On I Remember My Grandmas:

I have been thinking about my own grandmothers lately.

They are both long gone, more than 30++ years ago.

Of the two, I remember my mothers mom more. It was location more then anything. She lived around the corner and the other was over an hours drive away. And back in those days that was a day trip.

The first house I lived in was my Grandma’s. My parents were saving to buy a house.














This is the house from the back. With my mom in the side yard, before World War II, if you want a time reference.

Because of my grandma that house was a haven from the rest of the world. We were eight of us in a four room apartment. My parents rented out the upper floor apartment to help pay for the clothing and feeding of the six kids.

At grandma’s it was loving care, order and discipline. The food was good, hot and plain. Things were done on a schedule. They didn’t put up with roughhousing or poking about. But underneath it all was a sense of humor. Jokes flew, mostly over our heads. Giggles and laughter lived at both of my grandma’s houses.

And a sense of peacefulness. The quite comfort of an afternoon nap on the rug in a sun puddle. While grandma snoozed in her armchair rocker. The quite warmth of the hiss of the radiators in the winter. A place to go when things weren’t ‘as one would like’ with too many people living at home.

My father’s mother died when I was 14 and my mother’s mom when I was 23. But never a week passes by that I don’t think about them in one way or another. For the things that they taught me or the experiences I had at their knee.

I want to be a grandma worth remembering.