Grandma's Birthday

My Grandma was the oldest person in my family that I grew up knowing. She was born in 1890. I found myself thinking of her and Grandpa when pushing Struan in his swing at the park. He's a rather large child for his age and it was tiring work. I found myself calculating the age of my grandparents when I came along. Grandma would have been 66. Mind, I was a very small baby, being premature and all, and she will have had regular work outs with my weekly visits. 

Grandma was largely senile by the time I was 12, with only bits of her real personality peeking out here and there. I feel somewhat cheated at not having more time with the person my cousin calls his 'favourite auntie'. 

Grandma & me, c. 1957

What I have learned in searching out the records of my Dad's adoption is that the story is much different than I would have guessed. I grew up believing that Grandpa was disappointed I wasn't a boy, as his surname ended with my Dad. I would have guessed that Grandpa would have been keen to have adopted a boy. On the contrary, it was Grandma who filled out all the adoption papers and she asked for a little girl. It just turned out that my Dad was what was immediately on offer at the time and they snatched him up. 

I'm not sure Grandma was any better at raising children than my other Grandmother was at owning dogs (see yesterday's post). My dad wasn't exactly neurotic but he was spoiled rotten. Very much the opposite to many of the stories that came from children who were fostered out of the same orphanage as his records show. As it happened, he never actually went to that state school but was adopted from the maternity home where his birth mother left him, aged 11 months. It is an altogether odd and very sad story that none of us ever knew. 

Grandma and Grandpa did their best to claim my Dad as their very own and they nearly got away with it, but for a woman who snapped an illicit photo of the orphanage register and sent that photo to me. One of my life's stranger turns.

All that aside, Grandma and Grandpa were excellent grandparents and I count myself lucky to have had them.

Grandma's Birthday

It's been a funny sort of year pertaining to paternal grandma's. I write this for today to remember the Grandma who helped raise me.  On the other hand I've spent a significant amount of time searching for and learning about my genetic paternal grandmother.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about family and how I define it. Many times I've said that my friends are my family, in part because I haven't a large number of immediate family members left and also because I haven't a great deal in common with those family members who remain. However, for all our differences, and in spite of how fascinating it is to discover the stories of my genetic family, my 'real' family members are the ones I grew up knowing. The feeling of family comes most strongly to me when sharing memories of those loved ones long gone. I can listen to reminiscences about my parents and grandparents, about my aunt Rita for a very long time. 

I hope I take after my genetic grandmothers, as one lived to age 91 and the other to nearly 97! However, the older I get the more I appreciate my Grandma's qualities. 

I've been working through the pile of stuff in the attic while the weather is mild enough to make it bearable. It is as much a curse as a blessing to have a space like this. There have been times when I felt a bit dizzy at the top of the step ladder, looking around at the accumulation of shelves, boxes, bags, oddments, Bill's luggage collection, my canning jar collection. Christmas stuff aside I have at times looked around and worried I might have a DSM-5 code looming. However, with my new environmentally-friendly standards for clothing fabrics and a renewed commitment to wearing 'my' colours/contrast, etc., there has been a steady stream of upper-body strengthening donations to the Relate charity shop in Whitley Bay. 

Never thought I'd say bright sun was a nuisance...

Two items I came across that will be always remain are these aprons that belonged to Grandma. They were Christmas gifts from one of her sisters, I'm pretty sure from Myrtle who was her younger sister by three years. Grandma had a sister, Millie, just one year older but Millie died in 1961 when I was five. Myrtle outlived Grandma by nearly a decade.



I remember a green one and may run across it some time. I see there are some tiny holes in the brown apron which, as they are about 50 years old, I think can be forgiven. Given the long life of decent fabric I consider 'disposable clothing' an obscenity.




I rarely remember to wear aprons when I cook, a habit I keep thinking I'll change. However, when I do don one of the aprons hanging on the back of the kitchen door, it covers both above and below the waist. I always thought these little half-aprons sort of a house-wifey costume. Then again maybe in the 50s women weren't as sloppy as I am.




I was just thinking it was a shame I never wear these aprons and it suddenly dawned on me that I am developing the skills to cut a top piece and attach it to the bottom part. I remembered that the hems on these are quite deep - 4 or 5" - and so I could steal a bit of the hem to make a matching trim on the top. Or I could go all out and do some red and green cross-stitch. Pink, red and green aren't colours I would have mixed, but I must admit the roses are a nice design. As it happens I have quite a bit of plain white cotton that could be shaped with a loop for the head and some kind of trim. When and if this happens, I will be sure to share them with you. I can see a deadline of her next birthday post would be useful. 




