"To Grandma's House We Go"

Slowly, slowly I am moving things out of the way to make a "normal" house for Caroline when she gets here next week.  But like what happens with ALL of these "straightening up" sorts of things, I get sidestepped by just about everything I find, things I forgot I had.

Today I found a book I bought years ago called "For Our Children's Children."  I don't know if we even had grandchildren when I bought it, but I was looking ahead to having them and thinking about the things our grandkids might be interested in knowing some day.  There is so much about my grandparents' history that I don't know and that, in my adulthood, I'm sorry I never asked them.  I have mentioned before, for example, how angry I am that I never asked my father's parents about being in vaudeville.  Now it's too late.

But I was thinking about the comparison between the two families.  They were really city folk vs. country folk.  My father's parents lived in an apartment building in San Francisco.

They lived in apartment #5 and I THINK it's that first set of windows on the right side.  They moved in when my father was a young child and my grandmother moved out after my grandfather died, more than 60 years later, so this is the only house that I ever knew.

It was a no-bedroom apartment.  There was a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and a bathroom and Murphy beds in each room.  My grandparents slept separately.  My grandfather used to sit in the window you see there, looking out on the newsstand at the corner.  In those days, the New=Call Bulletin published three times a day and my grandfather liked to read the latest print addition, so as soon as he could see it being delivered to the newsstand, he would send me down to pick up a copy for him.  I remember my grandmother (whom we always called "Nannie" because "Grandma" made her sound too old) being so angry with me because I ran down the hill and then ran back up the hill and up the stairs to their apartment.  I can't remember the number of times she told me "Don't run...it's bad for your heart!"

She scrubbed her bathroom every day, and once a week she soaked her hairbrush in Listerine (isn't it funny the thing you remember?)  She also had a walk-in closet in which hung her prized fox fur stole, the kind where the mouth of the fox grabs its tail and that's what holds it on you.  We didn't think, in those days, about cruelty to animals.  They also had a candlestick telephone for a very long time, which I always thought was kind of cool.  I wonder if Brianna and Lacie could even figure out what this odd looking thing was used for -- or how to use it!

The furniture was very formal and we kids were always scolded for doing...anything...that might ruin the furniture (Nannie should see her chair, which we have had for many years, and which a dog tore once, so it is now covered by a rug.  She's be appalled.)  I don't remember ever seeing a book in the apartment.

When we ate at her house, it was always a formal dining situation, with good silverware and good china on the dining room table, and fancy dishes served.  (To this day I can't stomach celery root because I hated it when she served it).  The best thing about the kitchen was the bottle of ice water and glass that was always kept in what was first an ice box and later a refrigerator.  It's where I got my love of ice water.

In comparison, my mother's parents moved into a small farmhouse in Inverness, California shortly after my parents married.

Behind the house was my grandmother's (who was always "Grandma") large strawberry patch, to the left of the house was the little building where my grandfather had the baby chickens in incubators and beyond that was a wall of blackberries my cousins and I used to pick when ever we were there.  There was also a chicken coop where I got to collect eggs and feed the hens when I visited.

The house could best be described as "comfortable."  In my memory I see everything as mismatched and overstuffed, but very comfortable and nobody gave us rules for how we had to sit on the furniture.  And if I'm correct, my grandparents also had "flat surface syndrome."

There was a small kitchen with a big black wrought iron stove and a table that took up most of the room, but we gathered around to eat, or to play cards if it wasn't meal time.  I remember once I had tongue for dinner and thought it the most delicious thing I'd ever had, but never had it again, and eventually developed a distaste for organ meats.

My grandparents' bedroom was dominated by an old, sagging bed covered by a big flurry quilt.  Off one side of it was a bathroom where my grandfather's teeth always remained in a glass (he never wore them--and could even eat corn on the cob without his teeth).  It had a claw-foot bathtub, and an odd antiseptic smell to the room.  Grandma was a big reader and there were always books around.  She belonged to the Book of the Month club and one Christmas each of her 32 grandchildren got to pick a book from her bookcase as a gift.

