Growing up, my friends were a bit jealous of my grandmother. She looks like she is straight from Mayberry. An Aunt Bee with short hair that has been gray since she gave me my first peanut butter cookie. She giggles when amused but never loses her composure. She smiles freely, hugs often, and has iron in her spine. She was a nurse in World War II and met my grandfather at a dance. We often joked that grandma outranked grandpa, and she did. She was a lieutenant while he was a low-ranking seaman in the Navy. And while my grandfather, who taught me how to be charismatic and funny, told stories of why he will never drink tequila again. That story got funnier and funnier as I grew older and understood what tequila can do to you in the morning after.
My grandmother is more reserved with her stories. If asked and pushed, she will tell you about growing up on a farm in North Dakota during the depression. The oldest of 9 children, she was never one to idle. When she was 80 she came to visit me and her great grandkids at my house. I went to the store, and by the time I got back, she has cleaned my oven. I should feel guilty about that, but I have never known my grandmother to be any other way.
She would tell stories of how when she was first married to my grandfather, they had to use cardboard to cover where windows would have gone. She talks about getting up before dawn to milk a cow and tend to chickens. And in a drawer in the kitchen, even now almost 100 years later, she keeps every single twist tie she has ever taken off of a loaf of bread. Some habits from the Great Depression never leave a person.
Grandma was a nurse for a local hospital when I was a kid. The kind of stern woman that never seemed to panic. And given her life and her vocation, I imagined that it was hard earned. She was the go-to for any of my many injuries. She was always there with a pack of ice for a sprain, a set of scissors and tweezers to take out stitches, and a jar of peanut butter cookies.
I don’t think my grandma’s cookie recipe is anything special. It’s not handed down through the generations. Honestly, it probably came out of a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 1950s, when lard was a common ingredient and engine lubrication. On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be anything magical about them. But for me, the middle child that often made do with hand-me down jeans or a little sister that got the good car, they were a piece of heaven.
When I went to college, a random package would often come. It would have homemade fudge, clipped articles from a random newspaper in Arkansas, and always peanut butter cookies. She would crochet me different little knick-knacks and they were my dorm room decorations. Boots that acted as bookends in the color of my collage, or a blanket made from the buckets of yarn she keeps in her home. My friends would rally around these care packages as if they were gifts from heaven, which they were. I always shared as I talked about my grandma, but I would hide the peanut butter cookies.
I’ve been lucky enough that my grandmother has met all three of my children and have shown them the jar that she kept just for me. When we visit and they dig their hands in, I’m right there with them. It feels like just when I was a kid and for a moment, I still am. She has 8 great grandchildren now, and never forgets a birthday, a holiday, and sometimes even a random Tuesday.
She never sends emails or video cards. She writes letters on old fashioned stationary. Her cursive writing a jumble of crooked letters with sharp endings. You wouldn’t be able to read them if you haven’t been doing it your entire life, which I have. In the hardest parts of my youth, I’ve kept one in my wallet to look at from time to time. It talks about the weather, what spring will look like, and a wish that I am well. It sat next to sonogram pictures of my kids until age disintegrated the paper.
My kids look at her and can get the very same experience that I had growing up.
“Where is grandma? It’s late!” they’ll ask.
“Down at the VFW. Dancing,” I say.
And no one is surprised. She was 94 when we last had this conversation.
Yesterday, grandma had to go to the hospital. There’s a part of me that is ready for it and when I got the call, I expected the worst. But luckily, she was just dehydrated and sent home. At 99, that is the best we can hope for. She’s slowed down the last several years. She doesn’t walk 3 miles a day as much, but I’m pretty sure she still goes dancing after midnight. I’ve made plans on what I’m supposed to do and have faced the decisions that I’ll have to make. But she’s home now, and her birthday is this month. She will be 100.
I’m not afraid of the next moments. I know that I have been luckier than most. Not only because she has been healthy my whole life, but because she is the iron in my spine when I need it most. I feel more than at home with her. I feel special, seen, and unique. I’m not invisible.
I’m bringing the family down to see her in a couple of weeks. We will get hugs and then all four of us will run to the kitchen. I’ll show the kids her collection of twist ties in the kitchen drawer than never changes. And we will once more put our hands into a white ceramic jar and pull out that one thing that always made me feel important.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
