My Remarkable Grandma, Elaine

I have been telling people about my delightful maternal grandmother for years. She was one of the most talented, sneakily funny, and interesting women I’ve ever known. I’ve written and performed characters based on her while wearing the clothes she made and let me borrow. While directing a theatrical production, I’ve taken cast members to her to learn things I couldn’t teach them, and there’s a Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul published with a story about her in it. I have journal pages filled with hilarious Grandma Quotes. Because of her influence and teaching, I get to write for a living. So today, one day and a half after she slipped quietly home to Jesus, I’m going to tell you again about this remarkable woman.

Grandma was tiny (5-foot something?) and had scoliosis, so looked even shorter as she got older. She wore dresses exclusively and made them from her own pattern, which was designed as an optical illusion to offset the curve of her back. She went grey early and wore dark brown, curly wigs when I was little and a poofy white bun when she stopped wearing wigs. She made her own purses because nothing you could buy had enough pockets, and as an added bonus, she could also make a purse to match any outfit.

My dad has a wool blazer that was gnawed on by a moth. The quarter-sized hole meant a ruined blazer–until Grandma saw it. She whipped out a pair of magnifying goggles (I know, right?) and with a piece of matching wool from the lining, REWOVE that piece into the coat. We still show that coat off because it’s so cool. She knitted socks, crocheted butterflies to wear in her hair, and darned. When I arrived in their hometown to go to college, she and Grandpa showed up at my dorm the second week after I moved in. My RA popped into my room and said, “Hey, your Grandma is here to pick up your laundry…?” It was Grandma’s idea and you couldn’t tell her no, and so for the next 6 years of undergrad and grad school, Grandma did my laundry, showing up at my dorm every two weeks. What a gift to a college student. If I wasn’t there, the RAs just took my laundry basket out of my room; no one dreamed of letting her carry it. And friends, I cannot fully describe my amazement the first time I pulled out darned nylons from the clean laundry.

Grandma painted beautifully in oils and pastels and generally liked lovely things. Our family has samples of her nail-and-string art and tin punch as well as some carving. She was a natural teacher, and at some point, all of the grandchildren tried at least one of those with her. Most of the grandchildren also had a knitting or crochet lesson.

If you spent the night, she would wake the house gently by playing hymns on the organ, and when she felt that you were probably good and awake, she moved to the piano for a little more “oompf.” While visiting sometime in my twenties, I made the mistake of asking her to wake me up early for an event. No gentle organ that morning; she dug out the brass school bell and marched up and down the hallway to my bedroom calling, “Time to get up!”

I once asked her why she didn’t have tulips in her whimsical, overflowing flowerbeds. “Everyone has those. I want something different!” Her flowerbeds and greenhouse were delightfully “different”, comprised of clippings she collected from daily walks with Grandpa, and sprigs from past travels. She cultivated plants that other people called weeds–and she was right; they were lovely when given care. I had plants in my dorm room, in my car, and at home that were all from her. I still do, some of which are now 15 years old.

In the Fall, she would collect leaves she thought to be particularly striking and lay them out for display on a corner of the living room floor. She found a tiny transparent snail one morning when I was there and put him in a bowl on the dinner table to admire him through the morning. Then she put him back where she found him.

She had worked hard enough at seeing the best in people and things in general that it had become a habit. I’m pretty sure I wore a few outfits that she didn’t approve of but she always found a detail to note and admire. There was always something nice to say to everyone, and she went out of her way to say it. Even if served a food she didn’t like, she would endure it and find a way to compliment the chef. One day, after observing that I had been unable to finish a dish with coconut in it and confirming my dislike of the stuff, she agreed that it was disgusting. I was shocked. “But Grandma, what will you do if you get to Heaven and there are coconuts?” “Then I will pitch them over into Hell.” Grandpa and I positively howled. Then, “Oh dear, I think that was disrespectful.”

There was a fair heaping of determined boldness mixed in with that practiced grace. Once on a mission to find my mother a music stand, she stopped in front of a music store that I, personally, found a bit…sketchy. Against my 14-year-old objections, she marched into that shop with me in tow. The place was a complete haze of cigarette smoke, with a tattoo artist in the back and a guy playing a set of drums. The entire rest of the shop was empty. Now I was SURE we were in the wrong place, but not to be deterred from the mission, Grandma marched up to the guy at the trap set, made her inquiry, thanked him primly, and we left. I’m sure he’s still telling that story, too.

I started getting interested in writing when I was about nine, at which point I learned that my grandma was a published author. She had been freelancing for years and had published articles and devotionals in all kinds of publications. At one point she showed me some drawings for a series of stories about birds she was working on. She gave me the kind of practical freelance advice that I never got in any class but hers. She would give me a heads-up when admissions were open in various publications, and when I sent her my work, she would ask questions that helped me make my own editing choices.

She has been in Heaven only a day and a half, now, but for her, I imagine it feels as though she has always been there. I only ever saw her cry once, when she visited the green place where my mother, their daughter, is buried. But all her faith is sight and all her tears are gone. I imagine they are making music again together.

And if there is coconut up there, I imagine it’s pretty good.