The other thing I've done this past year is to knit dishcloths (no photos to hand at this moment so that will have to be another post). We have stopped buying sponges that wear out in a week. I've made dishcloths for Christmas gifts (not sure how well that went over). 




I gave one to my sister-in-law, Jane, when I knocked off a couple during our holiday together in Switzerland last May. I took a couple to our Thursday night craft group since there never seemed to be a sponge around for washing tea cups and I began to worry about the hygiene levels there. I've taken to drinking hot water instead of tea/coffee and though I know tea stains aren't important, I was pleased to be able to scrub a few off. I think some of the ladies at the craft group were pleased as well, from both a crafty and a cleaning point of view.




I know Grandma would be very happy to know some of her ideas have stuck with me. I also know that she wanted very much to be remembered after she passed, and so she will be for as long as I can see to that. 

Grandpa's Birthday

I've been thinking the past few days about what to write in remembrance of the three people born in September who were precious to me. The first birthday is of my Grandpa, born 10 September 1894.

I remembered Grandpa's bank box that I've kept all these years. It has fascinating bits in like his driving licenses from Oklahoma and from Wisconsin, both of which say he was 5'10" and weighed 185 lbs. There are legal papers for their burial sites in Minneapolis (which were never used), his WWII classification notice, a certified copy of his birth certificate from 1908 and another a few years later for Grandma. I found a photo she gave him of herself for his birthday in 1941. Also the bank book for their savings account. 

Bank books were never part of my life until I did business with a 'building society' here in Britain, probably the closest thing they have here to an American style credit union.  I have had several over the years, though I think they are called 'passbooks' here. 

I was fascinated to learn that Grandpa left over $7,200 in savings when he died. I've always thought that a remarkable feat for someone who was the sole support for his family, self-employed as a portrait photographer. His home and his car were paid off and he left no outstanding debt. It was a joint account belonging to him and Grandma. At his death the money was transferred to a different account with her name alone. Several withdrawals happened soon after, no doubt to pay for her nursing home stay.

Grandma's bank book had a more modern look featuring an image of the Local Federal Savings and Loan. 

Of course it looked a substantial building, something that had existed a long time and would stand forever. Kind of like I used to think of my grandparents.

Local Federal S&L is no more. It was taken over/ merged and moved a number of times then closed. The old building seems gone as well, replaced by a glass or mirrored building called "Leadership Square South". 




I was thinking 'Local Federal' was an oxymoron, but the new name is rather sickening. Just think how proud those men feel though, when they tell you their office is in "Leadership Square". 


The account was opened in 1960 and closed in 1973.  Bill and I reckoned that Grandpa turned 65 in 1959 and so the $2,000 he deposited initially was probably from his business account. I remember him doing the odd portrait photography shoot as late as 1968 and he still had his darkroom in the front bedroom, but not long after that. 

He made both deposits and withdrawals over the 13 years, but the final amount was more over three times more than what he deposited. The value of $1 in 1960 was the same as $8.26 today (so he deposited about $17,000). Sadly, the inflation of the 60s and 70s ate away at his savings, as the value of $1 in 1974 was $5.23 in today's money (still, he had the equivalent of about $38,000). I've not calculated what sort of interest he was earning or how much he deposited vs how much he withdrew. It sounds slightly mental that I might sit down and do such things, but it is a small way of spending time 'with' Grandpa, thinking about him. 

My thought in writing about this is that it is so representative of the kind of man he was: careful, painstaking and frugal. I will likely never be able to create the level of order that he and Grandma had in their home or in their lives (well, aside from my Dad, who was rather a tornado through all that caution), but I often think of them when considering where to put things and whether to keep something I don't have a place for.

If Grandpa had any character flaws I was never aware of them. I remember him as the most patient person I ever met, aside from perhaps my Mom (and I know several of her faults). So, I'm remembering Grandpa today and sometime this month I will be making meatloaf in his honour.

Grandma's Birthday

In The Netherlands now, on our way back to the ferry at Amsterdam that takes us about 10  minutes from our front door. Am so ready to be home!  Today is Grandma B's birthday. She was born in 1890. Funny how quickly you can get back to the Victorian age!