We rarely saw my mother's parents.  It was about a 50 mile drive in days before freeways.  A large portion of the road was winding and I almost always threw up before we finished our journey.  My father hated to make that drive, mostly because he looked down on my mother's family as "hicks from the sticks."  It was one of my mother's big disappointments that she got to see her parents so seldom (though eventually, after my grandfather died Grandma moved in with my aunt, who lived next door to us in San Francisco, so my mother was able to see her every day.)

My father's mother was a fashion plate whose biggest disappointment was that she had not been born into wealth.  She always wore high heels, gloves and a hat when out in public, her nails were always carefully manicured, and she had her hair done every week.  She belonged to a "sewing club" (which, to the best of my knowledge never sewed a thing, but was just a social group), where every woman in the group lived in wealthy homes.  Yet Nannie thwarted every opportunity my grandfather got to improve his financial situation, while at the same time reminding him what a loser he was.

My Grandma, on the other hand, bought her dresses from catalogues and was always soft and huggy.  I hated hugging Nannie, and loved having Grandma take me in her arms and whisper "precious child" in my ear.  I'm she did that to each of her grandchildren, but she always made you feel like you were the favored one.

So those were my grandparents.  I was lucky that I had grandparents, but they definitely showed me two different sides of life!

Grandparents at Last!

It's what grandparents do, right?  Spoil the grandkids and then let their parents deal with the consequences. 

Because of the distance between us, we've never really had that fun, but today we did.  After a morning with the girls at Tom's house, Lacie went down for a nap and Walt, Tom and I were going to go to get yogurt with Brianna, to give Laurel quiet to work in.

But Tom needed to go to the store, so he sent the two of us on with Bri (she is now big enough to fit in a booster car seat, instead of the baby kind of car seat) and we went off to Yogurtland. (Six year old Bri was invaluable, since she knew exactly how to get to Yogurtland, knew "left" from "right" and spotted the pet shop next door to the yogurt place before we did!)

Not used to the size of the cups and how much they hold, I probably bought more yogurt than Bri usually has.  She was good about choosing only fruit toppings and told me that "usually I can only have one sweet thing," meaning only one of the candy-like toppings.  She chose 2 gummy bears for her "sweet" and then sat with us to eat her bowl of yogurt.

But the sugar in the yogurt and in the fruit, and the excitement of being out on an adventure began to hit her and by the time Daddy finally got there, she was bouncing off the walls.  Literally.

When we were ready to leave, Walt was prepared to return to Tom's house but I, knowing Lacie would probably still be asleep and Bri was needing some calm time, suggested we go home instead and send Bri back with Tom, which we did, leaving Tom to convince Bri that she should not remove her shoes and suck on them in the parking lot.

Tee hee...It is fun to be a grandparent!

But the morning had been great fun.  We got there before the girls woke up, so we were there to wake them up -- and to see the new bunk beds recently installed, so they now sleep in the same room.

Laurel had work to do, so we kept the girls busy out on the patio, Tom pitching to Bri (for what seemed like an hour!...the girl had stamina!) while Walt acted as catcher.

At the same time I read book after book to Lacie, who absolutely thrilled me when one of the books she chose to read was "Joe the Bear and Sam the Mouse," which was one of the books I bought a few months back because it had been one of our kids' favorites.  It was fun to do the low "Joe the bear" and high pitched "Sam the Mouse" voices again.  Like riding a bicycle...even the inflections I used to use were right there again. 

Laurel had done an iMovie of Bri's t-ball team that was amazing.  She tried to copy it to a disk for me, but the file was too big, so she shared it in Google Docs and I was able to call it up on my cell phone.  Bri and I watched it together (for the third time) on my phone.

Santa Barbara at this time of year is just beautiful.  The city is ablaze with jacaranda trees, their purple flowers shimmering in the sunlight.

(This particular tree is in Tom's neighbor's back yard behind a lemon tree, adding yellow and green to the purple pallet.)

