I balanced on the edge of the tub so I could see myself in the splotchy mirror. I turned sideways, awed at how the dress hugged my beginning body. Ahh, I looked sophisticated and alluring.
“Here’s another,” Grandma said, holding out a burgundy moiré.
For an hour colors spilled and sang, the fabrics like foreign children, each whispering in a different language. As I wiggled into the slinky dresses, I saw myself, a character in a long story of thread and fabric, a story unraveling into many different endings.
My mother wouldn’t let me wear the dresses Grandma had given me.
“Too tight,” she said.
So I decided to sew my own clothes.
The fabric store smelled of something new and barely opened. The bolts were alert soldiers. The clerks raced around armed with scissors, dripping with remnants, their mouths prickly with pins. I selected a shiny orange, purple and black pattern, something surreal that I would never find in Sears. From the easy-pattern booklet I chose a fitted waist and plunging neck.
At home, I rolled out the fabric and stared. I could not remember what to do, so I dialed Grandma.
I heard the murmur of television in the background while she thought about my questions.
“First make yourself a nice cup of tea,” she said, her voice halting and dusty. “While you drink it, see yourself wearing this dress. Then, take your scissors and cut.”
I found some Lipton’s behind my mother’s Nescafe. As I sipped, I saw myself sauntering through the hallway at school, a vision of color and style. Boys paused by their lockers and watched silently as I walked past.
But once I broke into the cloth, my scissors bucked, the fabric fought. Once I inserted the needle, insinuated the thread, my seams squirmed and refused to lie flat. Despite all my work, my dress wore a prissy, puckered look. Then I saw my mistake: when I had gathered the fabric, I’d yanked the thread too tightly. The dress had no room to stretch and grow.
A month after Grandma died, I received a battered cardboard box filled with scraps of material: a length from a dotted swiss I’d worn when I was three, a scrap from a fiesta dress I’d swirled in at age five, forest green velveteen from my cousin’s wedding. I fingered each remnant of cloth and imagined the vest I might make. I knew just how to do it: I would sit in front of the light gathering and piercing, gathering and binding, gathering and, finally, letting go.
Deborah Shouse
A Legacy of Love
It would be more honorable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deed to imitate them more.
Horace Mann
“Who’s that, Grandma?” Four-year-old Taylor pointed to a delicate gold photo frame I’d carefully placed atop my new oak desk. I pulled my oldest grandchild into my lap so he could peer closer at the face of the woman smiling back at us. “That’s Mam-maw Gladys,” I replied.
I reached for the picture, my fingers carefully tracing the outline of the soft countenance returning my gaze . . . her clear blue eyes, the wrinkle lines that creased her forehead and the soft smile that always brought me peace.
My mind filled with remembrances of my mother. Always the peacemaker, it seemed she never made anyone angry. Even though she was barely able physically, she baby-sat my young daughter so I could work. She always made time for her grandchildren. When she wasn’t with them, she was making something for them with her hands.
Then her illness progressed. She was in the hospital for three weeks, suffering complications from chronic lymphoma. The doctor wanted to experiment with a simple operation that might give her another year of life. She agreed so she could be around to greet her long-awaited first great-grandchild.
After the surgery failed, she had to depend upon a respirator to breathe. When the doctors determined she wasn’t going to breathe on her own, the respirator was removed and she was moved to a private room. Mom died there the next day, exactly a month before Taylor’s birth.
Still grieving, I traveled five hundred miles to be with my family and welcome my new grandson.
A few days later, my daughter asked me to sit with Taylor while she visited her doctor. As I rocked him and cradled him in my arms, suddenly I realized that my love for Taylor was the same that Mam-maw Gladys had for my children. At that moment, I felt so close to her. And through my tears, I understood why she had sacrificed and cared so much for her family. I realized her love for us was so deep, so wide, so unconditional—a love I was only beginning to learn to give.
“She looks like you, Grandma!” Taylor’s voice jolted me back to the present. He touched the gold-framed photo tenderly. My eyes turned to his, and a soft smile came to my lips and heart, for then I knew my mother’s love and peace.
Libby C. Carpenter
My Official Storybook Grandma
It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
Lawrence Sterne
I spent most of my young life never having what I thought was a typical, storybook grandma. My dad’s mother didn’t live close enough, and my mom’s mother died before I was born.
At the age of sixteen I lived in Alaska, where I met my future husband, who joined our mission team there. From the beginning, Mike talked about his grandma, who lived next door. She allowed him, his three brothers and sister to raid the refrigerator. She defended them ruthlessly. The more he shared about her, the more jealous I became.
After a year of long-distance romance, Mike invited me to his home in New York for Thanksgiving. I was so excited—until I found out I was going to be staying with the famous Grandma Reba. It was common knowledge that she had not liked most of Mike’s girlfriends. I promised myself that I would not talk too much (impossible), swore I would not laugh too loud (unfeasible), but most of all I hoped she would love me.