Grandma, like Grandpa, was of German descent. I grew up thinking I was, too, but then a few years ago I discovered my Dad had been adopted, though they never told him. My DNA test has since informed me that my Dad was half Norwegian, which has been fun. My Dad wasn't put into the orphanage until he was 11 months old, so I'm thinking there is a story there about his birth family.

However, whatever I find out about my dad's original family, my Grandparents will alwayss be my Grandparents. I couldn't possibly have had better.

So I wanted to remember Grandma on her birthday. (She has more posts under her listing in the index on the right!)

Grandma's Birthday

I'm writing this back in April, having just been to a meeting of the WI where the speaker was talking about dementia. I wasn't much looking forward to going but I had things to discuss with other members and so I resigned myself to sitting through the meeting. It was much better than I expected - I actually laughed a few times.

Clara Rose (1890-1974)

The speaker had great passion for her topic: she worked on a ward for people with dementia diagnoses and her mother had dementia. Her presentation was part of a major initiative by the Alzheimer's Society to educate people in England about dementia. They had already met their first target of talking to a million people; we were part of the journey to the next target of 4 million. We played word Bingo and some sort of Simon Says game where we all pretended to be 73 years old with a six year history of dementia. She used a wadded string of fairy lights to serve as a model for the parts of the brain. She gave us a card afterwards to highlight "five things you should know about dementia":

• It's not a natural part of aging
• It's caused by diseases of the brain
• It's not just about losing your memory - it can affect thinking, communicating and doing everyday tasks
• It's possible to live well with dementia
• There's more to a person than the dementia

It wasn't until she got to this last point that my fairy light flickered and I remembered that Grandma had dementia. That's major progress, as it used to be the main thing I remembered about her. I got to scribbling some notes at that point and I'm writing this now while I still have a chance of remembering what they mean.

Though dementia is not a natural part of aging, about a third of us will develop this after age 65. She pointed out that it doesn't happen the day after our 65th birthday, some people develop this quite a while after that time. Dementia is caused by several diseases, the most common of which is Alzheimer's, followed by vascular dementia. I got the impression that a fair number of women present had experienced loved ones with dementia as the variety of types called out was wide - more than I knew about. I don't think Grandma ever had a specific diagnosis back in the 1960s or 70s. Given her history of stroke, perhaps she had vascular dementia. I'd not thought of dementia as an umbrella term for a set of diseases of the brain; and why shouldn't the brain be vulnerable to disease just like any other organ in our body?

The fairy lights, meaning the parts of the brain, could flicker off and on; they could grow dimmer but remain lit; or they could just go out. Presumably there are analogous brain functions but she didn't really go into further detail. She did say that besides memory loss a person's thinking might be affected in a variety of other ways. They might confuse words and start calling something by a different, incorrect name. They might perceive things differently, for example a shiny floor might look wet; a black, rubber mat might look like a big hole; a patterned carpet might look like it's moving and be interpreted as 'snakes'. They might have trouble with logical order and have trouble dressing themselves, ie putting socks on over shoes.

In addition to the fairy lights another analogy the speaker used was of book cases. She asked us to imagine a person with dementia standing next to a bookcase the same height as themselves. This was a bookcase of facts and events in that person's life; let's say she is in her 80s. The books on the top shelf are the most recent events of her life; books at shoulder height may be from her 70s or 60s; the shelf at knee height might be from her teens; you can fill in the rest. She said the bookcase could be likened to the part of the brain called the hippocampus, where information is stored. 

We were asked to imagine the bookshelf rocking quite hard. She then told us to imagine the bookcase is only made of plywood and so it will move quite a bit when rocked. Of course the books nearest the top are most likely to fly off the shelves but the older memories are more likely to remain. This is a familiar concept to any of us who have known someone with dementia. 

She gave us some examples of events for our imaginary person, who was in her 20s in the 1950s. She used to put on her tea dress and her lippy for when George was going to come for her and take her down to the seaside for a bag of chips. Other memories were about raising children, having a part time cleaning job to help make ends meet, losing George to a heart attack (I'm making up some items that my own holey brain has already lost, but you get the idea).

Then the speaker asked us to think of a second bookcase on the other side of the person. This bookcase has the emotions associated with the facts and events shelved on the other one, but the emotional bookcase doesn't rock so much; perhaps it is made of good old English oak. The emotions remain. That part of our brain is called the amygdala. 

The speaker mentioned two scenarios that must be very common for families of persons with dementia. One is when there is a big argument and everyone gets upset. The family may comfort themselves that Mother doesn't remember a lot of things and she'll not remember the fight. She may not remember the fight, but she may well remember being hurt and angry. This may influence her behaviour in ways that don't make much sense to other people. 

