Just as I wondered how we would be able to fire up the cook stove, Mom walked into the kitchen. She added kindling to the coals and a little later carefully opened the oven door and stuck her hand inside. She announced that the temperature was just right. I proudly carried the cake to the wood stove, and Mom popped it into the oven.
Grandma eased herself back into the rocker and said with a smile, “Someday you will face difficulties. Don't be too blind to look around and see how you can overcome them. Use the materials and abilities that God gives you. Count what you have, not what you don't have.”
I don't remember how the cake turned out, but I have never forgotten the making of it.
Norma Favor
Frozen Water . . . Melted Hearts
K
indness is more important than wisdom, and
the recognition of this is the beginning of
wisdom.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
When my grandmother repeatedly left pots of water on the stove, dangerously simmering away unattended, the reality was there. The time had come to move her to an assisted-living facility.
It ripped our hearts from our chests to move this usually sweet but now angry woman into her “new home.” I reassured myself,
She is forgetting too many things and could
really hurt herself or others.
Back at her house we began the arduous task of cleaning her home of twenty-seven years. I was given the assignment of cleaning the refrigerator and freezer. So many memories of life with my grandmother flooded my mind: Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, summers canning fruits and vegetables, and special times spent delivering home-cooked meals to those in need.
I was jolted from these pleasant memories when I discovered thirty tiny juice bottles filled with frozen water. More evidence of my grandmother's senility. Not wanting to add to my aunt and uncle's heavy heart, I quickly threw them in a large trash bag.
It must be tough seeing
your own mother slowly losing her mind,
I said to myself.
I
don't like seeing it either.
A protective covering formed over my heart as I completed my assigned task. Like the ice lining the freezer, I hardened my heart so the pain would not overtake me. I heard laughter coming from the other rooms of the house as family members cleaned and reminisced. Those sounds that for years fittingly filled my grandmother's home now seemed out of place. “How can they laugh at a time like this?” I murmured as I shoved the last item into the plastic garbage bag.
My mind drifted to the memories of my grandfather, who had passed away several years earlier. Grandmother doted on him. After he died she turned her attention to her children and grandchildren. I always enjoyed going to Grandmother's because she knew just what each grandchild liked to eat. She lovingly prepared our favorite dishes and placed them in the freezer just in case we came to visit.
Smiling at the recollection, I headed for the door, wanting to leave with a good memory fresh in my mind.
Before going to our own homes, my sister and I stopped at Grandmother's new one to visit her. Before we left she showed us pictures of her beloved home and garden. In an almost therapeutic way she shared stories of the people in each photographâwhen suddenly she halted. She stared at a picture of herself and a large man with dark skin standing by her rose-covered trellis. With a wrinkled forehead and set jaw, she turned to me, demanding, “Who's taking care of Melvin?”
“Who's Melvin, Grandmother?” I asked, almost afraid of the jumbled answer to come.
“He's the garbage man. I always leave a frozen bottle of water for him, tied to the post by the garbage can. Somebody needs to take care of him now that I'm gone.”
My heart melted. While we thought she was forgetting important things, she was still remembering the most important ones.
Cheri Lynn Cowell
B
ecoming a grandmother is wonderful. One
moment you're just a mother. The next you are
all-wise and prehistoric.
Pam Brown
She was a wild woman of the west. Unlike any woman you've met, she left an impression on you that you'd never forget. She wore crazy earrings, loved the desert and looked like she walked right out of a Louis L'Amour novel. Her name was Waneene, my husband's grandmother, and we called her Nana.
Nana was eccentric, feisty and spicy. And at the same time she was one of the kindest, most softhearted women who ever walked this earth. Accepting everyone as they are, she loved you completely and made you feel like you were somehow more special than anyone else. It was her way, a gift with her. She never let a conversation with me end without saying, “I love you, darlin'.”
A child of the earth, Nana preferred the outdoors and hungered for it like a firefly for a summer night. The most remarkable thing about her was that she lived as she pleased and didn't give a hoot what anyone thought. “True to herself” is the best way I can describe her. She taught me that and reminded me often to embrace life and love and to live with all my heart. “Life is short, don't waste a second of it,” seemed to be her mantra, as she repeated it to me often and emphatically. She not only said it, but she lived it too.
When the Utah winters slowly melted away, Nana would give her landlord notice, pack up her apartment and move into a tent for the summer. She loved the mountains; she loved the desert; she loved anything and anywhere outside. Camping and hunting were as natural to her as cookie baking to most grandmothers. Swearing she had the spirit of a Native American, I could picture Nana squatting near a campfire, making an aloe medicine concoction from scratch and weaving a basket. With her own pistol and a love for jerky, venison and cold river water, she could easily have fit in during the wild days of western migration. I can visualize her winning a shooting contest with Billy the Kid and then telling him to mind his manners.
Our family spent many happy summers camping with Nana and learning the ways of nature. She personally taught me how to cook a full meal for six over a campfire with nothing more than flour and weird spices. Whenever we ate Nana's cooking, we usually whispered discreetly to each other, “What the heck is this?”
The first summer I met her, we attended our first Mountain Man Rendezvous, where we ate fried bread dripping with honey and joined an Indian pow-wow. Nana, head thrown back in laughter, eyes sparkling as she joined in the Native American dance of friendship, her sun-catcher earrings glinting in the firelight, showed me how to really live. Over the years, Nana's lessons in living impacted me, and I began to remember to cherish each little miracle in my own life. I remembered to say “I love you” more often, to stop and watch the clouds float by, and to accept others with a wide-open heart, always feeling Nana prompting me.
