My Grandpa

     Grandpa isn’t far from my thoughts either as Father’s Day was celebrated a few days ago.  He’s been gone 5 years now.  He slipped out of this world while I was in Peru for the first time, but also has left me with many memories. 

     Some of my fondest memories are the way Grandpa liked to tease.  He and I would banter back and forth teasing one another and getting Grandma all riled up.  At other times he’d let a cat or dog into the house on purpose just to get Grandma’s goats.  Although he was truly a bit hard of hearing later in life, he chose to have selective hearing on many occasions just to get a reaction out of Grandma.  Really, I think he spent a good portion of his later years stirring up little bits of chaos in Grandma’s orderly house just to bring a little more life to their home. 

    

His Sweet Tooth

     Grandpa was known for his sweet tooth.  I’m not really sure there was something sweet that he didn’t like.  A glass goose sat on the kitchen table or on top of the refrigerator stocked with lemon drops for Grandpa and any grandchild who passed by.  

     When he’d go into the small brick bank on Main Street in Wakefield, he’d take a sucker for himself and then pick up a few for his grandkids.  The best suckers weren’t the spherical Dum Dums common today, but the flat circular lollipops of usually two or three colors, often green white and orange swirled together, that came out of a clear wrapper and caressed our tongues with sweet fruity flavors. 

     When Grandma would make cookies, Grandpa would already make several passes through hthe kitchen as he smelled them baking.  Within minutes of them being out of the oven on cooling racks, he’d slip in an steal the hot cookies while Grandma had her back turned.  When she’d catch him, he just complimented her on the cookies and suggested that she make them more often. 

   

Stubborn Streak

   Grandpa was stubborn about many things, but one thing I remember well was when he was given a golf cart to drive around the farm, so he wouldn’t have to walk so much or to transport his gardening tools.  That first year, the golf cart sat and he refused to use it, but come the next spring when he felt like the idea would be accepted as his own rather than a suggestion from others, he became nearly inseparable from it making many trips up and down and across the driveway daily.  He even then liked to comment that he had a pretty nice ride, and no one brought up the fact that he hadn’t wanted to use it earlier.  We all pretended to have forgotten.

The Mail

     The noon hour when the mail arrived was Grandpa’s favorite time of day.  He loved to receive mail and it didn’t matter what it was.  When Grandma would get her hands on the mail first, she through the junk mail in the trash before sending it on to Grandpa who could be found seated at his desk in the dining room or reclining in his chair in the southwest corner of the living room.  When Grandpa got the mail, he didn’t throw anything out until he’d opened every last advertisement or credit card offer, just to see what it was. 

     Reading the newspaper was a daily ritual for him.  He subscribed to the Pender Times, the Wakefield Republican and the Omaha World Herald.  He read them all as well as the Morning Shopper and some green and white paper that had agricultural news or adds.  Sometimes he’d doze off reading the paper, but was sure to return to it later in the day.  I didn’t know until much later that he was allergic to the ink in the newspapers, but that didn’t stop him. 

The Overalls

     Grandpa was a farmer through and through.  They had a picture of two little farmers on the landing towards the upstairs for the majority of my life, in which the two toddlers were dressed in overalls and one asked, “You been farming long?”  In nearly all of my early memories, those overalls of thin blue and grey stripes were Grandpa’s uniform.  From the pockets of his overalls, he’d pull out miniature boxes of Aztec Chiclet gum for us when he stopped the mower or walked by the little green merry-go-round or orange teeter-totter to tease us.  We’d open the boxes with delight and pop the two little green rectangles into our mouths and begin chewing.

     Potatoes had to be planted on Good Friday.  Grandpa was the expert.  His knees covered in moist brown dirt, he’d pull out pieces of potatoes from a large paper sack and instruct us where to place them and how to cover them.  Dirt beneath our finger nails, the smell of spring on our clothes and a little chilled from the early spring air, we’d take a break with Grandpa when Grandma brought us a pitcher of freshly mixed lemonade, then we’d get back to planting.

     Grandpa could make anything grow and knew when to harvest each crop, but one thing we never did agree on was the size at which cucumbers should be plucked from their vines.  I was in favor of small,  sweet veggies with equally small seeds, while Grandpa loved to see how big the cucumbers would grow and didn’t mind eating their large slimy seeds.  For years, when I was down at the house, I’d look out the kitchen window to see a man in overalls and a grey cap, tromp across the driveway from the garden, up the sidewalk, up the stairs and hand me a giant cucumber with a smile on his face cautioning me to make sure I didn’t eat it up before he had a chance to share it at dinnertime.