I arrived and met his family, and then Mike and I walked across the street. I was more nervous about meeting Grandma Reba than anyone else. As soon as we entered, I felt the atmosphere change. Family pictures filled shelves. Homemade crocheted afghans dotted the living room furniture. Next to her chair sat a basket filled with her current afghan project and crochet hooks. A tiny lady, standing around five feet tall with curly gray hair and incredibly thick eyeglasses, came from the kitchen to greet us. She hugged Mike and I could feel her eyes moving over me. All I could think was, Please like me. She welcomed me warmly, and I began blabbing. She listened and smiled.
When Grandma Reba was able to interject a word or two, she told me that she would show me my room. Mike left, and she escorted me down the hall and opened a door. Inside was a bed draped in one of her homemade afhgans. She apologized for the room being so small, then asked me what I would like for breakfast. Desperate to please, I told her, “Anything is fine.” Of course, true to form, I had to elaborate. “Eggs, bacon, sausage, cereal, bagel, orange juice, coffee, anything, really.”
She smiled at my nervous chatter and said, “Okay.”
We watched one of her favorite shows (I think it was Wheel of Fortune), then she went to bed. I already loved her but was certain she hated me because I had not shut up since she met me.
The next morning I was greeted by delicious breakfast smells. As I walked into the kitchen, I saw the table loaded with all the breakfast foods I had named. She stood at the skillet frying bacon.
“Oh, is everyone coming over for breakfast?” I asked.
She smiled and said, “No, honey. It’s all for you.”
For the first time since meeting her I was speechless. After falling into my chair in shock, I glanced up.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.
I told her I would never be able to eat all of this and that I’d be too fat for Mike to date and what a sweetheart she was and how I couldn’t believe she had cooked all this just for me. Obviously, I had found my tongue. She laughed and asked me what I wanted tomorrow. I told her cereal, coffee and orange juice was all.
After our visit, I knew I had experienced a storybook grandma
. I was now as much a fan of Grandma Reba as her own grandkids. During the next year, I wrote her letters and sent her one of my high school graduation pictures.
The following year, Mike moved to Alaska and we became engaged. We decided to spend that Christmas in New York with his family. I decided to purchase my wedding dress there so his mom, sister and grandma would feel more included in the preparations. Unfortunately, Grandma Reba could not go shopping with us. When I greeted her this second time, it was as if she had shrunk. It was more obvious that her curly gray hair was a wig, her thick glasses looked thicker, and she had lost more of her hearing. It was hard to believe she was the same person, but she still had prepared my room, and each morning I woke up to cereal, orange juice and coffee—she remembered.
One evening while we were visiting her, she got up to go to bed, lost her balance and fell into the Christmas tree, knocking it over. Mike and his brother helped her up and teased her about drinking too much. She laughed, but we all knew that something was not right.
I bought my wedding dress and tried it on for her. I sang her the songs we would be singing at the wedding, and she cried. She told me how she wished she could come. I begged, but she said she would never be able to make a fifteen-hour flight.
“You’ll be a beautiful bride,” she beamed.
I hugged her. “I can’t wait until we get married and you become my official grandma.”
For Christmas that year she gave me an afghan that she crocheted just for me.
Two months after Mike and I left New York and six months before our wedding, Grandma died.
We received a box of things she wanted us to have.
Apparently knowing that her time was short she’d spent her last months walking around her house, writing people’s names on the things. Our trophies were a corner shelf that Mike had made for her in shop class, a picture that Mike had always loved, and my graduation picture that she had placed in a frame on one of her shelves. It was then that I realized she had told me in a very special way that she was my official grandma. Only family pictures were kept on her shelves. I was part of her family. I fell in love with Grandma Reba, but even better, she fell in love with me.
Michelle Rocker
“Grandma, you are always nice to us
from the inside out.”
Reprinted by permission of Jonny Hawkins. ©2005.
Deposition Stew
In the man whose childhood has know caresses and kindness, there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
George Eliot
The first time I saw her she was just a fat lady who served bread and soup at the shelter.
I didn’t eat there all the time. Sometimes when Momma wasn’t too bad, she was able to work and we had our own food. Now, don’t feel bad for me and start saying things like “poor girl.” I hate that. And don’t start assuming that Momma is a bad person. I hate that more.
It’s not her fault that Daddy lost his job and left town looking for work, never to come back. And it’s not her fault she got sick right after she started working at the Food Lion down the road. People don’t like it when a cashier coughs on their produce, so Mr. Ranier had to let her go. He said he would hire her back if she got rid of that cough. She was reliable, she never came in late and she never took a sick day. Maybe she should have. Maybe if she saw a doctor before things got too bad she might have gotten better.
“I have to work,” she’d say, brushing off my worries as if they didn’t count for anything.
Sometimes she knew a job wouldn’t last. Like the time she took a position as a secretary for a lawyer downtown. Momma couldn’t type and she couldn’t spell, but she tried her best. When that man saw the deposition she worked on all week, he turned all red and fired her on the spot.
“That’s okay, baby,” Momma said. “I got paid, and I’ll make some chicken and dumplings. We’ll have a feast.”
