Her older sister called her Dolly. Tiny and cute, only five feet tall if she stood on her tippy toes, my grandma was one of my most favorite people of all time. At eighty-five years young, she still mowed her lawn with a push mower. She placed the mower on the lawn, walked several yards away from it, turned to face it, then raced with all her might, grabbed the handle of the mower and pushed.
She traveled around town on trash day in her little green Chevrolet Corvair, looking at what others discarded. (Triggered, I guess, by her ranching background and making do.) One day she found a perfectly good bureau on someone’s curb. She had one problem. With the car’s engine in the rear, the trunk opened in front. After she loaded the dresser, she couldn’t see out the windshield. So she backed all the way home.
She hadn’t always been triumphant. Orphaned at age eight, after the untimely death of her mother in a carriage accident and abandonment by her father, she was sent to a home. She told me the story, but not by way of complaint, of climbing up in a big oak tree to sit and await her death. No one had told her what happened to young girls as they matured. She had started her period and thought she was dying.
At twelve years of age, a family took her in. But not out of the goodness of their hearts. They needed someone to help raise three little girls. The mother was unable to care for them by herself. But Grandma never questioned her fate.
I’d walk to her house to hear her stories about what seemed like the old West in early Arizona. She meant my grandfather when on horseback, she’d seen him coming upon the creek where she and two friends skinny dipped. The other girls ran, shrieking, for their clothes, but not Grandma. She pulled a dress from the overhanging tree to cover her head to disguise her identity.
I don’t think it ever occurred to Grandma, my mom’s mother, to be anything but fun. Maybe that’s why when she bought a new Ford Galaxy. After the Corvair, she’d open her trunk, and make everyone look inside. “Isn’t this the biggest trunk you’ve ever seen?”
Every time someone in the family bought a new car, she’d stroll to the back to inspect the trunk. “It’s okay, but yours isn’t as big as mine.”
When Aunt Piggy purchased a Thunderbird, it goaded the competition. Grandma spied her trunk. “Mine’s bigger,” she bragged.
“Mom, if you don’t shut up about your trunk,” my aunt declared, “I’m going to stuff you inside.” Grandma grinned. She knew she’d won.
The last time I remember taking her out it was a Mother’s Day some years ago. She had dressed up in an out-of-date red and orange floral polyester bell bottoms pants suit, wore dangly earrings, and bright red shoes. When the hostess showed us to our table, Grandma danced all the way to her seat. My son, Hot Wheelz, then a young teen, looked embarrassed. Later in the day, he asked if I was going to do those kind of things when I got older.
Today, May 24th, on her unforgettable birthday, I want to be just like Grandma. I promise not to skinny dip, but I did purchase a pair of red shoes that I’m saving for my next Mother’s Day brunch with my grown children. And just before writing this post, I walked to my car, opened the trunk and looked in it. Grandma’s was bigger. Lucky her. And lucky me to have been her granddaughter.
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Love it!!!
That was a wonderful story. You were very lucky indeed.
made me cry a bit. no wonder your soooo cool. you come from good stock~
It's wonderful that you now get to be that person to your grandkids!
Those are wonderful memories. I wish we had the "get up and go" that that generation had!
What a fantastic grandmother you were blessed with! I don’t think I’m the dancing-in-red-shoes type, but I hope to be still enjoying life in my 80s and 90s.