Tom and family had a dinner date tonight, so Walt and I took Joe out to Outback Steakhouse for a delicious dinner, but we have all had an elegant sufficiency and I just may be asleep before 10 p.m. again tonight!

 

Bed Head

Grandpa(s)

My friend Kari and I had coffee together this morning.  It's something we do once or twice a year and I always think we should do it more often.  She's a fascinating person with whom I share a lot of interests.  For one thing, she's one of a very few people I know in my "real life" who not only understands, but appreciates all of the internet stuff I do.  She was my "Twitter" go to for awhile, though she doesn't use twitter as much as she used to (and I almost never use it).

She understands Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and the various program connected with blogging, like Flickr, Blog-to-Print, Blogger, WordPress, and other things that most people go blank when I mention.  It's nice to have someone who understands.

She was encouraging me to print my blog and I'm thinking about it.  It would be spendy, but kind of nice to have all these entries in hardback book form, one per year.

In addition to having the whole internet thing in common, we have aging mothers in common.  Hers is 85 and sounds like she is in a similar position to what mine was at 85.  She can't imagine her mother ever moving out of her family home.  Of course, when my mother was 85 I never dreamed that she would move out of her house either.

In addition to the other things we talked about, she mentioned that today would have been her grandfather's birthday, if he had not died 15 years ago, and that she had written a blog entry about him.  She talked about how fortunate she was to have such good memories of both of her grandfathers.

I have written here before about my grandmothers, one of whom (my mother's mother, Grandma Scott) I loved, the other of whom (my father's mother, "Nannie") I tolerated.  I never saw enough of Grandma Scott, saw too much of Nannie.  I miss Grandma Scott; I haven't missed Nannie once since she died, which is sad because she worshipped me (I was jealous of my sister because Nannie didn't like her all that much.   We called her "Nannie" because "Grandma" made her sound too old.)

I've never really talked much about my grandfathers, mostly because I never really had a real realtionship with either of them.  I called them both Grandpa (Grandpa West and Grandpa Scott).  I saw Grandpa West a lot but he was just kind of "there" and I never thought much about him.  I saw Grandpa Scott rarely and was mostly afraid of him because he seemed gruff and unloving.

But I thought I'd give them their due and talk about them.   Grandpa West was a formal guy.  He always wore a suit and a tie.  I can't picture him in anything else.  He was terribly henpecked.  He had been a star in Vaudeville, an Irish tenor who was offered a recording contract by a record company in New York, but my grandmother wouldn't let him take it because it would mean moving and she refused to leave San Francisco.  Instead he went into business with his friend Larry Barrett, who was opening a parking garage.  Grandpa had the chance to become his partner, but Nannie was afraid he would lose the money he was supposed to invest, so Larry opened the garage and Grandpa went to work parking cars for him.  He parked cars his entire career while Larry became very rich, opening several parking garages in San Francisco, owning a couple of homes that my grandmother liked to visit, all the while letting my grandfather know what a loser he was.

We frequently had dinner at their apartment (Nannie would never move out of the apartment because she felt buying a house was an expense they could not afford...she talked my father out of buying a house too, and he never did until after she died, and my sister and I were grown). When we went to dinner Grandpa always sat stiffly in his chair while Nannie took care of the entertaining.  I think he might have mixed drinks, but I'm not sure.  Once they encouraged him to sing one of his songs from Vaudeville days and the whole time he was singing (in a still-strong, steady tenor), Nannie spent the whole time rolling her eyes and sighing in exasperation.  I don't remember his ever singing again.

When they came to our house, Grandpa always gave Karen and me a quarter. I'm not sure why.  It was his way of bonding with us, I guess.  He always said "tell me all about yourself" and we never knew what to say, so one day he decided that the only reason we talked to him was because he gave us money and from that day on he never gave us money again and got angry because that time we kind of expected it, since he had always given us money before.  Kind of reminds me of my father, who always brought us little gifts when he came home from his weekly trips to Los Angeles.   We would run to greet him, grab his "grip" and dig through it to find our gift until the day he decided we were too old and got angry with us for looking for the gift he did not buy.  He had not given us a warning.  One day it was OK, the other day it was something that made him angry.

