Old Age Day by Day May 6, 2010

Having a grandchild brings back memories of my own grandmothers. One was Indian, on a midwestern farm near a river, alone, except for her father, who helped out after her German immigrant husband died young. My great grandpa sat on the porch and doled out sugared orange slice candies to us, when he wasn't driving his Model T Ford across the fields to get some errand done. Mom's mom had 13 children, and as my mother was in the middle, she was still raising some of them and slaughtering hogs, chickens and forcing a garden to grow, with buckets brought from the river. She was too busy to play with me, but I had plenty of fun anyway. With my cousins I rode the old plow horse, watched her hack a chicken's head off, ran in the fields, and watched biscuits baking in the hot kitchen. I was said to look the most like her of any of the grandchildren. I also sat by her bedside many a time as she was dying slowly and painfully of bone cancer. She was 60 when she died (I was 12), worn out and tired of fighting, probably, but still a vibrant presence. She was a "good" woman, who prayed and sang at her Baptist church, stood out on a dirt road with eggs in her pocket to sell to the occasional car that came by, so she could feed her brood. I don't much like any meat, though, because the screams of the hogs and cows and other animals slaughtered right there, made me know their suffering. They were bled out and hung. I'll eat an occasional chicken and seafood and fish, but I won't touch pork or beef or lamb.

My other grandmother and grandfather lived in a bigger town a couple of hours away, but out on a road by the fairgrounds, so it was still country. They had chickens, too, and parakeets and a big terrier dog called Mitzi. She saved boxes and containers for me so I could play "store", and had a dress up box for myself and the neighbor girls down the road to have fun with. There are pictures of us in big hats with feathers and scarves and dresses whose waists were to our feet. Sometimes my little brother dressed up, too. He'd do anything to get to play. She filled tin animal buckets so we could play in the water on the lawn in our bathing suits. I liked to sit on her porch and have her rock me. She told me I'd say, "Nice beeze, granma", just to be sociable. I loved her cellar with it's cool, damp smell, and the shelves and shelves of canned tomatoes, pickled beets, green beans, pickles, peas and other delights. She had a huge vegetable garden. I loved pulling up carrots and hunting for eggs.

I was left regularly, as a toddler and preschooler with both grandmas and various aunts and uncles. I adored the visits. I loved chasing fireflies, eating watermelon on the grass, going to the fairs and looking at quilts and paintings and cakes and pies. Both my mother and I won blue ribbons later, when I was about 10, me for an apron I'd sewed and my mother for a lacy white shawl she'd crocheted. I was left with a feeling of resourcefulness and a lot of useful survival skills, and the assurance that I was special to those grandmas, and now, here I am, upteen years later, passing on the love.