After that, whenever she got a good-size check, Momma would make some “deposition stew.” That’s what she called chicken and dumplings from then on. It was our secret recipe, and we always laughed when we ate it.
We hadn’t had many reasons to laugh the first time that fat lady came to work at the shelter. She seemed nice enough though, until she started asking questions.
“How old are you, little girl?”
“I ain’t little,” I told her. “I’m five, and I’m big for my age.”
“Yes, you are,” she agreed, taking a step back to get a better look at me. “I would have guessed you were at least six,” she told me, trying to get back on my good side.
I didn’t trust her, but Momma said she was okay, just talking to pass the time, and I should be respectful from now on. After that, I didn’t give the fat lady any lip. I didn’t want her to think Momma didn’t raise me right.
Momma took a bad turn soon after that; she got too sick to work. We moved into a homeless shelter and took all our meals at one soup kitchen or another. I heard someone telling her she’d better make plans for me. “Someone better be ready to take over soon,” he said.
I didn’t like that kind of talk.
“I make my own plans,” I told Momma. “And my plans have me staying with you.”
“That’s what I want too, baby,” she said. “And don’t you ever forget that if anything bad happens, I’ll always be with you, no matter where you go.”
“And we’ll have ‘deposition stew,’” I laughed, remembering the wonderful smell of her chicken and gravy filling our old apartment.
“Deposition stew and homemade bread,” she told me, giving me a hug so tight I could hardly breathe.
Then she died.
“Cold as ice” is what the paramedic said when they loaded her in the ambulance. I never saw her again. By the time anyone thought about me, I was long gone.
I wandered from shelter to shelter for a day or two, attaching myself to a crowd so no one would notice I was alone. I got by okay until I went into the place where the fat lady worked.
“Where’s your momma?” she asked.
“She’s not here tonight.”
“I can see that. Where is she?”
“Can I please have some of that soup?” I asked, trying hard to remember to be respectful.
She poured a bowl, putting a big hunk of bread next to it before sitting me down for a long talk. “Now where is your momma? I know she wouldn’t want you in here all alone.”
“She’s right here with me,” I spit back at her. “Right by my side forever, just like she promised!”
“Is she now?” the lady asked, understanding and softening her demeanor. She had heard Momma’s cough and knew she wasn’t doing well. “Who will look after you now?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “I haven’t got it all figured out yet.”
“Maybe I can help,” she whispered. “You sit here and eat your soup, and I’ll see what I can do.”
A short time later, another lady, not quite as fat but otherwise looking a lot like her, came walking into the shelter offering to take me home. Seems she took in foster kids and just happened to have space for one more.
It took me a while to sort it all out, but the fat lady is momma to the one that I call Mom these days. I can’t say Momma to her . . . that name belongs to my real momma, but she’s okay with that.
“Call me whatever you like,” she said, “just don’t call me late for dinner.”
That’s funny, the way she puts it.
Tomorrow the fat lady is coming for dinner along with the rest of the family. Now I have a foster sister, two foster brothers and some cousins coming in from out of town. All that and a nice fat lady for a grandma. I’m pretty sure Momma will be watching, and she’ll laugh along with us when my new mom and I cook up some deposition stew for everyone.
“Here Grandma, taste this,” I’ll say.
Bobbi Carducci
Thanks
Letters are those winged messengers that can fly from east to west on embassie
s of love.
Jeremiah Brown Howell
Few things thrill this man more than the sight of my grandmother’s handwriting on an envelope. I always save that piece of mail for last, saving it for when I am free to pay it the attention it deserves.
I start with the many enclosures. My grandmother reads at least three newspapers and clips the articles she thinks may be of interest to family members. She prints the newspaper’s name and the date the article appeared before folding the clipping so the headline is visible on top.
Today’s batch includes a story about another adoptive parent, an announcement about a book signing and tips on defeating kidney stones. I read the clips slowly, knowing that she thought them important enough to send, and her judgment was right on the mark.
Then I finally open my grandmother’s card. She buys discounted cards for their pictures and not the printed text, which in this case congratulates me on a new job. The words that matter are the ones she writes herself.
My grandmother starts where most people merely sign their name. She completely fills that page with her neat script, moves over to the facing page, and then finishes her note as the space runs out on the back of the card.
She is thanking me for hosting a birthday party. She doesn’t simply say “Thanks,” which would still be more than I received from others. My grandmother describes every detail she appreciated, mentions the news she heard and repeats the jokes that made her laugh. She recalls past parties I’ve thrown and dwells on the highlights.
Those who say that letter writing is a lost art never received mail from my grandmother, who has once again brightened my day and lessened my load.
Stephen D. Rogers
Aunt Tooty
Where there is room in the heart, there is always room in the house.
Thomas Moore
Her American name was Aunt Tilly; I don’t know its Hebrew derivation, but to me she was always Aunt Tooty. She was the beloved substitute for my own grandmother, her sister Ida, who died before I was born.