My husband told me of amazing childhood memories of living in a ghost town in Arizona with this woman who was part gypsy, part cowgirl. She taught him how to pan for gold, and together they fed wild burros that had long ago been abandoned by silver miners. They watched weekend “shoot-outs” on the dusty, dirt-covered main street of the tiny western town, a pocket of history alive in the Arizona desert. His childhood was painted with adventures with Nana, wherever she happened to be living at the time. She taught him to love God and nature, and our children were blessed to have these values passed on to them. At times I can see glimpses of the earthiness of Nana in my children's spirits. My oldest son loves nothing more than to sleep under the stars and catch his own meals in the cold, flowing stream. Just like Nana.
“I'm here for you, honey,” she said when my sister died of a brain tumor. I didn't know that only three weeks later I would be giving the eulogy at Nana's own funeral.
On Mother's Day, Nana was absent from our traditional family dinner. My gift to her lay unopened, the card sealed. She didn't feel well enough for the one-hour drive out of the mountains where she lived. We called her that night and made plans to drive up soon for a visit. I told her how much we all loved her, and she told me that it was important to her that I understand that she knew. Her last words to me were, “I love you, darlin'.”
The following Sunday, as my family was driving home from Palm Springs, where we had spent the week, the car phone call came. Nana had died. Suddenly and without warning, she was gone.
I wish I had hugged her one last time and thanked her for teaching me to be true to myself, to love unconditionally and to live life with zest and passion. I miss Nana, but her spirit remains eternally. I see her in the sunset, in the untamed desert of the west. I see her in the mountains of Utah and the dancing fields of wildflowers. I see her in every bit of beauty that God has blessed us with, and forever I will see her in the eyes and spirits of my children.
I love you, darlin'.
Susan Farr-Fahncke
I
cannot but remember such things were, that
were most precious to me.
William Shakespeare
My grandmother was perfect in most ways. Like other prairie mothers she had worked hard, raised her kids, attended church and crops with equal importance, and sewed and mended umpteen pairs of britches. She baked for bake sales, helped birth babies and calves, and never said a swear word, even when things were really bad. Only one thing kept her from being perfect. Grandmother had a quiet addiction that only we knew about: her relentless obsession with jigsaw puzzles.
There was never a time I can remember that a half-finished tiger or Eiffel tower didn't grace her kitchen table. Amid canning jars or supper plates laid the quiet addiction. The box with the jumble of pieces was set on top of the icebox when company was over to keep it away from prying fingers that might be dirty or elbows that might launch it. During supper a fresh tea towel would cover and conceal a work in progress. But once the meal was over it would be uncovered, and Grandmother would be at it again.
It was Grandfather's fault in the beginning. He got her the first one from the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog. He figured it would give them something to do during the cold prairie nights before bedtime. It was either that or shell out dollars for one of those newfangled televisions Grandmother had hinted for but that he could not afford.
So he got one pretty puzzle with flowers on it by some fellow named Van Gogh. Grandmother took to it like a chicken to scratch, forgetting about the silly television and spreading out the pieces like trinkets of gold upon the clean kitchen table. Grandfather never got the hang of it, his thick fingers not able to pry apart the little pieces and his puzzle ability leaving a lot to be desired. So he retired to the den and his paper and she to her jigsaw. They spent many a peaceful evening in separate rooms this way.
But jigsaws soon became an obsession. After a while all her egg money was going to buy newer, harder ones. She became a puzzle expert, knowing the best brands and searching for them at church bazaars and cast-off sales.
Her nighttime habit soon became her morning and afternoon one as well.
One day she lost track of time and heard Grandfather roar home on the tractor. She realized she hadn't even started supper yet! She dashed to the kitchen and put an onion in a frying pan, giving the aroma of a home-cooked meal on its way to maturity. Grandfather never could figure out what smelled so good when he got in, or how it turned into cold beans and Spam.
We children loved Grandmother's quiet addiction, especially me. Our days with her always included a jigsaw puzzle, though she called it “learning.” History was taught by completing a puzzle of the
Mayflower'
s landing, nature by doing one on sunflowers, art appreciation by completing the masters like Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Whistler. Social studies involved completing maps and pictures of foreign countries. Through it all Grandmother would talk. Did I know that the first jigsaws were actually invented by John Spilsbury, who produced a cut-up of an old map in 1762? That Chinese rice was grown in wet paddy fields and Indians used canoes to harvest wild rice? That tigers live alone but lions live in families called prides?
I learned my math: “Twenty pieces left in a thousand-piece puzzle means how much have we done?” Solving abilities. “Always do your frame first, then match colors.” And to never neglect chores: “Nancy! Bring the broom! The cat's got into the puzzle and we need to find three pieces!”
After years of fighting for elbow room on the kitchen table and missing her company by the fire, Grandfather built Grandmother a puzzle table, just the right size to do her jigsaws in the parlor. He took some ribbing for feeding her “quiet addiction,” but he shrugged his shoulders and said, “T'aint much of a fault in a woman. Besides, I'm the one who started it all.” In later years, he sat beside her, going through her puzzle box for errant pieces when her eyesight started to dim. “Here's the blue bit you've been looking for,” he'd say, and she would smile and press it in its place.
I wonder if Grandmother knows the legacy she left me. Upstairs in my daughter's room one of those three-dimensional puzzles sits half finished in a protective tray her father built to keep the cats out. Boxes of foxes, lions, sunsets and famous paintings line the upstairs shelves, waiting for a power outage, a cold rainy afternoon or a visit from friends. Tucked away by the dining room table is a puzzle mat rolled up with a half-finished treasure inside it.