Another scenario is where Mother keeps forgetting who they are when they take time from their busy schedules to come see her. They begin to think it doesn't matter if they don't make such an effort, since she doesn't even remember who they are. She may not have the facts straight about whether it's George Jr or her brother Henry, but she remembers feeling loved and wanted. So it is worth them coming to see her even if they don't get the response they would like to have. 

It is the last two of the five points that surprised me the most, and I gathered a few others there as well. I'm not sure everyone agreed that one can live well with dementia. I took away that a lot depends on what stage one is at and on having the right support - that is people who understand dementia, which is part of the purpose of this educational programme. I can see how a person with early dementia who is well supported could still enjoy life and perhaps even in later stages, though I'm not sure how one can tell. 

The last point she covered was to remember that there is more to a person than their dementia. An example she gave (fictitious or not, I've no idea) was of a woman who lived in a care home. She had the habit of tapping on any surface near her, tapping all day long. This drove the people around her nuts. One day her niece from Australia came to visit and they asked about the tapping. The niece didn't know why she did that. However, they were talking about her aunt's life and she reminded the staff of something they already knew, that the aunt had worked at Bletchley Park, where the Enigma Code was broken. They began to surmise that the aunt might believe she was tapping out Morse Code. Just holding that idea and remembering that this person had made an important contribution to winning WWII made everyone tolerate her tapping much more easily.

That's the point at which I remembered Grandma, who died when I was 18. She'd been senile since I was about 12, possibly before. I always thought of her as that 'dim housewife'; I thought that had she done anything to exercise her brain she might not have succumbed to dementia. Talk about blaming the victim! I think that's something we often do these days: comfort ourselves that bad things won't happen because we exercise / eat right / wear seat belts / etc. Grandma's dementia just took the form of her seeming to be lost all the time, even in her own home. She didn't have much to say at all, didn't remember the simplest of self-care routines. She seemed to just walk around the house picking things up and putting them down - sometimes somewhere they couldn't be found. She would sometimes remember to latch the screen door, though, particularly when Grandpa was outside taking care of the back garden! The poor man worked hard to take care of her in their last years.

I've written on this blog how angry I became with Grandma in particular when I learned (at age 54) that my Dad was adopted, decades after everyone else involved had died and I couldn't get any explanations. Over time, writing these posts, talking with people who remembered her before before dementia and piecing together observable traits from the pictures and clippings she carefully left specifically for me I have strangely forgotten her dementia. I know that she was lively, passionate, loving and dedicated. She 

• was devoted to all her family
• wrote hundreds of letters to siblings and extended family members
• was literate and expressive
• loved pretty clothes
• desperately wanted a son child! Having got the adoption papers I now know she initially asked for a girl!
• was fascinated by family history
• was frugal
• was perhaps spiritual rather than religious, as they seemed to change churches periodically, but Christian beliefs remained central
• took pride in keeping her home tidy and pleasant

When I visited the link provided on the WI website and learned that we would be asked to become 'Dementia Friends' I was determined to say no. Although they said it didn't mean making any commitment to do anything like visit nursing homes and have tea with doolally residents, I was sure there was a catch. Turns out they wanted people to spread the word about dementia, just as I've just attempted to do.

Looks like they caught me after all...

Grandma's Cloths

Initially I was going to do a review of some of Grandma's fabulous clothes in remembrance of her birthday. Then I read last year that I was going to knit a dish cloth and I hadn't yet. So 'clothes' became 'cloths' and I set myself to knitting. 

I'd bought a 40 metre ball of string a couple of months ago for 50 pence. I cast on 40 with who knows what sized wooden needles. Though the photo looks roughly square, it is in fact rectangular folded in half, so I'd try 30 stitches for the next one, if this one works out at all. It took maybe an hour and I read blogs whilst knitting. 

I do recommend learning the 'continental' style of knitting. I've heard this called Russian and German and all sorts, but I think it's all the same. Once mastered it is much less energetic than American style knitting.  One of the ladies at my craft group was interested in my description. When I said that it saved one having to throw the yarn around the needle with the right hand and instead used a knitting needle a bit like a crochet hook, she summarized beautifully by saying 'So instead of being throwers they are hookers?'.  I've become a hooker then...

I think my Grandma would tell me I was a clever girl.

