A zombie-free reminiscence:
The biography jar strikes again. Did anyone selecting these topics ever think to include a nice, short slip of paper like, “What is your favorite kind of jelly?” Or even which Dr. Who was your personal favorite and why? No, I seem to be picking long topics from the jar.
I remember all my grandparents in greater and lesser degrees. I vaguely remember my great-grandmother Grass, a woman who captured my interest for a short while when I was a toddler. If memory serves me, she was a buxom woman, strong-jawed and slightly heavy-set. She wore those floppy, slightly-wrinkled, plaid cotton dresses that I associate with grandmas.
My grandmas lived in the time when June Cleaver wore pearls and smartly-tailored dresses to vacuum. They never remotely resembled June Cleaver. Like so many other rituals of the time, they only paid lip-service to fashion, in tired, wrinkled cotton dresses with bobby-pins to hold thinning hair in place. None of them shopped for a hobby, I’m sure.
I am beginning to unravel a bit myself. A few days ago, I walked the dog wearing Sam’s old middle-school softball pants, soft, tie-dyed green cotton with SOFTBALL on my rear, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer socks, and my XL Worf Star Trek t-shirt that I sometimes sleep in. I’d dressed for comfort when I got home from school and I didn’t see why I had to change to walk a dog. I looked in the mirror before I left, laughed, and grabbed the leash.
Memories of my Grandma Grass remain hazy, though. Topics like this one remind me that I’m not a naturally observant person. This fact has handicapped me in the classroom. I seldom know where the damn paper wad began its trajectory and I know students sometimes like to see just how weird they can act before I acknowledge their efforts, finally pointing out that trying to put your foot in your mouth is unusual behavior and please put your shoe back on and go get hand sanitizer right away. A favorite from last week: Two students took tape off their desks and put the tape over their mouths. I caught this oddity immediately since the tape is bright blue. Asked to reflect on why that was unacceptable classroom behavior, one boy wrote, “I didn’t safely put tape in my mouth.”
My age and grandparent illnesses affect my memories greatly. I only vaguely remember my Grandma Adele who died young from breast cancer. She was another buxom, slightly heavy set grandma in floppy cotton dresses, with brown hair that was often tightly pulled back. When I was little, I spent time with her often and I remember playing with grandma, climbing all over her and all the furniture in the tiny house in Lakewood, not far from our own house. Like my eldest daughter, I was a natural climber. I ate donuts and candy and drank pop at the gray, formica table in the kitchen. No one seemed too worried about nutrition in that house. (No one seemed too worried about nutrition during my childhood, a post for another time.) I probably exhausted grandma, but she always seemed happy to see me. My grandma Adele was my first real loss in life, somewhere in early elementary school, but I sense that parents buffered that loss as much as possible. We did not talk about her passing. I’m sure mom and dad must have talked about her often, but not in front of the children.
Memories of my Grandpa Bill are also hazy. He had a series of strokes when I was young and my final memories of Bill are sad, watching Grandma Velma coax him to eat while he sat mutely at the kitchen table. I don’t know how she managed. She was a small woman, somewhat crippled by polio herself, and he had significant mobility and speech problems at the end. When I was little, I remember him on ladders. I watched him build a house that burnt down not long after he finished it. He had studied engineering at Vanderbilt and I am sure he had quite a story, the Depression story that led him into farming in Pleasant Valley, Washington. I did not know Bill well, though, since even when he was healthy, he always seemed to be on a ladder or walking around with tools. I don’t think he was a kid person, although possibly other grandchildren knew him better. I am told that I was a handful, a bundle of endless climbing and nonstop talking energy. If I’d been quieter and able to sit for awhile, my memories might be different.
I do remember my Grandpa Orlie, my dad’s dad. We saw him often when I was in elementary school. Grandpa was fun. He always had junk food and soda and he enjoyed kids. I remember him with his cigarette and shot of bourbon at the gray, formica table. He talked through a stoma, having lost his vocal cords to cancer, a throaty, deep whisper that could be hard to interpret. He’d slide the shot of bourbon over toward me. Mom would say, “Grandpa!” The bourbon slide was a regular family joke. The Lakewood house was near a school playground, so Steve and I could go to the playground while adults talked about mysterious adult stuff that didn’t interest us. Back in that time, no one felt they needed to watch children all the time. I have a sense that my mom was at the playground sometimes, probably to get away from all the smoke, but other days we were left alone to explore around the school and neighborhood. We lost Orlie while I was still in elementary school, a real hole in my childhood. He went quickly from a heart-attack.
My Grandma Velma was a force in my life and a force in the life of all her grandchildren — especially my cousins, Guyle and Melody, who lived with her for some years — and I was blessed to have her to visit until I was in college. We often went to her house in Mineral when I was young. The family would pile into the car on the week-end, stopping at Gilbert’s store for our Mountain Cones, three scoops of ice cream that would be running down my wrist in the car on hot days. I’m pretty sure my parents never worried much about car interiors. Some summer weeks I stayed with Grandma Velma. I read, wandered the small mountain town, visited the swimming hole and relaxed the way only kids can, knowing the most important parts of the day are visits to the tiny store for candy bars or chocolate-covered, ice-cream bars, and the later walk-skip along the curving, hot, black asphalt to the swimming hole. Grandma Velma didn’t push. Like my mom, she seemed to regard reading as a perfect excuse to get out of domestic chores. She couldn’t cook, but she gave her grandchildren stories about the horrors of beet greens, funny reminiscences now that the beet greens are ancient history. I did love her hot potato rolls and cooked rhubarb. I liked that pat of butter she put in the oatmeal, too. I loathed the stupid roosters who chased you as you entered and left the house, but for some reason Grandma Velma kept roosters for awhile.
I am going to stop here, but this story runs much longer and I have left out many parts that helped shape the person I became. At some point, Parminder needs to enter the blog, since he entered the family through Grandma when I was in my teens. Of the strange tales of our childhoods, I would have to include the tale of the wandering Sikh who was expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin and ended up trying to hitch a ride out of Mineral, Washington. Grandma guessed how well that might work out for him and told him that if he got tired he could stop by her house for — was it milk and cookies? Parminder remains family to this day.
