by Noella Noelophile®
Royalty-free image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay
Wild violets always remind me of my maternal grandmother.
So do a lot of other special things.
Peanut-butter fudge and stuffed dates at Christmastime. Patchwork quilts. Backyard picnics. Church bells. (“I love to hear the sound of a church bell ringing,” she used to say.) Even the whistle of a freight train.
The latter because my family always visited my grandmother, during the holidays and summers of my growing-up years. Tucked up in bed at night during these visits, I’d hear distant train whistles. My grandfather had worked on the old Baltimore and Ohio line, as a maintenance man. Throughout my childhood, freight trains still ran on the outskirts of Wilmington, Delaware.
Royalty-free image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay
I can only imagine the life my grandmother must have had, as a married woman raising five children during the Depression. My grandfather had one of the few jobs around. How I wish I’d asked her to tell me more stories of that time.
What I do remember, though, is that she was a lady. With a very kind heart.
She had grown up as one of thirteen children, in Elk Mills, Maryland. In her day, people considered educating girls a “waste of time”. Grandmom received only a third-grade education–after which she had to stay at home and help raise her younger siblings. Years later, she would sit down to study with her own children, as they did their “lessons” after school.
Grandmom was sharp as a tack. She loved to hear people read aloud. She’d write a weekly letter to my mother, filled with news of the community. And there was very little she couldn’t do, with needle arts–or creative arts in general.
Sharing her gifts
(Royalty-free image by jacqueline Macou from Pixabay.
Many times, she’d sew clothing for a new baby in the community. She made a patchwork quilt for each of her four grandchildren. My mother used to say that Grandmom could travel into Philadelphia, see a dress she liked in a department-store window, then come home and make herself that exact dress, from scratch.
Whenever we came to visit, her special sponge cake was waiting. Candies and cookies awaited company in the pantry. Sunday dinners were a from-scratch affair with fresh vegetables and roasted chicken.
What I remember best, though, is her Christmas bread.
Royalty-free image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay
The Christmas I was thirteen, Grandmom made loaves of sweet bread in the shape of a wreath. Then, she iced them with white icing, cherries and almond slivers. We delivered them to neighbors that afternoon.
I still remember that her Christmas-wreath bread would have looked right at home in a bakery’s front window.
Ninety pounds of determination
Never a large woman, Grandmom nevertheless had an iron will. She was a faithful churchgoer: never, to my recollection, missing a Sunday. Even when health issues began draining her energy, she would get up and dress, then carefully lie down across her bed until her ride came, to the church.
And she set great store by “looking nice”.
“Make yourself neat,” she counseled one grandchild with an upcoming job interview. “Have your hair and nails neatly groomed”.
Practicing what she preached, she herself took particular care with her appearance. Every afternoon, she would go into her bedroom, comb her hair and freshen her face powder and perfume–exactly as she had done when my grandfather was alive and she was expecting him home from work.
Beauty beyond the mirror
Behavior, though, was the other side of the coin.
“Pretty is as pretty does,” she said once, in response to a grandchild’s question, “Am I pretty?”
Grandmom would live that axiom, as well.
My mother liked to tell the story of baking days during her childhood. The neighborhood children would all come by after school, for a slice of Grandmom’s freshly-baked bread with butter and sugar. “Let’s go to Auntie’s for a piece of bread,” was a common refrain.
One of my favorite stories, though, illustrated her closeness with my grandfather.
Both active members of their church, my grandparents knew when people had come across hard times. One particular instance involved a man in their community who had lost his job.
“Your grandfather and I talked about whether we could lend him the money he needed, and decided we could,” Grandmom said.
Now, she had married my grandfather in 1906–at a time when women did not yet have the right to vote. They would be married for fifty-one years. But even as a child, not knowing the thinking of their times, their life together as equal partners–in love and kindness–always impressed me.
Remembering with love
I was blessed to have my grandmother in my life until I was in my twenties. She passed at the age of ninety-two, and will always be a beloved figure in my memory.
I’ve inherited the small jelly glass in which she used to put the wild violets I’d pick from her backyard, when we came for an Easter visit. More often than not, it sits in our window, just as it used to sit in hers, with the small, cheery purple wildflowers in it–from OUR backyard. When we first saw our home, those heart-shaped leaves (not all that common in Southern California!) signaled to me: “This is it!”
Happy Mother’s Day, Grandmom. Thank you for being you.