A Bit of Big Granny

----- My post today includes paragraphs touching briefly on sad topics. The specific paragraphs will be in gray font color (like this), so you can skip them, if you’d prefer. -----

Some business before we get to the good stuff:

After some contemplation, I’ll be making a small change to my website. Rather than calling my writing a “blog”, I’m going to publish my writing under the heading of “journal”. What I do here feels more expansive than a normal blog post.

For those who have asked for a podcast, I’m considering taking each journal entry and doing a podcast on it as a way of generally expanding the discussion.

Who knows, if anything takes off, I may even start selling some related merchandise online. We’ll see…..

~~The Good Stuff~~

It has occurred to me that a “cast of characters” might be useful to some of my readers. Although, to be fair, many of you are related to me and know who I’m talking about when I say “Big Granny” or “Little Granny” ‘cause you have met them. And, some of you are good enough friends with me that you’ve heard me tell stories about them. However, one or two of you only know me through a casual acquaintance and haven’t heard of these folks before.

I’ve sort of covered some of the main characters in past posts, but perhaps more detail is required, so here goes…

First and foremost, ‘cause that is usually where she is in my mind, we have “Big Granny”.

Her real name was Ethel.

She was my great-grandmother (on my mom’s side) and a fixture in my childhood. She was one of those people you love without even realizing you do and I didn’t fully appreciate her until she was gone. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her in some kind of way. And most nights, I dream of sitting at her kitchen table, nibbling on soft peppermint sticks or rooting around in her pretty green bowl for my favorite flavor of hard candy while having talks about various things.

I think I’ve explained I called her Big Granny because she was older than my maternal grandmother. Being a kid, I felt extra age was best expressed as being bigger. I don’t know why. That was just how my brain worked back then. So, she was Big Granny and my younger grandmother was Little Granny.

Anyway, she wasn’t all that big (physically) when I knew her. She was small-ish and frail.

But she bragged of having been much larger in her youth. (Thinking back on it, it’s refreshing to know a woman who regretted losing weight.) I’ve seen pictures of her in her younger days and she was, indeed, much bigger. I was struck by the difference between her and her husband, Pug. (His real name was Gordon.) They had a Jack Sprat sort of vibe going. She was...ample...and he was super skinny.

In many of the pictures, she’s either holding a cat or one is lurking in the background. She was a fan of the felines.

She had dark hair (most likely maintained by chemical enhancement) that fell down to her lower back. I rarely got to see it, though. She kept it rolled up and under a ruffled dust cap.

She had teeny, little pointed features and huge glasses, the combination of which made her resemble an inquisitive owl. (The word inquisitive fits. We lived just up the hill from her, and dad used to say he could walk into the bathroom at three in the morning and sneeze, and the next day Big Granny would ask how his cold was.)

The thing I remember most clearly are her hands. They were the best. Her fingers were long and pale and gentle, and she would sit in her upholstered rocking chair, slowly rocking and touching each finger to her thumb, in turn, over and over again. It brought me great peace to watch her do it. Nowadays, I realize it must have been soothing to her, as well. My youngest son has hands very like hers and I’m so thankful for the reminder of her.

Once in a while, as she’d rock, she’d lean over and spit into her copper spittoon. It could be a bit off-putting to strangers. She dipped snuff. It was the thing to do when she was a teenager, and she’d picked up the habit. (On the plus side, she taught me snuff was good for keeping bugs off roses, although I feel odd asking store clerks if they have any.)

Besides the dust cap, she always wore dresses, usually with buttons or a zipper down the front paired with a pretty apron tied at the waist. She had knee length white stockings that she rolled down to her ankles, covered by brown or black slip-on leather shoes. There was always a delicate gold watch on her wrist and some kind of pretty necklace nestled around her neck. A gold ruby ring was always on her finger. I inherited the ring and it is one of my prized possessions, along with some of her colorful flowered handkerchiefs (which she kept in her apron pockets), and an old doll.

Her house was full of the most amazing treasures. Now that I’m an adult, I realize most folks would say her house was full of junk. I’m not one of those people.! To me, she seemed surrounded by the things she loved. She could tell you the why and how of everything in her small little trailer. As a young girl, I was always proud when something of mine made it onto her walls, like a pair of yarn dolls I made in Girl Scouts, or some toy I’d outgrown. I liked exploring in her teeny house and hearing the stories that went along with all of the trinkets.

She could flat out cook. She made the best breads, stews, and fried apple pies! (She’d ask me to pick sour little apples from a tree on the hillside above her place.) She was also good at canning fruits and vegetables. She taught me how to can peaches and string beans.

Whenever my dad had a hankering for some deer or squirrel, he’d bring it to Big Granny and let her cook it up for him. I seem to recall the two of them conspiring together over pig’s feet and pickled eggs, too. She knew how to fix all of it.

Oh, and flowers! Everything I know about flowers and plants, I learned from Big Granny. She loved them! She had them all over her porch, and my dad built a set of steps by her house so she could put more flower pots on it. She had snowball bushes and rhododendrons planted where she could see them, too. My love for Bleeding Hearts came straight from her appreciation of them.

Looking back on it, I think she had a love for things that bring nostalgia and comfort to life.

I know little about her early life. She’d mentioned growing up in a family with 13 children. Apparently, she was one of the oldest.

She, herself, had only had 3 sons. She told me she lost her youngest to a mining accident. Recently, I found out it wasn’t as straight forward as she’d said. It turns out, her son had gone into the mine to try to dig out coal for heating their home. While he was digging, the mine shaft fell in on him.

Later, she lost another son to suicide. His name was Mason, and I can remember him. He used to catch minnows for me and share candy, whilst teaching me to say “Yummy, yummy in my tummy.”

It blows my mind how someone so desperately depressed could have been so loving to a wee little girl. You truly can never know the entirety of someone’s mental health struggles.

Her last remaining son was my grandfather (Little Granny’s husband). He was ever present in my life, but I still didn’t know him well. Like others in my family, he worked for the railroad. On top of that, he sold Christmas trees. (Hence, my love for all things Christmas related, but that is another post for another time.) The fact he was always coming or going may have been why I never got to know him well.

So.

Big Granny was important to me. Still is. Often, I find myself thinking of her life and her death.

In the end, she was placed in a nursing home, still feisty, fighting everything the nurses or doctors suggested. She refused any life prolonging care. I’ve cried so much for her, at her passing.

When I try to put a finger on what made her so special, I think it was her honesty.

I don’t mean that overrated brutal honesty everyone yammers on about. Instead, she was honest about the things she loved and what she was willing to do in life.

One of those things was helping people out. If she could afford to do so, she would loan money to those in need, including charities and church organizations. She kept everyone’s favorite treats and goodies on hand. She’d send meals to family members. If she asked a favor of you, she would generously pay you back.

Most of all, she found joy in simple things like little birds, and kittens, and growing things.

Lest I make her sound like a complete saint, she did have a spicy side. Well into her 90s, she once pulled me aside to tell me the best way to keep lead in a man’s pencil was to feed him pepperoni. I nearly died trying to keep a straight face.

Sweet with some spice.

I think this enough for now. Big Granny deserves a stand-alone posting.

Stay tuned for more important characters. Including doggos!