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The Perfect Grandmother

Grand parenting has been on my mind lately.

It forces me, happily, to think of my own Grandmother, who was perfect. I will freely admit that she becomes perfect partly by comparison. My other grandmother was not perfect. In point of fact she could be downright mean. She seemed to think that it was perfectly all right to love some of her grandchildren and hate others. Even when you are on the good side of this, and even as a child, you can smell the meanness in a person who is willing to be mean to her own grandchildren. Also, she committed unspeakable acts of meanness against her own daughter, my Mother. I work hard at making this unforgivable and moreover, she makes my other grandmother look better.

My son-in-law has explained to me that because there are always two sets of grandparents; one of these becomes the “A” grandparents and the others become the “B” grandparents. Grandmom was certainly the “A” grandmother.

She was fat. I don’t know why that is so prevalent in my memory unless it speaks to all of the positive things that fatness represents. She was jolly and she was large in everything that she did. Particularly her laugh. She laughed in a big and distinctive way that I can recall instantly. It was a high-pitched laugh with several parts, always ending with some kind of exclamation, like eeeeee gods.

She was fun. She didn’t seem to care nearly as much about rules and conventions as she cared about people. She went sledding with us. I point this out as a representation of her sense of fun. Generally you don’t see fat people, let alone old people out sledding with kids, but Grandmom did and like everything else she did she did it loudly. She also wasn’t that good at it, but that is very far from the point. She went sledding with her grandchildren and that made it more fun that usual.

She was inappropriate. I think that perhaps that this is what I liked best about her. She dressed the way that she wanted to. She spoke about people in the way that she wanted to. She gave her young grandsons beer at bedtime to help them sleep. She gave us money, with strings attached. The strings were that we had to promise to use it to have fun. Saving it for college or for something useful was equal to wasting it. When she asked what you wanted from the store, cigarettes were a reasonable request, even if you were 12. If you were seventeen, she implored you to drive faster. Doing so might just force her to stick her head out the window to enjoy the rush of the wind. Now that is fun.

She was generous. Her generosity reflected the rest of her. She felt truly compelled to give things to people. I received gifts that included a #10 can of cranberries, a coffee cup and an assortment of pins with variously covered heads. Not one of these things was at all useful, but her spirit of generosity made me treasure them. I once saw her give the lady next door a piece of sausage that was left over from breakfast. I think that she just couldn’t stand the idea of someone leaving her house empty handed. Once, around the age of 7, I was eyeing up a blue glass ashtray that was in the shape of a top hat. Because I was looking at it, it instantly became a candidate as a gift. She explained that my father had made it, when he was just about my age. This really made me look at my father in awe; because I knew that there was no way that I could make a top hat ashtray out of blue glass. Once she made me love the ashtray, she then gave it to me. I kept it on my dresser and told all of my friends that my dad had made it, when he was about 7. By the time that I was old enough to figure out that the ashtray came from either Wheaton glass or from China, I loved it all the more. In fact it made me love her more. It was what she did. Any small event in her life, created a story.

She was spontaneous. My grandmother was never a wealthy woman. I doubt that she had any love or need for saving. She bought things, I believe, because she had enough money to buy it, at the instant that she looked at it. I recall her buying a fan that she didn’t need, because it was a good deal and it looked like a good fan. My Grandpop remarked that it would join the other dozen or so surplus fans in the attic. This point was completely lost on her. It was still a nice fan at a good price. I once saw her buy a tacky bit of gas station art that was a velvet painting of the last supper. It was placed up very high in a five and dime store. She bought the painting only because she didn’t like the idea that “Our Lord” was getting so dusty up there. Everyone that knew her knew that it would never be dusted once it was in her house, but that wasn’t point. Anyway, she probably gave it to someone as a gift soon after.

She was a great storyteller. Here’s on of my favorites. She talked about her brother, Henny. Now Uncle Henny was not someone that I had ever met, and I never heard anyone speak about him, except for her. She told this story, in exactly the same way, every time I heard it. “My brother Henny, eeee gods he was fun he was and he was sad sometimes. One time he farted in church and we sure laughed. He killed himself, god love him, and he was my brother”. From that little vignette, I got to know about my great uncle.

She was grateful. When her brother Otto died, it was the first funeral that I had to attend. I dreaded it really and once I was there, I had no plans to review Uncle Otto in repose. When Grandmom came to me and took me by the arm and said, “Walk me up to see my brother, hon” I could not turn her down. (By the way, she called me hon because she was never sure what my name was. I took no offense at this, even considering the fact that she most often called me by one of my brother’s names). When we got to the casket, I thought that we were supposed to kneel. Probably Grandmom was unable to kneel, or to get back up after kneeling, and so, when I began to kneel she pulled me back up and said “Hold me up, hon”. She then said the following to Uncle Otto, as if he could hear her. The way that she said it, so clearly from her heart taught me about the nature of being truly grateful. I believe that I can still quote her exact words, nearly 30 years later, and so I will try. “Otto, you was an ace. You was always good to me and to your wife Barbara and to our Mother. When we didn’t have enough, you bought shoes for my kids, God love you.” She then touched him and kissed his head. I remember the feeling of terror as she bent over to kiss him, using me to hold her up. If I wasn’t careful her weight might pull me over and throw me into the coffin. When she stood back up, I thought that it might take quite a long while for her to compose herself. When she caught a look at an old friend coming into the funeral parlor, she called her name out with such glee that you would have thought we were at a party. She was over it and moving on. She kept me attached to her arm for quite a while though, and so I was introduced to lots of people as “my grandson, ain’t he handsome in his suit” as well as two of my brothers names, two of my cousins names, and also Jerry, whom I don’t know.

She was memorable. When Grandmom died, people, including me, began telling her stories. It was wonderful. If you took all of the stories and tied them end-to-end, it would be three times longer than Gone With the End.

I believe that a reasonable gauge for someone’s life is how many stories they create. If this is so, Grandmom had a tremendous life. She could probably tie Frank Sinatra or Jackie Gleason or Mark Twain.

Here’s one more. I don’t know how this story begins, because I wasn’t there. I do know that she ended up riding in a car with my sister driving, who was too young to have a license. This fact would have little impact on my grandmother. It probably only heightened the possibility of adventure. It is not unreasonable to believe that my sister said “Hey Grandmom, let’s go riding in the car, I always wanted to try driving” and Grandmom would have said “Sure, hon. Just let me get me teeth in”. Teeth, it seemed, only went with certain outfits or occasions.

So later on Grandmom regaled the adventure. “Eeeee gods, it was fun. Kath-a-leen drives good. We was passing kids on bikes and I had a highball in me”.

Other Grandmothers would have completely missed this opportunity for adventure and one more chance at creating a memory.

Not Grandmom.

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