Grandmother started. Being the oldest, she held her
oplatek
out to me and I, the youngest, held mine out to her. She wished wonderful things for me. I know because my mother translated what she said. As Grandmother wished, she broke off my waferâa small amount broken off for each wish. Then I wished my grandmother wonderful things. Again my mother translated, but this time in Polish. We put the broken wafers in our mouths and kissed. The ceremony continued throughout the family until my wafer was reduced to a crumb.
I loved all the kind things people wished. Sometimes it was all in Polish, sometimes in English and other times it was some kind of mixture of Polish and English. My aunt would wish, “Get good grades in school, stay healthy, and maybe you'll get that bike.”
My mother would say, “Be good and we can talk about that puppy.”
So many wonderful wishesâexcept for my brother's goofy wish, like, “I wish Trudy would get lots of toys for Christmas so she'll leave mine alone.”
After the ceremony, my grandmother stacked my plate with dumplings filled with sauerkraut, cheese and potatoes called
pierògies,
cheese-filled crepes called
nalesnikies, chruscikies
âpastries sprinkled with powdered sugarâand apple strudel.
There were many other foods. Borscht, horseradish and sauerkraut were tasty, but I didn't eat everythingâthe pickled herring and mushrooms were yucky.
My grandmother sat at the head of the table on the other side of the room. She smiled at me with her eyes, and I smiled back with mine. She knew how to hug across a room. I felt loved all over, in Polish and in English.
Later, I fell asleep on a little bench off in the corner of the warm kitchen. Grandmother reached down and gently touched my face. As I woke and stood up she looked at me lovingly, reached over and hugged me. As we were getting ready to leave for church, she helped me with my coat and earmuffs. I left my hand muff on the bed. I didn't need it. She would keep me warm. I held her hand. She held my heart.
Trudy Reeder
F
aith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It
allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands.
It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own.
Terry Tempest Williams
It started with her name.
Luella Konstance Peterson Lovstuen.
At least, we thought that was her name . . . until she died and we saw her birth certificate. Then we found out she had been born Luella Caspara Peterson. She hated her middle name and changed it to Constance . . . with a K. She loved her initials, LKL, and changed her monogram on her handkerchiefs so that the K had the most prominent spot. That's the way she wanted it, so that's the way it was.
She just handled it.
She bore and raised six children, three boys and three girls, during the Depression era. She carried a heavy, pregnant belly during the furnacelike summer months, when temperatures stayed over one hundred degrees for weeks on end, working to sew clothes for her children, putting up preserves for the winter and helping on the farm. She cooked for threshers on a wood-burning stove in a small kitchen without air conditioning. I might have gone mad with the heat and the work.
She just handled it.
She struggled to keep her children warm in the harsh winters that still hold records. She bore her first child in February when the temperature had been at least fifteen degrees below zero for weeks, sometimes dipping to thirty degrees below at night. She worked to keep the stove going, often sleeping next to it. Wind chills on the flat Iowa fields were worse. She toiled to keep her family warm and fed despite the lack of necessary items during the Depression.
She just handled it.
When her husband reached his thirties he became very ill with paranoid schizophrenia. He wasn't like Russell Crowe's movie portrayal of a misunderstood genius. He was mean, nasty, delusional and a danger to himself and others. When the safety of her children was threatened because of the disease-induced hallucinations, she made sure that he was sent somewhere to get help. She also made sure that he couldn't threaten her children and her anymore.
She just handled it.
Times grew worse and the farm failed. She moved the six children into town, and she got a job at the local five-and-dime. She supported her family at a time when the term “single parenting” had yet to be coined. She still sewed all of their clothing and made sure that they were clean, churchgoing and well-loved. She didn't really have time to whine about the single-parenting dynamic; she was too busy ensuring that food was on the table and her children were growing up to be decent people.
She just handled it.
As her children grew up, they got jobs and tried to help out at home, but as time went on the boys joined the service and the girls left to get married or start lives of their own. With two brothers in town and the Depression over, things began to look better. Then her brother was struck with an excruciatingly painful disease. Medication didn't touch the pain, but it messed with his normal thought processes. In anguish he took his own life. She was devastated. None of us really knew how deeply it affected her until years later.
She just handled it.
When I reached middle age I sat talking with my grandma, who was in her late eighties, about her life. I commented on the trials and hardships she had endured. When she talked about her life, though, she talked about the joy, the blessings and the love. Problems were never the centerpiece of her conversations. This sweet, gentle woman still had such a tender heart. Mine, I fear, may have become bitter under those circumstances.
She just handled it.
“Grandma, how did you handle it all?” I asked as we talked, looking for the wisdom that would bring me through my own trials. She looked at me and the wrinkles grew deeper in her velvety skin as she smiled her sweet smile.
“I didn't,” she said. “God did.”
Karen J. Olson
T
ell me a fact, and I will learn. Tell me a truth,
and I will believe. Tell me a story, and it will live
in my heart forever.
Indian Proverb
When I was a little girl, Christmas Eve was a time of family storytelling.
One of my favorite childhood stories was one that Grandma told every year. “Sometimes the best gifts come without ribbons or bows,” she would say to her family before beginning this favorite story:
It was 1918, and Grandpa worked paving the roadways and laying railroad tracks in the city while Grandma worked part-time in the canneries. When Grandpa came home from work, he'd eat a hurried supper and then rush off to night school to get his education. After Grandpa graduated and attained his American citizenship, he went to work full-time on the cannery lines and part-time in a shoe-repair shop. He labored on the night shift so that his days would be free to take care of the children, thereby allowing Grandma to attend school and receive an education.