Patchwork Chair Covers

I don't think I've ever shown you my kitchen chair project. I started this project last January (yes, 2013). Our kitchen chairs are two pairs:  one set belonged to my Grandma & Grandpa B, the other set belonged to Bill's Aunty Mary Polly. You could be forgiven for thinking that the 'before' picture was of Bill's walking boots instead of the faded blue print of G&G's chair; you can barely see the brown and peach brocade of AMP's chair.  I must have been in a real hurry that day?

'Before'

Anyhow, besides being the wrong colours my chairs were like sitting on a board, the stuffing was so flattened. The loose webbing on Bill's chairs made it like sitting on a donut.  

In my usual fashion, rather than go buy fabric, I decided to use up some of my mountain of fabric scraps to make up patchwork pieces for coverings. Many of these fabrics frayed and so I overlocked the edges, which meant the project took me quite a while to complete. Even so, the patchwork fabric was ready for ages before the project moved on.  



Bill did such a great job on the dining room chairs, I thought he should be the one to take care of the padding part of this project.  Besides, joint projects are more fun. Also, while my chairs were quite straightforward in their construction, his were more complex and I didn't want to mess his up.  So, when I was in Nice on my own last summer, I left Bill a 'to-do' list to keep him out of trouble; this padding job was on that list and he duly addressed it.

Real-life photos with power drill, laundry basket,
Bill's walking shoes drying by the radiator...maybe they live there in January?

When we returned from France in September we both took ill and other things seemed to get in the way. I made Thanksgiving my deadline for finishing this job.  In the event, it took less than an hour most of which was fiddling with the staple gun. 




They aren't perfect, but I'm happy with them.  They are quite comfy now and the colours coordinate with the kitchen's white and red walls, the black and brown counter and the beige-y floor.  

  

Two more things that need to happen are to experiment on some other similar fabric with stain-repellent  or water proofing and decide what to do with the wood of my Grandparent's chairs - the square ones above.  Bill doesn't want to paint his, which I understand.  I may decide to paint Grandma and Grandpa's or to find a way to stain them so they are more similar to Bill's.  

Any suggestions?

Grandma's Birthday

I've no idea when this was taken but I would guess Grandma was about 16, which would mean it was taken around 1906.  She wrote her name on the photo, as she wrote names on many photos.  She never was a great beauty, but she always loved her clothes and she wasn't camera shy.

I wear her engagement ring most days alongside of my mom's wedding ring; I didn't want more jewelry when Bill and I married.  Grandma's wedding was 20 February, 100 years ago.

Grandma's Birthday

This is currently my favourite photo of Grandma.  Is that a snazzy (Grandpa's word) outfit, or what?  I hadn't appreciated what a clothes horse she was until I began writing this blog and collecting photos of her, scanning the photos from her and Grandpa's album.  When I knew her she wore cotton floral dresses with matching necklaces and earrings and what I thought of as 'Grandma shoes'.  Then again, these days, if I'm not wearing trainers I'm most likely wearing 'Grandma shoes'. 

I've had a bit of a resentment about Grandma keeping Daddy's adoption a secret.  Then, just the other night, it occurred to me how much I had in common with Grandma.  She couldn't have children, for whatever reason.  I've never had children either.  I know as much as I do about Grandpa's family history and her family history because of the bits of information she wrote down and tucked into their family Bible.  My Dad didn't keep in touch with his relatives and so the only ones I know now are through my genealogy research.

I know the names of everyone in Grandma's album  because she wrote their names on the photos.  I used to think this was defacing the pictures and she should have written on the back, but I've definitely come to see the wisdom of labelling the front of photos (the one above, a case in point).  Grandma corresponded with her brothers and sisters, then with their children and even grandchildren.  She talked about her family a lot and I grew up hearing names that I've since been able to put with photos and in the family tree.  It's been a very satisfying puzzle to solve.  I can see now that family history was important to her, perhaps because she came so close to having no family future, like I have none. 

For most of the time I remember her, she was increasingly senile.  I saw her as a rather wishy-washy housewife, sometimes a bit smothering in her affections.  From what Mom told me, Grandma always liked my Dad's first wife better, so Grandma had definite opinions at some point.   That said, without fail and certainly without any prompting, everyone at the reunion of Grandma's family mentioned what a nice, lovely person she was.  It makes me sad I didn't have the opportunity to get to know her better as a person, but I suppose while it's possible to become friends with one's parents, we are all that little bit further removed from grandparents. 

Whatever else this adoption business has roughed up in me, it has certainly brought Grandma to the fore of my mind a lot and I've come to realise she was much more complex that I gave her credit for being before. 

