Life Lessons

The Day My Step-Grandmother Went To Church In Her Petticoat

She refused to give up her faith

Photo by Robert Koorenny on Unsplash

My step grandmother was a vibrant and wise woman. She’d married aged nineteen a man twenty years her senior. My grandfather had lost his wife in childbirth in 1945 and after almost a decade of grieving had remarried.

Together, they had nine boys,

Leaving three of his children from his first marriage to be raised by his mother and his sisters — he was an only son —my grandfother aka Papa Joe brought his third-born daughter to live with his second family on the little island of Aruba.

That daughter — my mother— had the misfortune to be deaf in one ear yet otherwise healthy, happy and extremely beautiful. She loved being big sister to her little brothers she told me — and mummy‘s little helper to her stepmother

My mother in her early twenties / © Wilfred Bishop

Papa Joe had firm ideas on where a woman belonged — au naturel, in the home. While this was fine for step-grandmama while the children were young, as the youngest became too old to need her daily ministations, my step grandmother looked around for something else to occupy…