My Mother’s Mother

I’m alive because my mother lived in spite of my grandfather making an understandable choice for the doctor to save his wife instead of the baby that was struggling to be born.
The flu was ravaging the country. My grandparent’s small Chester County town saw so many people dying that there were not enough coffins to accommodate bodies.
My grandmother was pregnant and deathly sick. There was a little son in the picture and the uncertainty that my grandmother would survive the flu that was taking its victims without discrimination, and her labor began.
The doctor said that he could save only one. Did my grandfather want him to save his wife or the expected child? My grandfather had experienced the loss of his first child, a little girl. Now, he had a small son who needed a mother, and he so loved his wife.
With sadness over the need to choose, and realizing if she made it through the birth, the flu could still take her, he heartrendingly selected his wife.
Miraculously, mother and child survived the birth, and my grandmother recovered from the flu. The baby, my mother, was healthy, beautiful and strong, a preview of her entire life.
Later, my grandparents welcomed three more fine children into their family. My grandmother was a lady who was worth preserving. It seems that someone higher than all of us agreed.
When I was a child, it seemed that my grandmother had always been old. Now, of course, I realize that she wasn’t all that old. I was her oldest living daughter’s oldest daughter, so she couldn’t have been much more than 40 at the time.
I never saw her that she didn’t look spiffy clean, and smell wonderful.
Speaking of smells, most of her fragrances were Avon, but I once discovered her long hidden Evening in Paris secret.
My grandmother and grandfather had been dating for a while when he gave her a bottle of Evening in Paris perfume for her birthday. My grandmother didn’t care for it, but she never discouraged anyone, and she loved him, so she praised his gift.
Every birthday thereafter, he aimed at giving her equal or bigger sets of Evening in Paris that added to the perfume, lotion and powder in the same fragrance. He never knew anything other than the satisfying pleasure that he was giving the love of his life something she really liked. Because of that, she remained consistently delighted with his birthday gifts. Every year, she knew what to expect, but she never knew what size her gift would be.
If she had not been given a bright blue box of Evening in Paris, I suspect she would not have felt as loved. She knew how caringly he selected this special gift for her.
My grandmother, happily using my grandfather’s gift, setting an example for me that emboldened me to go to church on many Mother’s Days wearing tissue paper flowers and macaroni jewelry. She taught me the joy of wearing such badges of honor.
It was all about love.
You know how the Bible says that the two will become one in marriage? Well, my grandparents were like two parts of one. Their thoughts and goals and efforts just blended.
The only time I ever heard a stern word from one to the other, my grandfather was in the basement working on their monstrous old heater. The house had gravity heat with big square metal grates in the floors to let the heat rise. Out of frustration, my grandfather’s voice burst from beneath the grate, exclaiming, “Oh, shoot!”
Yes, it most definitely was clearly “shoot.”
My grandmother hurried to the grate where I was trying to see what Grandpa was doing, and aiming her voice through the openings of the decorative ironwork, she firmly scolded, “Charlie! Now you stop that cussing.” She didn’t want me to hear bad language, but I always remembered the forbidden word.
I can even remember thinking that it really wasn’t a bad word. They had such pure hearts, and they both were the kindest, most loving people I ever knew. I’m glad my grandmother can’t hear the language in public today.
They had six children, but the oldest died as an infant. My grandmother said that for a while she blamed herself because she had taken the baby out visiting on a cold day. Of course, that wasn’t the cause of death, and my grandmother did get over her guilt because she knew the comfort of the Lord and His word.
They raised five children and endured The Great Depression in an era of hard work. It was a time when conscientious housekeepers ironed far more than I would ever consider ironing.
My grandmother was an exceptionally careful housekeeper.
Also, worth remembering is the fact that there were no electric irons. Clothing was starched with a powdered product mixed in water, dried stiff, sparsely sprinkled with water to make it manageable, and heavy irons were heated on the stove.
Families usually had two irons with clip-on wooden handles so that the task could proceed while the cooled iron reheated. A whole day was set aside for ironing in addition to the many other daily chores. There were no such things as takeout food or boxes of easy meals in a freezer.
Life was hard work, but there was a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. In the midst of all the regular work, my grandmother took a job in the local sewing factory because my grandfather was out of work due to the bad economy. That didn’t prevent her from performing her continuous home duties.
One of her frequent sayings that often carried me was, “You can always do what you have to do.”
Like most families in rural communities, they had a garden, and during the lean years, my grandfather supplemented their food supply by hunting.
Grandma gratefully cooked my grandfather’s small game after he skinned and gutted the little critters. I remember watching her prepare long lanky rabbits and skinny little squirrels for the stew pot.
Everything tasted good from my grandmother’s kitchen .. even squirrel stew.
She taught me to meet the challenges of difficult circumstances. I think I’ve passed on a bit of that to some of my grandmother’s great-grandchildren. This achievement was all about thankfulness whenever it wasn’t simply about pride in good old-fashioned American pioneer spirit.
My grandmother worked exhaustingly hard, but never outwardly complained. Her home was open to others, and whatever they had, they shared.
Perhaps her most inspirational characteristic was that she was never known to say an unkind thing about another person. In fact, I heard her say kind things about people who made me want to be anything but kind.
She wasn’t perfect, of course, but her character and attitudes put to shame most people I know including myself. No one ever met discouragement or failure because of my grandmother’s words, and some people became better because of her example.
She left behind a whole family that remains glad to have had her if they knew her or unknowingly benefited from her influence if they lived after her time. She definitely was a lady worth preserving.