She was round and cozy, always opening her arms wide for big hugs. She had dark hair, short and soft with curls. Her eyes were hazel-warm, filled with kindness, and always watching for what her family might need. She wore clothes for comfort. Always elastic waist paints, sneakers or sandals, and sweatshirts. She also wore her glasses around her neck or on top of her head, and would still ask you if you had seen them even though they were right there. I remember her wearing visors on occasion in the summer, and a fanny pack on vacations. When she walked she was always careful--slow and steady so she wouldn't trip. And yet she still tripped and fell all too often, and usually had a bruise on her hip or leg or arm to show us. In her last few years she also had some false teeth that she sometimes took out to eat, much to her own embarrassment. She would also take a Beano at every meal, much to our embarrassment. Her face was wrinkly, and when she started loosing weight the skin sagged and wrinkled a little more. She loved to knit, crochet, and sew. She loved reading paperbacks, watching her programs on the television, and fussing over anyone who was visiting.
I know my grandma was a worker bee at heart. She had several jobs I heard about. She worked at the National Parks in Yellowstone, and the pictures from then were some of my favorites. She also worked at a soda shop, though I don't remember that. The job I remember her having was at the fabric store where she would measure and cut for the customers. In my mind t suited her and her grandma status. I remember running my hands over the crazy bolts of fabric when we would go visit her, and flipping through the catalogs with the patterns. I liked her apron with the fabric scissors always tucked in the pocket. But best of all, I liked watching her hands while she worked. It was something I never stopped doing the rest of her years.
Grandma worked with her hands, a lot. She would knit and crochet on the couch and was always in the middle of one project or another. While she wandered to fabric appliques, modge podge, and weaving with plastic sacks, she always came back to her yarn. She sewed just as much. Almost all of our Halloween costumes, Easter dresses, and Christmas pajamas were made by her careful hands. I remember being measured repeatedly. She would whisk out the measuring tape and tell me to turn around. Her hands were steady and she would mark down the sizes in her careful cursive. Even so, when it came time to try on our new clothes mine were always a little big. "You are just too skinny," she would always smile and say. And I was too, a scrawny little beanpole that always climbed and squeezed into all the best hiding places. While she sewed I would slip into the space between the wall and her foot board. I had a pillow hidden there that I could lay on. It smelled like her, and the whir of the machine would lull me to sleep. It was so comfortable, and always funny to pop out when she had forgotten I was there.
My earliest memories of her usually come with the shag green carpet of the living room floor and a stamp kit she would pull out once we had finished our after school snack--usually strawberry swirl cakes. For as long as I can really remember, my mom has worked. So that meant grandma would often pick us up from school in her Pontiac, gold Grand Prix I think, and take us to her house for the last few hours of the day. She would get us situated in the living room with cartoons on the television and snacks on the t.v. trays. We would also play on the floor with these crazy orange floor chairs. They were shaped like an "L" and the cushion would flap depending if you wanted to sit upright or just be propped up on the floor. We would watch, and eat, and stamp our hearts out. She would sit on the couch, her needles clicking rhythmically until mom came to claim us.
In later years, while I was in junior high and early high school, she would drive me to afternoon swim practice. I remember thinking she looked so small behind the wheel of a car. I also remember hearing about the time she ran into the trailer hitch on a truck and popped a circular hole in her bumper. "I couldn't see it all the way down there," she said. They never had it fixed and I would smile every time I saw it. She shuttled me to swim at first in that gold car, then in her new red Vibe that passed to my brother. It took me weeks to program and reprogram the radios. I swear every time I got back in she had managed to completely mess up all the stations. Not that we really listened to music. On the drive she would ask me about school and church and family. Once the preliminary conversation was over we sat in comfortable silence while the radio sang quietly from the the backseat speakers, also something she managed to do and I always had to fix.
Grandma was also a patron of the arts. She couldn't sing a single note on key, but she loved to listen to music. Christmas was an especially good time for her. Not only did she come to all our orchestra and choir concerts, but it also meant her favorite version of her favorite song was on all the time, "Little Drummer Boy." She loved the classics too by Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. The holiday season is a little lonely without her handmade advent gifts and her pointed, cursive lettering.
I see her in my daughter's crooked pinky fingers, and the way the backs of my hands are starting to look with the protruding blue veins and the occasional age spot. I see her in my aunt's kindness and generosity. I feel her presence when we sing Christmas Carols, specifically "The Little Drummer Boy." I think of her when I pass skeins of yarn or pull out her old sewing machine for a project. It still kind of smells like her sewing room. I know she is still doing all she can to watch over her family and make sure we have everything we need.