[Gee--is this the pattern of my life?]

Grandpa died in a rest home.  The day he was dying, my mother and father took my grandmother to see him.  My father dropped the women off and went to get a haircut so he would look groomed for the funeral.  Nannie wouldn't touch her husband as he was dying, and Grandpa died in my mother's arms.  He deserved better.

As for Grandpa Scott, he was an interesting man.  He was completely bald because someone dropped a bucket of tar on him when he was working in a deep hole one time and his hair never grew back.  I remember him in overalls, with a hat on, though I know he didn't wear the hat all the time.  He also had no teeth.  He had false teeth, but he didn't like to wear them, and he could function just fine without them.  It was always funny when I used their bathroom, because his teeth sat in a glass on the counter.  The combination of no teeth and his big moustache and the fact that he mumbled made him difficult to understand when he talked, but I was fascinated that he could eat corn off a cob just as cleanly (and perhaps more cleanly) than someone with teeth.  He also put sugar on his sliced tomatoes.

He had been a rancher on a small ranch when my mother was young, then when they sold the ranch and moved into town he was a handyman.  They moved to San Francisco and he was a handyman there too, for I don't know how long.  Before I was born, they had purchased an acre of land in Inverness, about an hour's drive from San Francisco.   That's the only place I ever knew him.  

He raised corn and chickens and I don't know what else.  I remember him taking me into the shed when he had newly hatched chicks and letting me hold one of the soft little chicks. I remember helping feed the chickens and gather eggs from the chicken pen.  I don't really remember much else about him.  I don't think I ever sat in his lap or had a conversation with him.  He had raised 11 children and buried one and maybe he was burned out on talking with kids (though Peach, who lived in a house on the acre and saw him frequently, may have different memories).  He had a fishing boat and used to go out on Tomales Bay to fish.  I went with him one time, trying to catch crab (he set me up with a length of string with bacon on it).  I don't remember if I caught a crab or not, but I remember that as being fun).

By the time he died, he had had both legs amputated for a blood circulation problem.  After that I was really afraid of him because I was scared of seeing him without legs.  I can't remember if he died at home or in a hospital, but I remember my mother telling me that he was so in control of himself that while most people's bodies release bowel and bladder at the time of death, his never did.  Not sure how he accomplished that!

I would like to have better memories of my grandfathers, but at least I knew them, a little bit.  Grandpa Scott died before Walt and I were married, so he never saw any of our children.  Grandpa West lived long enough to hold Paul as a newborn (but, of course, I can't find that photo now!)

Grandparents

First of all, apologies for the bad link yesterday on the article about The Putah Creek Crawdads, which several people wrote to me about. I can't seem to get it to link properly, but if you really want to read it go to http://criticontheloose.blogspot.com/ and search the labels in the right column for "Putah Creek Crawdads."

I've bought a couple of books recently on grandparenting. One is a book chock full of ideas for how to be in your grandchild's life when you live at a distance. I've started working on that already.

The other was a book I finished reading in a day. It's newspaper columnist Adar Lara's "The Granny Diaries." I found that more fun reading, but less helpful because Lara's grandchild is her daughter's child and the book really comes from the place of a sometimes uneasy relationship between mother and daughter, and how the mother can support her daughter's decisions, even when she wants to open her mouth and say "why don't you..." or "in my day we..." or other such comments which might be taken as a criticism of her parenting.

She actually gives 2-1/2 pages to the grandmothers whose SONS are the parent and it was more acknowledging that some of us are grandparents to our son's children and that's about it.

But reading these books has made me think about my relationship with my own grandparents (I am fortunate that I knew all four of them) and how I felt about my mother's parents (her mother especially), given that I was lucky if I saw her three times a year, makes me realize how grandparenting can be done even at a distance.

