Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Grandmothers
I grew up with two wonderful but very different grandmothers, one Danish-American and the other Irish-American. My great grandmother from Denmark somehow ended up in Montana, while my grandmother's grandfather's grandfather from Ireland found his way to Mississippi. These two states, respectively, were the birthplaces of the two matriarchs I later came to know and love.
Grandma Edith (Christiansen-Hamilton) lived across town: first in the house I can still picture among giant shade trees with a black labrador sleeping by the huge old oil heater in the living room, and a parakeet singing in the kitchen where I watched her do kitchen chores when we lived with her up until I must have been two or three; and later in an apartment near the junior high I attended. Grandma Pearl (O'Neal) lived fifteen hundred miles south and always sent us dates and also postcards from Australia and Hawaii and Europe where she occasionally traveled as a Olympics-caliber swimming coach.
I remember Grandma Edith always had a home-baked cake waiting for us when we stopped by, and often came for Saturday night dinner but insisted we take her home in time for Gunsmoke. It wasn't until I was older that I discovered the reason she left so early was she smoked cigarettes and didn't want to do it in front of her grandchildren. When Grandma Pearl visited, she made us all go to the pool with her for swimming lessons.
During the summer, Grandma Edith took care of my two cousins while their parents worked at the post office and the hospital, and I always liked her ham sandwiches with Miracle Whip and barbecue potato chips. I still laugh at the thought of her locking the front door just before my cousin made it inside after pelting some other kids with a handful of hard, spiny sycamore pods. Not having us around as much, Grandma Pearl sang us songs with moral messages when not attending to our athletic development. Between the abstract melodies and the down-to-earth tactics of the two, we managed to come out OK.
Outside her family, Grandma Edith--who'd worked at the train station cafe when raising her kids--loved three things most: baseball, TV Westerns, and trout-fishing. But she also went regularly to the Eagles Auxiliary to participate in their ladies' drill team, which when me and my two cousins watched, sent us into hysterics that nearly got us thrown out of the building. Grandma Pearl--who liked to play uplifting religious songs on our piano--had supported her four children during the Depression giving swimming and piano lessons and raising vegetables, rabbits, and a milk cow on Lake Washington near Seattle.
Both these grand motherly influences on my early years are gone now, but I find the combination of Irish enthusiasm and Danish steadiness maintains a sort of inner balance and outward harmony in me that I might not otherwise have acquired. And I suppose that's a pretty decent tribute to their care.
Grandma Edith (Christiansen-Hamilton) lived across town: first in the house I can still picture among giant shade trees with a black labrador sleeping by the huge old oil heater in the living room, and a parakeet singing in the kitchen where I watched her do kitchen chores when we lived with her up until I must have been two or three; and later in an apartment near the junior high I attended. Grandma Pearl (O'Neal) lived fifteen hundred miles south and always sent us dates and also postcards from Australia and Hawaii and Europe where she occasionally traveled as a Olympics-caliber swimming coach.
I remember Grandma Edith always had a home-baked cake waiting for us when we stopped by, and often came for Saturday night dinner but insisted we take her home in time for Gunsmoke. It wasn't until I was older that I discovered the reason she left so early was she smoked cigarettes and didn't want to do it in front of her grandchildren. When Grandma Pearl visited, she made us all go to the pool with her for swimming lessons.
During the summer, Grandma Edith took care of my two cousins while their parents worked at the post office and the hospital, and I always liked her ham sandwiches with Miracle Whip and barbecue potato chips. I still laugh at the thought of her locking the front door just before my cousin made it inside after pelting some other kids with a handful of hard, spiny sycamore pods. Not having us around as much, Grandma Pearl sang us songs with moral messages when not attending to our athletic development. Between the abstract melodies and the down-to-earth tactics of the two, we managed to come out OK.
Outside her family, Grandma Edith--who'd worked at the train station cafe when raising her kids--loved three things most: baseball, TV Westerns, and trout-fishing. But she also went regularly to the Eagles Auxiliary to participate in their ladies' drill team, which when me and my two cousins watched, sent us into hysterics that nearly got us thrown out of the building. Grandma Pearl--who liked to play uplifting religious songs on our piano--had supported her four children during the Depression giving swimming and piano lessons and raising vegetables, rabbits, and a milk cow on Lake Washington near Seattle.
Both these grand motherly influences on my early years are gone now, but I find the combination of Irish enthusiasm and Danish steadiness maintains a sort of inner balance and outward harmony in me that I might not otherwise have acquired. And I suppose that's a pretty decent tribute to their care.
