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More Than One Mom

Grandma

By J. G. GourleyPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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I’m one of those lucky people who had several mom figures. Probably not unlike many small town, middle-American kids whose family mostly remained in the same rural area. I had mom, of course, and she was great, but she had to work to make ends meet. I was lucky to have others to step up when she couldn’t be there. I had a wonderful aunt who I stayed with for a few weeks each summer. I have great memories of being at her house. I also had an older sister--older by nine years, and I thought she was a real pain until I grew up and realized how much she actually did for me. There were a number of best friends’ moms--the ones who would answer questions about those embarrassing young woman curiosities--too embarrassing to ask my own mom, and finally, there was my grandma. Perhaps the most amazingly kind and loving woman I’ve ever known. She’s gone now, but the impact she had on my life will never ever be forgotten. If I had to describe her with only one word I’d use wise, but so much would be left out with only that word. She truly did always know exactly what to say.

I was the youngest of three by several years--you know, what folks used to call a mistake. By the time I came around, my grandma was knee deep in caring for my grandpa who had emphysema, a terrible disease that took a giant man to nearly nothing in a matter of months. Grandma was only fifty-nine when I was born, and since I’m now fifty-six, I have a new respect for how young that really is, but I believe she was pretty overwhelmed with being a caregiver. She told my mom that she wouldn’t be able to babysit for me when I came around. She had cared for my brother and sister before they went to school, but she just couldn’t keep me. In hindsight, I think she thought she was too old and had lost her patience for little people. That turned out to not be a problem.

I can imagine my mom was probably pretty disappointed, but she honored grandma’s wishes and found me a place to stay with a neighbor lady in town so she could go back to work. I have no memory of this, of course, but the way the story goes, she made my dad take me to the babysitter because she couldn’t stand hearing me cry when she left. After grandma heard about me crying each morning, she changed her mind and agreed to sit with me. I imagine my dad was the one who told grandma cause he likely didn’t want to hear me cry either. So my grandma became a huge part of who I am.

As my grandpa got weaker and harder to care for, my parents helped move them to a place in town. It was really only a few miles from where they lived in the country, but it was closer to my parents so they could help with grandpa. Best of all, it was within walking distance of mom and dad’s house. Just a short time after they moved, grandpa died. I don’t remember him very well--I was only seven at the time. The thing I remember most is how sad everyone was, but in rural middle-America with WWII-generation parents, there wasn’t much time for mourning. One of the most powerful things I remember my grandma ever saying was, “bury your dead and move on.” It sounds harsh and I’ve learned most people don’t like to hear such a jaring statement, but it has gone a long way in helping realize we can’t change the fact that we have loss, but we also have a life to live and grieving the loss for too long inhibits our ability to live.

With grandma just down the street and me in school, I went to her house each morning for breakfast and stayed at her house after school until my parents got home. She was a huge advocate of breakfast, so each morning there was some kind of substantial meal to begin the day. To this day, breakfast is my favorite meal. There was bacon and eggs with the eggs cooked over-easy with toast under it to catch the “egg goo.” Sometimes she made cream o’ wheat in a pan on the stove. It is still one of my favorite comfort foods; although as desperately as I want it to taste the same, it isn’t quite right. And on very special days there were Hungry Jack pancakes with Log Cabin syrup. My spouse occasionally tries to get me to eat real maple syrup but it never tastes right; it has to be Log Cabin.

After school, I’d run into her house like I owned it, and if she wasn’t sitting in her rocking chair with a book in her hand she was in the kitchen cooking or washing dishes. If you asked anyone she knew they’d all tell you how much she loved to read. Friends brought her secondhand books all the time and my mother once said there was nothing she wouldn’t read. I think she was probably right. I once asked her why she liked to read so much. As a kid, I struggled with reading--a little bit of undiagnosed dyslexia caused reading to be a real challenge. I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to read. She told me that when she was a young girl she was kind of sickly--that’s the word she used. It caused her to not be able to go out and work or play so she was stuck inside with books. It was a passion that I grew into over time, but I’ll never be able to consume a story like my grandma could. She also loved poetry, and while I can’t find the same joy she did in reading a poem, I have great memories of her quoting poems she’d memorized.

As I got older and didn’t need a babysitter anymore, I still went to grandma’s every day after school. I’d get a snack--sometimes cookies but always orange juice, and we’d visit for a minute. I’d tell her about my day and she’d listen with great interest to my childhood problems. Sometimes when my parents would go out on Saturday night I’d stay with grandma and sometimes I just spent Saturday night at her house for fun. I’d basically grown up as an only child being so much younger than my siblings, so I was pretty good at entertaining myself, but at grandma’s there was always something to do, like checkers or rummy. She was also great at admiring my artistic creations, but some of the most vivid memories were of watching the Carol Burnett show with popcorn and a Pepsi.

Sometimes I mowed her lawn for a small allowance, but other than that I never had chores at grandma’s house. I’m sure she had to correct me at some point but I have absolutely no memories of her disciplining me. I generally was a pretty well behaved kid, but I can’t believe I never did anything wrong.

Grandma was always there and she always knew what to say--when I was young and being bullied at school, she had the answers. As I got older and had boyfriends who broke my heart, her words of wisdom eased the ache. When my parents were seemingly hard on me she found the words to make a child understand.

There is one piece of advice she gave me when I was a young adult newly enlisted in the United States Air Force that I’ll never forget and I throw it out to anyone who will listen. I was stationed in Germany and phone calls were difficult and expensive, but my mom called me every Sunday. One Sunday when she called, my grandma was at her house and participated in the call. Mom asked if I’d found a boyfriend--it was always important to her and I sometimes felt like I was letting her down since I didn’t have one, but my grandma piped up and said, “It’s okay, never, never lower your standards.”

That’s my motto and it always will be. I’m no perfectionist, by any sense of the word, but I try hard to make sure that no matter what I’m doing I don’t lower my own standards for someone or something else. It taught me that I was the only one I had to satisfy and I should never let myself down.

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About the Creator

J. G. Gourley

I served in the Air Force for twenty years and deployed to both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I still work for USAF as a civil servant, but my true passion is writing and woodworking (Jan Galye, Author and Froggybuilder.com).

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