One of the housewife-y things she used to do was to knit dishcloths.  I expect Bill will hate them, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to knit myself a couple of dishcloths, just in case there is more value there than I'd previously appreciated.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!



Happy Birthday to Grandma

I've been working on my pressure cooker skills, in honour of Grandma.  Also because it's wonderfully frugal to cook beans in the pressure cooker, not to mention quicker.  Fortunately I have an expert in residence (Bill) who walked me through this once and I made notes.

1. Fill the baskets.  One of the two pressure cookers we have has three baskets so you could cook different things that require the same cooking time.  We put in three varieties of beans. 
2. Put in enough water to just cover the bottom shelf on which the baskets rest.
3. Boil until the small steam release rises and then the large release begins rising.
4. Before the 2 white lines on the large pressure release are showing, turn the stove top temperature down to level 3 (medium-low) and set the timer for 20 minutes.
5. Turn the heat off at 20 minutes and leave the pressure cooker to cool. 
6. When cool, open the lid, remove the baskets and drain the water.

I'm not sure these are adequate instructions if you've not got a resident expert or time to practice with one, but I found the most amazing website that tells you everything about pressure cooking:  Miss Vickie.

We freeze the cooked beans in one cup portions, for later use.

Clara Rose, aged 22, 1912

Grandma's Birthday

We had lots of family birthdays in September, didn't we! Today is Grandma's birthday.


I can't tell you her favourite food because when I visited she always made my favourite at that time, beef stew with carrots and potatoes. She made it in the pressure cooker, even though that contraption seemed to make her very nervous. Grandma also made fruit cakes at Christmas time which were brilliant door stops, they were so hard and dry. I've no idea what they were supposed to taste like but I always managed to avoid them, saying they were too sweet for me.

So, in memory of Grandma, my task will be to produce beef stew in the pressure cooker we never use. Also, to learn to make edible fruit cake -- or enjoy inflicting door stops on everyone in December....I'll have to think about which sounds like more fun!

P.S. This is also Colleen's birthday -- Happy Birthday, Colleen!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

43 Things about Grandma

1. Grandma was born 13 Sept 1890, in Stillwater, Minnesota and was named Clara Rose, which I always thought was a pretty name. I think she liked her name, too.

2. She was the 8^th child of 12, 11 of whom lived to a ripe age, a fact often given in newspaper clippings of family obituaries, so this may have been unusual for the time.

3. Grandma had brown hair and pale blue eyes. I would guess she was about 5’7”. She doesn’t appear to ever have been very thin, but she was never fat either. I don’t think she ever wore a girdle, as did my Grandmother, but as a child I thought of her as a pillow with a string tied around the middle. The pictures from her younger days suggest that while she wasn’t exactly pretty, she may have had an hourglass figure.

4. Grandma was raised a Lutheran. She later dabbled with Christian Science, though she still took lots of medicines. I don’t remember going to church as part of Grandma and Grandpa’s routine, though they may have done when my Dad was younger. I have several small prayer books, one of which is in German and has an ivory cover. Grandpa seemed to go along with whatever was Grandma’s current fancy pertaining to religion. Crosses, prayers and religious pictures were part of the décor in their house.

5. Grandma always believed that her father was born in Indiana, where his family first settled. In fact, he was born in Furth, Lindenfels, Germany. He appears to have altered the spelling of his name about the time of WWI when it may not have been very popular to be German. I gather that two of his sons fought in the war against his homeland. That must have been very strange; then again, my Dad mentioned to me once that his ancestors immigrated to the US because they didn’t like living under Kaiser Wilhelm. Grandma is in the front on the left.

6. I know very little of Grandma’s life before she married. From the pictures of her family I gather they were fairly well off, better off perhaps than her husband’s family. When she was 22, Grandma married Jacob, whom she called Jake, 20 February 1913. They had been married 60 years at the time of Grandpa’s death.

7. She was 4 years older than Grandpa, which embarrassed her, though I see that her brother Henry was 5 years younger than his wife, Ann, who was Grandpa’s sister. Perhaps this age difference wasn’t all that uncommon at the time. She wore a hole in the page of the family Bible changing her birth year; I always found that amusing, but a bit sad.

8. I think she was quite the clothes horse in her younger days, and I really enjoy looking at the style of her clothes from nearly a century ago. When I remember her she wore simple cotton dresses, of dainty floral prints and with matching belts, hosiery and practical walking shoes, usually beige, with holes in for air circulation. I think this was an accepted uniform for older women in the early 1960’s.