Grandma anticipated her first day of school in America as a very important moment in her young life. She knew that she needed an education to become a good citizen of her new country.
On the morning of her first class, Grandma excitedly rushed to dress. Though she didn't have much of a wardrobe, what she did own was clean and well pressed. As she slipped her feet into her best pair of long black stockings, Grandma's happy mood dissolved into sadness. Her stockings were riddled with gaping holes.
“Forget about your socks, Mama; you haven't time to mend them now,” urged Grandpa. “You'll be late for class. And, anyway, I have a surprise for you!”
A moment later, Grandpa handed Grandma her old high-button shoes. Only now she hardly recognized her timeworn shoesâthey had been transformed. They gleamed with brand-new leather soles and shiny black laces. She could see her reflection in their brilliant shine. While she had slept that night, Grandpa had secretly worked until the wee hours to repair Grandma's high-button shoes.
Grandma's eyes welled with tears of gratitude as she placed a kiss on her husband's cheek. “I will look like a fine lady in these wonderful shoes, Papa,” she said.
“Hurry now, Mama, hurry. Slip your feet inside these beautiful shoes, and no one will ever suspect you have holey stockings. It will be our little secret,” Grandpa promised.
Grandma had no time now to mend her tattered stockings. So she did as her husband had suggested and slipped her stocking feet into her high-button shoes. She quickly laced them up and rushed out the doorway, pausing only a moment for Grandpa to kiss her good-bye and to hand her two one dollar bills for her classroom tuition.
Arriving at school that morning, Grandma felt uneasy in a classroom filled with strangers. Standing at the head of the class was a stern-looking teacher by the name of Mrs. Peabody. In her hand she held a long, ominous-looking pointer stick, which she used both for pointing and intimidation. She passed a large, empty bowl around the classroom and instructed each student to drop the tuition fees into the container. Every student complied. One of the more affluent students paid his fee with a bright two-dollar gold piece.
After collecting all the money, the teacher placed the bowl on her desk.
Later that afternoon, when Mrs. Peabody tallied up the tuition money, she discovered the gold coin was missing. Convinced that one of her students had taken the gold piece, she demanded that everyone in the classroom empty their pockets onto her desk. The students promptly obeyed, but no gold coin appeared. Angry and frustrated, the teacher took her search one step further and demanded that everyone in the classroom remove his or her shoes. A small gold coin could easily be hidden in a high-button shoe.
One by one, the students removed their shoes. Everyone, that is, except Grandma. She sat there frozen with embarrassment, hoping and praying the missing coin would be found before she had to slip off her shoes. But a few minutes later, when the coin failed to turn up, Mrs. Peabody pointed her stick directly at Grandma's shoes and demanded she remove them.
For what seemed like an eternity, the entire classroom stared down at Grandma's feet. Grandma, who had been so proud of her elegant shoes, just couldn't remove them now in front of her peers and expose her holey stockings. To do so would be a great disgrace.
Grandma's reluctance to remove her shoes convinced the teacher of her guilt. Mrs. Peabody marched Grandma off to the principal's office. Grandma, in tears, immediately telephoned Grandpa, who rushed down to the school. Grandpa explained to the principal why his wife was reluctant to remove her shoes. The understanding principal then allowed Grandma to remove her shoes in the privacy of his office. He soon discovered the only thing Grandma was hiding was a pair of unsightly, tattered stockings.
Grandma returned to her classroom, but all that day a shadow of suspicion hung over her.
Late that afternoon, just before the dismissal bell, Grandma was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing. When Mrs. Peabody raised her right arm to write the class assignment on the blackboard, the missing coin fell from the cuff of her sleeve and rolled across the room in plain view of the entire classroom. Earlier that day, as she counted up the money, the stiffly starched cuff of her dress had accidentally scooped up the small coin.
That afternoon, when Grandma returned home from school, Papa was waiting for her on the front porch swing. Exhausted from his night job, he was quietly napping. Cradled in his hardworking hands was Grandma's darning basket. Inside the basket were all of Grandma's old stockings that Grandpa had carefully and lovingly mended.
In later years, Grandpa would become a successful businessman. He took special pride in giving his wife stockings made from the finest silks and woolens.
Though Grandma appreciated these fine gifts, she often said they were never so dear to her, or so well-loved, as those old, tattered stockings, so lovingly mended by her husband's callused, hardworking hands.
Cookie Curci
T
he world does not require so much to be
informed as reminded.
Hannah More
Fifteen of us crammed into my Grandma Chesser's tiny one-bedroom apartment a few days after her funeral. Even after her death at the age of eighty-one, her apartment was as it had always beenâas neat as a pin. Grandma was quiet, austere; she dressed simply, almost plain, never drawing attention to herself. She hadn't cut her hair for years and wore it in a single braid wrapped around her head. Only at night would we see the long silver mane.
She was meticulous about her meager possessions, tidy to a fault, and practical about what she needed and didn't need. Because she had such a limited amount of storage, we thought that most of her keepsakes were thrown out or given away. But as drawers were opened and boxes searched, a whole mansion of memories unfolded before our eyes.
Grandma had utilized every available space in her tiny apartment; we found boxes under her bed, hidden behind blankets and stacked in closets. Dozens of pictures and letters spilled out of small shoeboxes. I even unearthed some cards and letters with my childish handwriting, my first attempts at letter writing. Stacks of letters, cards and all kinds of papers included report cards from the 1930s, World War II ration books, postcards from forgotten vacations.