As I have written before, we saw my father's parents all the time. They lived just a mile or so from us, in San Francisco, and they did not have a car, so they relied on us for transportation everywhere. Every Sunday morning we picked them up and took them to church. My mother and my grandmother spoke on the phone veryfrequently. (This was not my mother's choice and my grandmother carried on such lengthy one-sided conversations that it was not uncommon to watch my mother holding her head in her hands, the telephone receiver down at her side while my grandmother chatted on and on and on, unaware that nobody was listening to her.)

She was a small woman but very definitely the matriarch. Her rule was law. All the time. She was always impeccably dressed, and would not be seen in downtown San Francisco without high heels, a nice 2-piece suit, a hat, and gloves. She liked being waited on and her habit was to sit herself down somewhere and then start issuing orders, always prefacing them by "Hon, like a good girl would you...." get her a drink, get her purse for her, open a window, etc., etc., etc.

She was angry all of her life that she was not rich, and her circle of friends were all people of some degree of wealth. As they all got older and her friends began to die off, she was always disappointed that nobody left her a lot of money. She had been a chorus girl in vaudeville and occasionally could get frolicksome, but mostly I saw her as a woman with a great deal of unhapiness with a sour disposition that affected everyone around her.

She loved me. She showered me with stuff and smothered me. It was nice for her that I liked frilly, girly things, because she did too, and when Karen came along, and was a tomboy, she really didn't care much about her. Oh she treated her nicely, but it was always clear who was her favorite--and it was one thing I was jealous about my sister--Nannie didn't like her as much as she did me.

In contrast, my father's father, in my memory, was very quiet and aloof (he never got a chance to get a word in edgewise, and my grandmother spent most of her life criticizing him to his face). He also was always impeccably dressed. Always wore a white shirt and a tie, even when working at the downtown garage, parking cars, where he worked until he retired. He never seemed to quite know what to do with grandchildren and was very stiff and proper with us. Whenever he saw us, the only thing he could think of to say was "tell me all about yourself."

Where my father's parents were the quintessential city folk, my mother's parents were definitely all country. By the time I was born, they had moved out into the country in Inverness and lived on an acre of land, where my grandfather could raise chickens and corn and other crops and my grandmother could tend her strawberry patch. They had raised ten children and had 32 grandchildren, two of them (Peach and her sister) living in a house on the property.

So there wasn't a lot of money to go into gifts for grandchildren and I almost never saw them but I will never forget being swept into Grandma's arms and when she whispered "precious child" in my ear, I knew that I was her very special grandchild. Each of her other grandchildren knew that too--she just had this knack of making you feel loved and special when you were with her. I can't remember a thing that my paternal grandmother gave me (I know she gave me a lot) but I treasure the one gift I got from my other grandmother--she belonged to the Book of the Month club and near Christmastime, we got to look through the books she had finished reading and choose one for ourselves. I still remember that I chose a book called "The Tontine." by Thomas Costain. I don't remember if I ever read the book, but just having a gift from Grandma was wonderful.

My mother's father was also a quiet man, and apparently had been all of her childhood as well. He lost his hair when tar spilled on his head when he was working in a well...I don't know if it grew back, but the story was that it didn't. And his teeth rested in a glass in the bathroom. I never saw him with teeth, though he could clean an ear of corn like you wouldn't believe. I remember he liked to put sugar on his sliced tomatoes.

I was always kind of afraid of him, but I do remember one time when he took me out to the shed and showed me some newly hatched baby chicks. Before he died he lost both of his legs from poor circulation. I didn't feel much when he died because I never really felt I knew him (much as I never really knew my other grandfather either).

But after his death, Grandma lived with us for awhile. I used to love watching her brush her hair, which came to her waist. She would braid it and put it in a crown on to of her head.

When I think back on my own grandparents, I realize that grandparents are special whether they live next door and see them all the time, or whether you only see them a few times a year. It's how they make you feel that makes all the difference. I feel sad that I could never feel about my father's mother the way I did about my mother's.