9. Grandma was always very tidy in appearance; I only ever saw her in her nightgown and robe just before bed. She was an early riser. She wore matching earrings and necklaces a lot. She and Grandpa both wore glasses.

10. She wore Wind Song perfume. After Mom and Dad split up, I once gave one of my Dad’s girlfriends some Wind Song perfume for Christmas, thinking it might put him off her. This idea amused me very much.

11. She had one son, Lyle, born in 1918 who was the apple of her eye and the centre of her world.

Naturally, when I came along, she thought I was wonderful, too.

12. Grandma was always a housewife as I remember, but from Mom’s letters in 1944, she possibly worked in a photographic studio in Madison with Grandpa for a while.

13. Grandma’s family was mainly in Minneapolis, though later generations scattered as far as California and Florida (and me, here in England). She and Grandpa lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1934 and by 1944 they’d moved to Madison. They followed Mom and Daddy to Oklahoma City in the late forties or early fifties. It was there that they bought the first and only house they ever owned. Mom was telling me one time about how excited she had been when she and Daddy bought their house in the Village before it was built, and how seeing this Grandpa had decided to also buy his first house. I was surprised to learn that before WWII it was more usual for most people to only ever rent their houses rather than to own. This of course was quite different by the time I came along.

14. Grandma always knitted her own dishcloths; I don’t remember her knitting anything else. She taught me to cover hangers with strips of nylon her sisters sent her. She kept a giant needle and a long thread for me in the button drawer of her treadle sewing machine. She would let me string buttons for hours, but always warning me to be careful with the needle. I don’t remember ever seeing her sew, except to mend clothes by hand. Her sewing machine sits beside the front door in the hall of this house.

15. Grandma was the family correspondent, keeping up with 10 brothers and sisters, and numerous nieces and nephews. I have letters and cards from more nieces and nephews than I can fit into a family tree. I have no idea about what sort of education she will have had, but the letters I have of hers are all grammatically correct and written in neat, square-ish handwriting.

16. She tended to be quiet; I never heard her speak loudly or at length. I don’t remember her as expressing strong opinions about anything. She always struck me as being a slightly anxious, timid person. She seemed to worry a lot about the people she loved.

17. Grandma never drove a car, so far as I know. Grandpa took her with him most places; otherwise she stayed at home.

18. Grandma was as thrifty and careful about money as Grandpa. I never heard her complain about not having enough money, but when Daddy was down in Dallas her letters to him asked that he repay the money he had borrowed from them.

19. They went back to Minnesota or Wisconsin most summers to visit family. I gather family members came down to Oklahoma City occasionally, but I don’t remember ever meeting any of them, strangely.

20. She warned me often to watch my fingers around the wringer washing machine and though she often used a pressure cooker, she seemed to regard it as fairly dangerous. I think this is why I’ve never learned how mine works; I’m afraid of it! Grandma used a push sweeper on their short pile carpets in the living and dining room. She had a meat grinder that clamped on the kitchen counter and had a big handle that turned. I still use it to make bread crumbs.

21. I remember hiding between the sheets and playing with the clothes pegs while Grandma hung her washing on the lines in their back yard; we called it ‘helping’ Grandma. She was a methodical, meticulous housekeeper, but she let me turn the house upside down when I came over. She was rarely idle, usually darning or knitting when she sat.

22. Grandpa and I used to make a ‘train’ that was sort of an obstacle course with the rugs and chairs that twisted and turned through as many rooms of the house as we could make it. We did put it all back of course, that was part of the game.

23. I don’t recall seeing her read much, but she clipped obituaries and kept funeral cards and crushed flowers in her Bible. She also wrote out birth dates and dates of death and the family and place names and put these pages from a stenographer’s pad into her Bible. It is this information that has enabled me to do most of my genealogy research on Daddy’s side of the family.

24. She played cards with Grandpa and me, but always left it to Grandpa to play checkers with me.

25. Looking back it seems I rarely took my dolls or toys to their house; there were endless other things to do over there, thing I only did at their house. It seems I grew up experiencing 3 separate cultures in my parents and grandparents’ houses.

26. Grandma never swore, never smoked, rarely finished a single beer, though she did occasionally have seconds of Mom’s cooking.

27. Grandma was very affectionate with me, I remember lots of hugs and kisses. In the last year I found one of her nephews from Minnesota, Clay, who now lives in California. He and his sisters say she was always their favourite aunt and she was very affectionate with them.

