For Grandma
This post is dedicated to my Grandmother Hunt, my mother, and to all the women in this world who love and nourish their children.
Clickity-Clack click click SNAP!
Grandma has just claimed 40 points with the 66 spinner,and is scratching her score on the notepad beside her. Cigarette smoke curling its way heavenward, threading a blue finger through her horn rimmed spectacles. She grins at me across the oak table and chuckles, “Your turn taterbug.”
I watched her bring the ever present Vantage to her lips, as she fixed me with her smiling blue eyes. “I’ve had three robins at my feeder this morning, and a hummingbird!
Me and old charlie here almost got us a squirrel this morning too, didn’t we?” She said, as she patted the head of Charlie Brown, the amazing 20 lb. Dachshund who was lording over the game from upon the throne of grandma’s ample thighs. I didn’t think that Charlie could catch much more than a free meal and a nap, but I smiled nonetheless, from imagining his effort.
This large Den, overlooking my Papa’s tidy backyard, was my grandma’s domain. The bird feeder her entertainment, and Charlie her confidant and friend. She preferred to spend the day at the carved oak table, playing gin rummy or dominoes, taking on all who dared, and soundly whipping us all. She kept a harmonica in the pocket of her housecoat, along with her pink cigarette case that had the little pouch for her Zippo lighter. When I was a baby, she would rock me on the soft expanse of her ample bosom, and play the harp for me. She loved to tell me how “I would just stare and stare at her with those big blue eyes” until I would drift off to sleep. No matter what I was wailing about, as soon as I heard music, I was at peace.
We sat many hours together at that table, swapping stories in peace. Slapping the bones down, or shuffling the deck. I wish to God I could remember all the stories she told me of her childhood, growing up in Ryan Oklahoma. I sensed a lot of pride and pain in her words. She was Salutatorian to my Papa’s Valedictorian of their high school (or was it the other way round?), and the star of her basketball team. she described with bitterness the fights she took on, while growing up under Jim Crow. I realize now, being mixed breed Cree Indian and white was a burden for her in those years. Somewhere between, in the no man’s land of privileged white and burdened “colored”, she was accepted by neither, really. She told me once that she took her shoe to a bunch of mean hearted white boys who were threatening the colored girl down the street. She beat them all into retreat with her courage, resolve, and a wooden heel, even though they were older and scarier than her. She didn’t really say so, but I think the girl and her were actually secret friends, who grew up together in a time when that wasn’t tolerated.
My grandma raised four kids through the dust bowl and depression, a position she took, but probably wasn’t meant for. She had too much intelligence and fight to settle down with a man while barely out of high school. My father was always quiet on the subject, but his mom and dad fought like cats in a bag all through his childhood. Violence too. My Grandma hid her hurt in cooking and humor, and my Papa stepped out on her when he could. Their’s was a love and hate affair than ended in a truce by the time I came round. I always wondered why they had separate rooms and routines, but never thought to ask. I was Grandma’s boy, and she taught me to take things as they come. She taught me strategy and patience, she taught me to stand up for myself against all odds. She played favorites, and I felt honored to be in her massive sphere.
I dreamed of her last night, She comes to me in sleep and offers her encouragement. She has done so off and on since she passed.
If I have even an ounce of that woman’s fire, I know I will get on, come hell or high water.
2 Comments
lynette
oh my word, that is such a beautiful tribute to your grandmother. tater, this is stunning. what a wonderful thing for you to have had her in your life and for her to have had her little "taterbug." wow. this is really, really wonderful.
Thursday, February 22, 2007 - 01:50 PM
Tony
What a great memory. Thanks for sharing Tater. I had a much loved Grandmother myself, who was one of the few safe places in my childhood. Thanks again.
tater
10 Comments
Reader Comments (10)
Thanks for the post Tater. It brought to mind my own beloved grandmother. It's a wonderful tribute and sets my mind to long happy conversations with Gramma at her kitchen table as she would cook, bake and tell me stories about her own childhood.
With iPods and video games, we've lost the art of sitting around and telling stories, passing down family lore through the ages. I remember playing every card game imaginable, or sitting for hours doing a jigsaw puzzle, and hearing all about life when they were younger. All the "characters" that I felt I knew but never met.
Yesterday, I took mother dear for a ride back by her farm and through the town she grew up. She always told me how the barns were there, the cows in that field, there's the chicken coop, I rode my bike down this hill, there's where grandma taught school. This year, for the first time, I spoke the monologue as I drove, she no longer able to remember.
Your grandmother sounded like a wonderful woman playing the cards she was dealt. I admire her courage going against the odds of the bullies against herself. With "nothing left to loose," she backed them down. I think it is the only way to deal with bullies, whether one backs them down verbally or physically,they need to be exposed to the light of day.
It is liberating when one looses the fear of a bully and stands one's ground.
Many thanks for sharing your grandmother's many facets of her being from the tender side of rocking and playing music whilst holding you to the heroic side of standing up to bullies.
It's always interesting, as well as humbling, to be reminded of what people had to endure in times past; particularly in the depression, like your grandmother here.
I'm fascinated with the stories never told, the dreams that hadn't been verbalized because the holder never imagined that they could ever come true. I'm certain the histories of people of your grandmothers time are full of those unacknowledged dreams, as sometimes certain things just have to give. Often, it was those things. As I said, humbling and a little sad. This was a wonderful post.
What a great tribute. I bet your grandma had good stories too. What a nice thing to remember, and I can't imagine how awful it was to be raised back then looking a little different then whitey. People still struggle today. The world is getting a little better with each generation.
It's clear to me that your Grandmother played a large part in forging your character my friend.
She done good!
Beautiful Tater! I share similar memories of my Grandmother, playing gin, listening to her stories and watching slack-jawed as she played the piano or accordian with the ever present cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.
Thanks for this...it brought back great memories for me too!
She sounds like a wonderful woman, and what a gift to leave you with those memories. Her early days were certainly hard, but to spend the later ones with a smoke, a fat dog, and you to love and play games with...not bad at all.
Tater - Rodger's not the only one looking forward to meeting you Friday.
The rich memories of your grandmother are part of who you are, and for any one lucky enough to have that kind of love wrapped around your shoulders, it's an imprint that last's a lifetime. I have an idea you were giving her lots of that love she needed............
I love my own Grandma. I STILL treasure the patchwork quilt laying as the top-piece on our bed sewn from old shirts I wore in high school. Shirts that were MADE by her. That Grandmother that somehow made you think that huge rhubarb or berry pie just out of the wood stove was made just for you. I'm with Rodger, thanks for letting peek at YOUR Grandmother.
I don't know how she did it. She had the relationship yours seemed to have had. Her husband, a giant man we were all afraid of, was an alcoholic, a word that couldn't be discussed in "good company" in 1952.
All us grandkids still talk about her and miss her often.
Lovely story, Tater.
I can't say the same of my family.
Well...maybe I can. It's a long and winding road that eventually works itself out, you know?
See you on Friday.