing and Bill was standing on the sidelines, watching her, every time she passed in front of him, he would whistle at her. This image of my grandparents flirting always made me giggle.
The echoes of her shoes on the sidewalk as we walked to and from the grocery store. … The neighbors’ names and a little about them as we walked past their houses. … Watching her put her hair in a bun and crimp the sides with her curling iron, heated by a kerosene lamp she kept on her dresser. … The fact that she kept a picture of Gary Cooper tucked in the side of her mirror. (She chuckled, impishly, when I asked, “Who’s that?” thinking it must be a relative.) … When I couldn’t sleep, teaching me to count sheep as I imagined them jumping over a fence. . .and laughing whenever she thought about my calling out in the night, “Grandma, what do I do now? They’re coming back the other way!” … Eating Puffed Wheat for breakfast. … The year of the baseball cap: having to take it off at the table. … Taking time to pose for me during my “artist phase” and not laughing at the results. (Years later, I found that she had carefully kept that sketch.) … The blue-eyed Siamese cat statue that sat, regally perched on a top shelf overlooking the pictures of smiling grandchildren inside the bookcase glass doors
The attic. Oh, my goodness…the attic! It was a magical place. The door in the hall looked like just another bedroom door but it opened to a stairway instead – a mystical, magical stairway that led to a place where fantasy overcame reality. The attic was not clean. It wasn’t dirty, either. It was just the way an attic should be and had all the proper smells of an attic – old books, older wood, and the dust of time. There was an old desk, right next to the little window near the peak of the roof. The window pane was surrounded by small panes of various colored stained glass. When the sun shone through that window, radiantly colored, dust-filled beams of sunlight pointed right at the desk and chair. I think it is one of the most magnificent sights I have ever seen. If you can imagine a vision of what is invisible; every poem ever written…every song ever sung…every prayer ever uttered, that would be it.
That house is gone now – demolished. When, unexpectedly, my grandmother needed nursing home care, her home and contents became possessions of “the system” and were auctioned off. Neighbors bought the property to enlarge their yards and had the house torn down. Now, one would never know it existed. But I know. The proof that it is not a figment of my imagination is that the garage I watched my grandfather build out back is still there. I drive by once in a while. . .just to hear my grandmother sing and my grandfather play the fiddle.
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