JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Congratulate me, everyone, I’m a
grandmother! Little Paulie* arrived last week, a full ten days before his due
date, throwing us all into confusion. He must get this from my
daughter-in-law’s side of the family, because I guarantee you no one on the
Hugo-Vidal camp has ever arrived that early to anything.
*He looks just like Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas
Right now, my grandmotherly duties are keeping the new parent’s two dogs, which, if you’re keeping score at home, makes for four dogs and two cats, one of which is my younger daughter’s $15,000 guy. It feels as if my house had been invaded by needy toddlers, which, I suppose, is a good preview of the future.
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| Like this, but bald, no cigar, and in a onesie |
I’m excited about this new stage in my life, in part because my own grandmothers played such an important role in my life. I was lucky to have three: Grandmother Spencer, a loving fluffy bisquit of a Southern woman, Grandma Fleming, who magically always had fresh-baked cookies when I stopped at her house on my way home from high school, and Grandma Greuling, a no-nonsense Adirondacker who let me help in her antique shop and told me stories about my family going back to the 1600s.
None of my grandmothers took me on vacations or showered me with expensive gifts. They let me be with them while they sewed, gardened, baked, refinished furniture. They loved me for who I was and listened to me no matter what. What a gift for any child!
Reds, what do you remember about your own grandmothers?
HALLIE EPHRON: I remember my grandmother was very old and wrinkly and spoke very little English and with a thick accent. She always had a coin or two in her pocket for me.
She lived in an apartment nearby and came to our house once
a week and cooked. She made the world’s best thin, crisp cinnamon cookies which
I’ve never been able to duplicate. I got to cut them out and brush them with
butter and sprinkle on cinnamon.
She also made the world’s best chopped liver. Don’t groan, it’s delicious.
She’d start by rendering chicken fat from chicken skin (I stood by the stove
hoping to grab off some of the crispy bits). And end by chopping sauteed
livers and onions that had been cooked in the chicken fat, seasoning with
plenty of salt and pepper, and chopping in a massive wooden bowl which I still
have, it’s bottom cross-hatched with cut marks.
I never got a chance to ask her what life had been like in
Russia, how she and others in her family managed to flee, what it was like to
go through Ellis Island….
If you have a living grandparent, ASK while you can still get answers!
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My father’s mother was elegant
and gorgeous, beautiful with icy white hair and the best clothes, and a
wonderful cook who made lemon pancakes in the shape of our initials and dusted
with powdered sugar. She made amazing chicken soup, and kreplach, and matzo
ball soup, and a wine cake that no one could ever duplicate–and she had
written out recipe cards with NO quantities, so no one could
possibly make her dishes again. She gave me a typewriter, when I was
about 9, which was so life changing. (It came in a little suitcase.)
I did ask her about leaving Russia, and she started talking about what a lovely village her family had lived in and what lovely soldiers came to town, and I soon realized she was about to tell me her own fairy tale, and I’d never know the real story. I did ask her to write it down--she typed it on my typewriter! And it is still somewhere.
My mother's mother was very..quirky. Ethereal, and fragile.
From another time, it really felt. I have no memory of her ever saying a word
to me.
When my parents were divorced, I also had my step-father’s mother. She once said to me, when I was 10, maybe: “I love you as much as I would love a real grandchild.”
LUCY BURDETTE: My mother’s mother was Lucille Burdette–she
was a painter, very kind and gentle. Sadly, she died when I was about seven so
I don’t have lots of memories.
My father’s mother was little and fierce–we still tell stories about how she bossed my grandfather around. My mother was afraid of her, and my uncle didn’t have too much good to say either. Even so, I admired her sturdy toughness and John fears I’ve inherited too much of her:).
I feel like grandmothers of today seem much younger and more active. Congratulations Julia!
RHYS BOWEN: Congratulations from me too, Julia. You’ll love this stage of life.
My mother’s mother raised me while my mother worked (female
teachers were required during the war), then came to live with us when my
grandfather died, so she was always a huge part of my life. She was tiny and
gentle. I don’t ever remember her raising her voice. She showed endless
patience and kindness to me, which was great because my mother was always
overworked and stressed and had no time for me. She lived to 91 and ate like a
sparrow.
I didn’t know my father’s mother as well. We went to visit her frequently but it was always a formal visit, not playing with her as with my other grandmother. But she was a wonderful cook. I remember her sausage pie with her homemade red cabbage pickles. Still drooling! And when she died, when I had just got engaged, she left me her wedding ring, which I had melted into my own ring.
I am blessed to have been part of my grandchildren’s lives since the day they were born. When they were little II had to make up fantastic stories for them. