My Grandmother

" A little bit parent, a little bit teacher, a little bit friend."
Author Unknown




It is 1970. I am standing at the pay phone in the college dormitory hallway dialing zero for the “operator”. I say, ‘Collect, 413 7822998. I hear my grandmother’s voice on the other end and the operator says “Will you accept a collect call from Cheryl?”Of course I knew she would say yes and then we talk.
“The lilacs are coming out here in Keene, Nana. It’s beautiful. Will you still be planning to drive up to go to dinner this Sunday? Shall I make reservations at the Black Horse Inn?”

I am not sure of the exact conversation. I am not even sure if that was the restaurant. But what I do remember is that whenever I wanted to call and talk to my Nana, she was always there. And I do remember several occasions when she would drive the distance from Springfield, MA to Keene, NH to see me while I was at college. I was so fortunate to have two grandmothers that made an impact on my life, and contributed to who I am.

Grandmother: the mother of one’s parent. That is what the dictionary says. But perhaps a better definition might be this quote; A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend. (Author Unknown) My grandmother was all of these. I was 46 when my grandmother passed away. My sons were grown. I had a lifetime of opportunities to learn from her, and to be her best friend. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. ‘Her things’ are ‘my things’ now. Wherever I look in my house there are pieces of her life that have now become mine. They are constant reminders of all that she taught me, of all that was important to her and what has now become important to me.

My love of gardening began with my grandmother. Nana loved her gardens. Her yard was not huge but she had many garden areas and took pride in them all. I would help her cultivate the beds. I learned how deep to plant iris and what to feed roses. She loved her roses and would spend hours pouring over the Jackson and Perkins catalogs in late Winter before the Spring planting season arrived, deciding which new variety she would try. I helped her set the Japanese Beetle traps and prune off the dead canes on her existing plants. I would follow her as she chose which rose she might clip to enjoy in her pewter bud vase in the breakfast nook. I learned what ‘hens and chickens’ were that lined her rock steps and I watched as she would set stones in her rock garden, just so, for different plants to grow. She had bad knees and her feet, crippled with hammar toes and corns, laced tightly into her orthopedic shoes, made it difficult for her to kneel down and then get up again but that didn’t stop her. The joy and satisfaction that her gardens brought her, taught me much about determination through pain and adversity. Yes, my love of gardening truly did begin with my grandmother.

Gardening was only one of the many things I learned to love because of my grandmother. She surrounded herself with magazines like National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Yankee Magazine and Better Homes and Garden, and her favorite Reader’s Digest along with the latest best sellers, and of course the daily newspaper, all of which she would read from cover to cover. In the bedroom where my sisters and I slept when we stayed overnight, there was a bookcase that was filled with children’s books, and before we went to sleep, she would always read to us. Frequently we would take a trip downtown to Johnson’s Bookstore where she would let us buy whatever books we wanted . From classics to the newest children’s selections, she encouraged us to choose what we liked. Growing up we had subscriptions to Highlights, and other children’s magazines and I continued to receive Reader’s Digest and Better Homes and Garden until she passed away in 1997 and even after that, my father continued to renew the subscriptions. It is no wonder that through her example, I love to read, I love to be surrounded by a variety of texts and I can barely pass a bookstore without buying at least one new book.

My grandmother also wrote. She wrote in a journal every day. Sometimes just a line or two about the weather or what she had done that day, but occasionally other bits and pieces of her life. She wrote letters, mostly because that is what people did then, in order to communicate with friends and family who lived far away. Her penmanship was beautiful and it seemed as though it flowed from her pen to the paper effortlessly. Even as a left hander, it made me proud to form my letters as perfectly as hers. I treasure her journals and many of her letters that I now have. It has inspired me to put words to paper and save my thoughts if only just for myself to read.

Most importantly, she always made me feel as though she had been waiting to see me or hear from me all day. I remember when I dialed those numbers, 7822998..numbers that I will never forget. I was in my 40’s, she was in her 90’s. She would answer and I would never have to say, ‘it’s Cheryl’. She always knew it was me and I always knew that she would put aside whatever she had been doing to make time to listen. I never thought of my grandmother as old as she looked on the outside, since she was just like me on the inside.