A Tribute To My Grandmother
My grandmother owned a house on three acres of land, and we would run wild, catching fireflies in the summertime. We would chase each other, playing tag or hide and seek. When we were tired, we would sit on her front porch and enjoy the summer breeze. No matter what we did, we always had fun. And then we would stay for sleepovers. We loved staying at “Ma’s” house because we could do so much there. And I am sure my mother loved sleepovers too because they gave her a break from three crazy kids!
The one thing I hated the most about Ma’s place was her food choices. She was a health nut. And she never had any food that we would have eaten. For breakfast, she would eat coffee toast. She would place toast in a bowl and add coffee with wheat germ, honey, and who knows what else. I recall her pulling jars out of the cupboard and adding a sprinkle of this and that onto her coffee toast. The honey looked saucy gold, and she would explain to me about eating right and watching our figures. She had no milk for cereal; she never had cereal; she always had brown, wheat-type bread, which I hated. I had no idea what it was that she added to her bowl. But it didn’t look good. And I don’t know any child that likes the taste of coffee.
But she did have bananas. I love to eat bananas with peanut butter. So when I asked for the peanut butter, she handed me the rather lumpy kind with oil floating on top. It was organic. Creamy peanut butter, like Jif, is my favorite. I said, “Yuck. What is this?” She replied, “You should never eat creamy peanut butter. It is too fattening! This is better for you. Now go on and eat it.”
As I am older, I wonder why she never had anything in the house that we, as children, would like. But that was how she was; we had to adjust to her ways. And so I ate the organic peanut butter.
We only did sleepovers in the summer. And when the summer ended, my mother and grandmother would take us to Baldingers, a candy store where you can buy penny candy. It was a tradition for us. My mother would hand my siblings and me $1.00. Then we would run in and go straight to the penny candy. We would buy Pez, Swedish fish, sour patch kids, gummies, M&M’s, etc. We were given a brown bag, walked around the entire store, and put whatever we wanted into the bag. So I ended up with 100 pieces of candy. What excitement!
Afterward, we would go to the checkout, and the older woman who ran the store, would dump our candy onto the tabletop and count each piece, touching each piece with her bare hands. This was in the 1980s, and it was unsanitary, the older woman feeling the candy, the candy hitting the tabletop, and finally hitting my mouth. But it was so much fun when we left the store knowing we had 100 pieces of candy. My grandmother didn’t like penny candy so much and always purchased some chocolate, like chocolate-covered cherries or Cadbury Eggs with caramel, which were her favorite.
My grandmother was born in 1924 and grew up during the Depression. Many of her ideas and views were what I called “old-school.” She even worried about gaining weight until the end of her life. She was 95 years old and complained that once she was in a facility, she had gained 6 pounds.
In the facility, she had hot-cooked meals, something she had never had at home since she didn’t want to cook. She was also dehydrated. She didn’t want to drink too much water for fear of racing to the bathroom because she said that “her bones just hurt.” She always said, “As I get older, time flies by. I don’t know where the time goes, but the older you get, the faster time goes.”
She and I have had many conversations over the years. And we got into many arguments because she believed, for example, that males and females should not be friends. I went out to dinner with a friend, who was a male. And she would wag her finger at me and say, “AHHH AHHH! It doesn’t look right! You shouldn’t be doing that!”
Or she called me on the phone and said, “If you don’t want to cook and clean, then don’t get married.” And I would inch her along. I asked her, “Well, what is my husband doing?” She replied, “Well, he has to work.” I countered, “Well, I am working too! So why can’t he cook and clean?” She said, “The woman is to cook and clean.” And boy, would this anger me. I have told her on many occasions, “This isn’t 1950. You need two incomes to survive today. We both work, and I expect my husband to do half the chores.” She would sigh and say, “Maybe you shouldn’t get married.”
In 2019, she was diagnosed with lung cancer; she never smoked but was exposed to secondary from my grandmother. Maybe this is how she got lung cancer. But she had one goal before she died: to live longer than her father, who died at 91. Her father was born in 1900 and died in 1991.
My grandmother died in February 2020 at the age of 95. I am glad that she achieved her goal. I think of her often and wonder what kind of conversations we would have today, her scolding me for her old school beliefs and my attitude of telling her thinking is out of date.
But when I think of food, I think of her. Someone who didn’t cook or clean herself but loved to eat and always came to someone’s house and then criticized you for eating a piece of pie, and yet, she was eating the Boston crème pie. And her plate was filled with nothing but desserts! And I would look at her and say, “What did you tell me? Not to eat sugar and all the goodies, and what are you doing?” She replied, “Don’t do as I do. Just do as I tell you.”
My mother told me stories about my grandmother and how she was mean growing up. I never saw that side of her, but you hear this happens to people who get older. They tend to mellow out, or their relationship with their grandchildren is very different.
Most recently, my family pulled out all of these black-and-white photos of my grandmother when she was young, and she looked so beautiful. She never talked about her childhood or family life because “You are seen and not heard.”
My great-great-grandparents came to this country from Germany, and I asked her, “Well, where in Germany did they come from? What have you learned from them? Her response was clear, “I know they came on a boat. But I don’t know anything else because you didn’t ask questions.”
But I think of my grandmother all the time. How she was blessed with a long life, all of the organic food, how she was hypocritical, how her mortgage was $66 in 1950, how she loved to eat desserts, how she scolded me for not moving my arms when walking, how she was a health nut and can’t believe that at age 95, she was so worried about her weight and of course, the many arguments we had, but she always told me, “Grandma loves you!”