28. She liked to have me sit in her lap and to scrape half an apple with a spoon, feeding it to me like baby food. She did this until I rebelled around the age of 6 or 7.

29. She always put a chair beside the bed when I spent the night so I wouldn’t fall out of bed, even after I thought this was a silly thing to do.

30. She firmly believed in Vick’s Vaporub and a scratchy wool cloth on the chest to help a cold; I learned to avoid visiting Grandma & Grandpa if I had a cold.

31. Every day, Grandma had to have Grandpa put in her drops eyes for glaucoma, though a doctor later told us she probably didn’t have glaucoma after all. Still, this was part of the routine of the day for them and it was a major multi-step procedure that started with moving the chair away from the desk, getting the medicine bottle out of the box, having tissues to hand, etc. I think I thought I was watching minor surgery or something.

32. She saved all the birthday and Mother’s Day cards she got – and I still have a good number of them, as they are old and interesting and I am perhaps nearly as sentimental as she was, though I don’t save my own cards, well, not very many.

33. Grandma always liked it that her birthday and Grandpa’s were only 3 days apart. I don’t recall that they exchanged presents beyond a card or did anything all that different about their birthdays, but they were acknowledged as special days.

34. Grandma saved her (giant economy) dishwashing soap bottles with the snip-off tops for me to play with in the bathtub. It was great fun to fill them up and squirt the water out (though never at Grandma – I wouldn’t dare even think of it!) Another game we had was for her to help me try out ‘hairstyles’ sculpted from shampoo.

35. Grandma’s cutlery was a mismatched collection. When I expressed a preference for the design of a certain, knife, fork and spoon, they became ‘mine’ and appeared on the table at my place ever after. She routinely made my favourite dish of hers when I came over: beef stew in the pressure cooker. I ate it a la carte, putting butter on the mashed carrots and potatoes and ketchup on the beef.

36. According to Mom, Grandma preferred Daddy’s first wife, Adeline, to my mom, though I never heard either of my grandparents ever speak the woman’s name. Mom and Grandma never argued or anything, Mom just wasn’t included in the circle of people Grandma fussed over and the main effort in the relationship was made by Mom, who didn’t really seem to mind that much.

37. Sadly, Grandma’s only son found her expressions of love and concern smothering and irritating. He seemed to keep her at arms’ length as much as possible and only provided birthday and Mother’s Day cards with Mom’s prodding (purchase and provision of a pen, if I recall correctly). Even when I was fairly young I was able to understand why he felt smothered, as I did too sometimes, but I did think that he could have been kinder to his mother all the same.

38. Grandma loved to tell me about her father, her brothers and sisters, none of whom I ever met. I used to think she was jealous of Grandpa’s family and that was why there weren’t as many pictures of them and they didn’t seem to keep in touch as much. Now I realize that while she may have felt that way, it is more likely because Grandpa was the youngest child of a much older family and many of them had died by the time I came along. I also think his family had less money when he was growing up and consequently fewer family photos from that time.

39. Grandma began to lose her mental capacity by the mid-to-late 60’s. I remember at our house Grandpa having to follow her to the bathroom to make sure she was presentable when she returned to the living room. This may be in part why she was so quiet, because she was slipping away. One day when they picked me up from school she handed me an envelope with a note inside. When I opened the note a little plastic spider fell into my lap and I squealed and we all laughed. Even at that time it struck me as being an unusual thing for her to do and I wondered if it was perhaps a glimpse of what she was like before senility began to creep in.

40. She began to lock the screen door when Grandpa went out to mow the lawn and seemed forget he existed. We could all see the humorous side of this situation, but it was also frustrating for my Grandpa. Grandma’s encroaching senility may have been part of what my Dad found difficult to be around; being dependent or disabled in that way was one of his chief fears.

41. After Grandpa died and Mom came over to care for her, Grandma wandered around in the house in her pajamas, as though looking for something, though she only asked for ‘Jake’ once. Mom said Grandma seemed to vaguely understand when told he was ‘gone’.
    

42. Grandma was impossible to keep in bed, but she fell often and Mom wasn’t strong enough to help her up. Much as Mom hated it, they had to put Grandma into a nursing home. She only lived a few months longer.

43. Grandma died of a stroke, on the 16^th of August, 1974, only a year after Grandpa. Just as their dates of birth were only 3 days apart, so were their dates of death.