My Grandma

This week has been a little tough for me.  I’ve missed my grandma a lot.  I always miss her on Saturdays.  We spent nearly every Saturday morning together.  I’d clean and help her cook and we’d talk about anything and everything.  Sometimes I’d draw.  Sometimes we’d play the organ together.  Sometimes we’d just sit and visit.  Saturdays were our days.  She was one of the best friends and mentors I’ve ever had.    To this day, I feel the need to clean the house every Saturday morning. 

She wasn’t big on celebrating birthdays, and I don’t remember ever doing much for her birthday besides having a nice meal or a picnic but there’s something about dates and remembering people on their birthdays.  If she hadn’t left us almost three years ago, she would have been 97 six days ago.

I guess I’d always known it was coming, but I chose to deny her departure.  I remember a neighbor lady visiting when I was down at her house one Saturday morning and Grandma had told her friend that she hoped I’d never stop going down to her house.  When I finished college, I was bound for Kenya 10 days later, but I went down to her house every single day in between.  Her breathing had changed.  I recognized it immediately.  It was no longer the even, quiet rhythm of someone who is well, but rather she drew in shorter raspier breaths.  I didn’t want to admit that she was getting old, that something was wrong and that she wouldn’t be around forever.  That last day, she seemed like a little girl, something so uncharacteristic of her proper and restrained self.  She gave me a hug hurriedly and like a childhood friend, eager to meet again exclaimed, “I hope the time hurries up and you’re back in no time.  I wish December could get here right now.”  I’d never seen that part of her and I as left her house in tears, I couldn’t look back, because I knew that she too was crying.  I think we both knew we wouldn’t meet again. 

Now her stories and the memories we shared are all I have left of her.  Here are a few anecdotes that I remember her by.   

A Dream of Flower Children

Although she didn’t consider herself a dreamer or to fantasize about things she did tell me a story of something she desired when she was very young.  She dreamed of flower children, but not of the kind famous during the 1960s.  As a young girl, Henrietta dreamed of one day having six children (specifically daughters) and naming them each after flowers.  Some names included Pansy, Daisy, Violet, and Lily.  If I ever have a daughter, I will give her the name of a flower, perhaps not one of the names my grandma would have chosen, but a flower that we both loved. 

Her Life Was Full of Music

Grandma loved music.  On Saturdays we would often sit down at the organ (and in her final years at the keyboard) and she would play filling the house with music.  She was very talented and could sit down and expertly play any piece set before her.  She often played church hymns, but also enjoyed folk music.  A favorite among her music books was a large green song book published by Reader’s Digest.  She loved a song which began with the lyrics, “How much is that Doggie in the Window?”  In addition to playing music, she loved listening to instrumental music and disliked country music claiming, “It sounds sad.” 

I heard a story about how she heard, “Hello Mrs. Robinson” a few too many times before the record disappeared.  She laughed about this story as she would tell it years after the incident. 

Grandma had the largest music box collection of any person I’ve known.  The ornamental song boxes lined the top of the kitchen cupboards, covered an entire bookcase in the sewing room, and decorated shelves and dressers in various other rooms throughout the house.  Grandma shared her love of music with others by giving music boxes to many family members and friends as gifts. 

I Had No Vegetable Shelf

It’s a parent’s job to raise a child—teaching them right from wrong as well as teaching them proper eating habits.  It’s a grandparent’s job to spoil a child.  Grandma and Grandpa spoiled me, especially when it came to food. 

Grandpa always had tiny boxes of chewing gum in the pockets of his overalls.  He had an enormous sweet tooth.  It was for that reason that they kept lemon drops in a decorative glass container on the kitchen table.  Most, if not all, of the grandchildren appreciated the sweet treat. 

Grandma understood that everyone has some kind of food that he or she does not care for.  For her it was soup.  For me it was vegetables.  She would say, “A person knows what he likes.  No one should have to eat food that they don’t like.”  Sometime in early elementary school, I readily explained to Grandma that the inside of my body was organized like a refrigerator.  I insisted that my vegetable shelf was missing, so I simply couldn’t eat them.  Grandma never protested and never asked me to eat canned vegetables.  After all, she knew that I had “no vegetable shelf.”  After high school and spending a year in Germany, I discovered that I like vegetables, just not canned ones.  When I told Grandma, she chuckled and exclaimed, “So you finally found your vegetable shelf!”     

