The Other Grandmother

One of my fears, and I’m not saying it’s a rational one, is of becoming the other grandmother; the one who lives further away and doesn’t get to spend as much time with the grandkids. When I was growing up, my family spent many Sunday afternoons at my grandparents’ farm. The farm was about an hour’s drive from my home which, when I was a child and prone to carsickness, seemed  an insufferable length of time to be trapped in the backseat of a Chevy. My other grandmother lived about a half hour further away, and so I saw her less frequently than I did the farm grandparents.

I didn’t know my other grandmother well, but I do have a few distinct memories of her. I remember that during the extra half hour drive to her house, we passed a small wildlife exhibit which featured a bear kept in a cage. The bear’s name was Toby and, even though it would make the trip to Grandma’s take even longer, my siblings and I always begged Dad to stop and let us see Toby the Bear.

I never met my grandfather; he died when my father was a young man, before my parents were married. Grandma lived with one of my aunts who never married, in a tiny house in a small town in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. Next door to her house was an actual mansion and, although its owners shared garage space with Grandma, I never met them or knew anything about them. Several years ago my brother told me he saw the mansion listed for sale in The Wall Street Journal, and I realized I’d never learned the story of who built it. I’m guessing its first owners were somehow connected with the oil boom which took place in that area in the late 1800s.

Dad and My Brothers, circa 1976

The Allegheny River flowed through the rear of Grandma’s property. The small town in which she lived continues to host the annual Pennsylvania State Championship Fishing Tournament. One year my dad took my two brothers to Grandma’s for the tournament, and each caught monster-sized carp. The younger of the two, and the one who caught the larger fish, still remembers that his measured twenty-eight inches and weighed fourteen pounds.

Triumph Swedish Union Church. Tidioute, PA

I don’t remember Grandma being a church-goer, but I learned sometime after her death that her parents, Samuel and Lovina Donaldson, had sold a piece of their property to a small Swedish church in town. The church served a small congregation of immigrants who were mostly farmers and oil field workers. Grandma even taught me a Swedish phrase: tack så mycket which means thank you, very much. I’m sure she used the phrase when I made the trek to her house to introduce her to my beloved Swedish fiancé.

When I think of my grandmother, I think about yarn. She always had piles of the stuff which she would pull out to describe her latest project. I remember the year she gave me a pink poodle she’d crocheted to cover a bottle of clear nail polish. Even now, in my home I have three afghans which bear witness to the work of her hands. I remember her in her later years, when she could no longer work her needle, and felt as though an important part of Grandma was gone.

Grandma often kept cans of Pepsi in a refrigerator in her basement which seemed a luxury since, when I was young; my parents didn’t often keep pop in the house. To get to the refrigerator, one had to walk through Grandma’s mudroom, passing a cactus which was taller than both she and my aunt. She didn’t have many toys or games at her house, just a few puzzles and an electric organ which my cousins and I played around with when we visited. Grandma often served us Jell-O, which she referred to as “wiggle food.”

My grandma taught me a technique for memorizing the alphabet backwards, a party trick which I continue to pull out to this day. A school teacher by training, Grandma explained that the secret was to break down the alphabet into short letter sequences. She told me, “Once you learn it, you’ll always remember it.” And I have. The sequence is here:

ZYXW    VUT       SRQ        PONML             K             JIHG      FED        CBA

I have no idea if or when I might ever be a grandmother, or how far away I might live from grandchildren when they come along. I’m certain I won’t crochet them anything. But perhaps, when they come to visit, I’ll tell them that the real name for Jell-O is Wiggle Food, and I’ll teach them the trick for reciting the alphabet backwards. And as they drive away, I’ll be sure to wave with both hands.

Sharing another imperfect memory over at emily's place: