My Grandma Jones

Taken on my trip to Canada with her.

               I saw Grandma’s face yesterday.

               I often get a glimpse of Dad,

               a certain twist of the mouth

               or mom’s smile, blue eyes like mine.

               But it was the first time I saw Grandma,

               tiny farm woman in shapeless cotton dress,

               with apron and sagging stockings.

               I liked to watch her brush long, thin, gray hair

               then twist it back into a bun.

               I remember her careful steps down the walk

               to gather eggs, with dancing little side kicks

               dispatching chicken droppings to the grass.

               Grandpa ignored her pleas to fix the chicken run.

               We’d giggle when she’d call him the old poop deck.

               Grandma walked to the woods early summer mornings,

               built a small fire to boil water for coffee,

               and took down a cast iron skillet hanging on a tree

               to fry a few strips of bacon and one egg

               fresh from the hen house, its yolk like the sun.

               After eating she’d replace the skillet

               and use the dented old coffee pot

               for picking tart and juicy blackberries,

               warm and fragrant with bees hovering around.

               I smile thinking of Grandma’s baking,

               her lemon cookies with large chunks

               of lemon rind and burnt on the bottom,

               and blackberry pies with soggy bottom crusts.

               Grandpa had a new car every few years

               while Grandma had the same stove forever.

               She didn’t eat much, a taste of this,

               a nibble of that, a half dozen peas on her plate.

               Grandma played “Rock of Ages”

               on an old piano, scarred keys, out of tune.

               Once she showed us a French cancan dance

               She’d seen on their new TV,

               kicking up her slippered feet, laughing.

               Grandma kept jelly jars on her windowsill

               filled with four leaf clovers for good luck.

               After the first shock, I decided it’s not so bad

               seeing Grandma in my mirror.

 

Blackberries like Grandma and I picked

Just before the end of May, I sent my annual submission of poetry to the Ohio Poetry Day Contests. I only submitted ten this year to the close to thirty contests because I’d delayed to long in writing any new ones. The above one was written after last year’s contest.

Many people have important roles in our life on what kind of person we become. Some people unfortunately, don’t have many if any positive role models, but I was fortunate enough to have only positive ones, and Grandma Jones was one. My other grandma died when I was five years old.

Not my grandparents' farm but what it looked like

I grew up next to my grandparents’ farm that was on both sides of the road. I had an aunt and uncle and two cousins who lived across the street, and not too far away another aunt and uncle with their four children lived within easy walking distance. My cousins and I spent a lot of time roaming the fields and woods of the farm. The last cow was sold when I was quite young, but Grandpa still farmed the fields with corn and wheat. When bales of hay were put up in the hay mow in the upstairs of the barn and piled outside of the barn, we played in there. Some years big draft horses were brought in to use when harvesting the wheat. I enjoyed that because it took several days so the horses were put in stalls in the barn, and I loved horses.

We also spent a lot of time with Grandma. She was so much fun and quite annoying to Grandpa because he had twice a week delivery of bread, doughnuts and other pastries, and often she’d share those treats with the grandchildren and there would be little or none when he came home.

I'm still don't like them.

As the poem mentioned, Grandma was a thin little woman, who ate very little. Breakfast usually consisted of a doughnut and a cup of coffee. She also had a cupboard full of over the counter medications like laxatives and who knows what else. It wasn’t anything we kids were interested in. However, once I went to Canada with Grandma and Grandpa on a fishing trip. As we got close to the lake where we’d be staying in a cabin, she offered me some chewing gum. I was about twelve years old then, and I took some. I had no idea it was a laxative That year there were tent caterpillars everywhere including in the outhouse.  I’ll never forget that first nightly trip to the outhouse scared to death I’d sit on one of those caterpillars.

This looks like where we used to fish.

Although Grandma liked to fish, it was never from a boat, but usually beside the Grand River a ways north of us or on a dock. She didn’t often go to Canada fishing because mostly Grandpa went with his fishing buddies. Sometimes I went with my grandparents when they fished at the Grand River about ten miles away, but the mosquitoes bothered me so much, I didn’t go often.

When we’d like a little extra money for something, Grandma would fish in Grandpa’s pockets for change, and she’d give it to us in exchange for a little work like washing a window or two.

Once I dug up a sapling in the woods, and she bought it from me. I doubt that she ever planted it.

In the winters, Grandma sat in a chair with her feet on the heat register and the chimney from the furnace in front of her. She’d read her magazines or newspapers there and clip out pictures or articles and using thumb tacks put them on the wall all around her chair. Even though I don’t stick things on the wall, maybe that’s where I got the habit of clipping out things that interest me from the newspaper.

Grandma was tiny, but she was fearless, too. One night while Grandpa was in Canada, a teenage boy came peeking in her window. He wasn’t a small teenager, either. She took a broom and went out and chased him off.

Can you picture the woman at the top trying this?

All her grandchildren who lived within easy walking distance of the farm have wonderful memories of Grandma Jones, at least those who are still living. I know my siblings and I do, and because of her, we don’t obsess about how we look or being a little different. If I hear a lively tune on the radio, I dance all by myself and picture Grandma dancing the cancan and laughing.

Henny Penny likes to follow me around

And when my little hen, which refuses to stay with the big hens in the coop, leaves droppings on my sidewalk, I think of Grandma doing what my brother called the Teaberry Shuffle

going down her sidewalk and with a sideways kick, she'd kick those droppings off to the side.

What do you remember about your grandparents?