Saturday Grandma Thoughts

Thinking about grandma this morning... I was lucky growing up - I had 4 different grandmothers still alive when I was born, Grandma Lova (mom's mother), Grandma Clara (dad's mother), Little Grandma (Kate, Grandpa Dewane's mother) and Grandma Lula (Lova's mom).

I spent the most time with Grandma Lova as a kid - Mom had me at 17, and was divorced from Dad by the time she was 20, so she needed all the help she could get.  I spent a fair amount of time with Little Grandma too, since she lived right down the block.  I didn't realize until I was an adult that Lova must have been frustrated with that arrangement - living right down the block from your mother-in-law can't have been an easy way to spend a marriage.  But she made it work.

I remember when Grandma would come home from work (usually about 3:00 - she worked the early shift at Kellogg), she and I would have a little ritual.  She would fix us each an english muffin pizza, and we would sit at the kitchen table and count her tags for the day.  She did piecework - sewing zippers into tents or sleeping bags or whatever. She's the one who passed down the deep satisfaction of statistics to me.  You know, acknowledging each piece, watching the pile grow, occasionally comparing yourself to the others in the group, but mostly just trying to beat your own personal best.

She also instilled a love of the company of women.  I find myself hanging out with the guys most of the time, but there's something to be said for the comfort of just sitting down with a mutual project (usually a quilt, but sometimes making rolls, or canning, or whatever) with a group of women.  It's best if it's a project that's fairly repetitious and not terribly taxing mentally so that your fingers can just go ahead and fly while your brain and mouth can just enjoy spending time with friends.

And then there's the fear of throwing out anything...  Yep.  I definitely got that from Lova.  One entire closet in the basement was filled from floor to ceiling with nothing but fabric - mostly yard-ends that she grabbed from the dumpster at work.  And there was the food cellar that had canned goods (both home canned and store bought) from the 1950s on up.  She could easily have ridden out a zombie apocalypse just from her basement - it might not have been all that pleasant an experience, but she would have come out of it with some nice new quilts.