Grandma’s Kitchen

Decorated with music boxes, magnets on the refrigerator and grandchildren’s drawings taped to the walls, Grandma’s kitchen always gave the feeling a being used but was still tidy.  She always kept a jar of nuts by the door, a bottle of honey on the table and cookies in a Tupperware container on top of the refrigerator. 

Grandma was a good cook.  She didn’t have an extremely diverse array of dishes that she prepared, but the things she did prepare, she made well.  Calico corn was one of her specialties, as were mashed potatoes.  Few meals at her house lacked potatoes.  She could make gravy and roasts as well.  She satisfied Grandpa’s sweet tooth with many baked goods—particularly her pumpkin pies, chocolate chip cookies and angel food cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries.  No meal, or visit for that matter, was ever complete without a glass of lemonade that she always kept on hand. 

Grandma was a good cook and patient teacher.  We cooked and did the dishes together after each meal.  On numerous occasions she told me how she had had a cousin with whom she sometimes washed the dishes as a child.  Whenever Henrietta , who was drying the dishes, had pointed out that a piece of kitchenware or tableware was unclean, she had been told that it was the dryer’s job to clean up those things with the towel.  That rule still stood decades later as one or the other of us washed the dishes while the other dried them.

The Blue Chair

Many times when I stopped by Grandma’s house, I would rap on the door once or twice, then hear the familiar, cheerful call from the sitting room, “Come in!”  I’d walk in, take a handful of nuts from the jar that she always kept well-stocked next to the entryway.  I’d take a seat in the living room.  Maybe it’s because blue was her favourite colour, or maybe it’s because she found comfort in routine, but the light blue recliner was a very common place to find her. 

As I’d sit, Grandma would put down whatever she was reading (oftentimes Reader’s Digest) on the small stand next to her chair, smooth her clothes, running her hands across her lap to her knees as she’d lean forward and say, “Now tell me…what news do you have for me?”  I’d tell her my news and she’d tell me hers.  Often she told of the progress of her flowers, of the latest birds or animals she’d seen and of the books that she’d read. 

                Grandma loved to red non-fiction books.  Being practical and valuing honesty, historical non-fiction was her preferred genre.  Grandma’s desire for truth was a reason for her to view novels as a waste of her time and to insist that children should not be told of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, because children should not be deceived. 

                After discussing many things, cooking, doing dishes, and eating, we would always return to the living room where Grandma would adjust a small pillow as she settled back into her pale blue recliner.

The Writer in the Family

I knew Grandma as a generous, though not an affectionate woman, who aimed to please others.  She liked to be in the presence of others, but preferably very few people at a time!  She was very good about communicating and keeping in contact with family and friends by writing letters.  I received letters nearly every two weeks from Grandma, after I was no longer home and able to visit every Saturday.  She always closed her letters with, “Love and Hugs, Grandpa and Grandma B.”  She was kind, a great listener and soft spoken, yet was well understood through her letters.  I found the farewells of her letters fitting, as each time I left, she gave me a hug and called, “Come again!” as she did to everyone who walked out her door.

Like Clockwork

Grandma loved to have order in her life.  She used to have me write inventory lists of the items in her kitchen cupboards.  The house was always tidy.  Everything had its place.  When it came to trips, visits and visitors, plans were much better than surprises.  We spent Saturdays together.  On Sundays, Grandpa would go to church in Thurston.  On Fridays, they would go into Wakefield and run their errands—Grandpa going to the band and farmers co-op, while Grandma got her hair done at Pam From’s parlour and went to the Fairstore where she always received a warm welcome from Charlie Sodeberg.  I remember one Friday morning when people even called home to ask if something was the matter, because she hadn’t shown up at the Fairstore.  They were concerned because she was there every week “like clockwork.”

Laughter

Grandma didn’t have a loud, contagious laugh like some people do, but when she found something funny her body language said so.  Grandma had a soft chuckle—usually consisting of two syllables while she raised her hands and brought them down to pat her lap.  Real “knee-slappers” as some might say.  Grandma’s sense of humor often involved a play on words or silly things that happened and she did not tolerate anything that she felt was mean in anyway.  Grandpa and I used to get Grandma all riled up as we teased one another.  She wanted none of it.  In Grandpa’s final year, when he had a cane, he was joking about chicken hooking me with it as he reached the cane across the table to hook my neck.  Grandma tried to defend me, threatening to take away Grandpa’s cane.  Grandpa and I laughed.  Grandma didn’t want to, but eventually she did too.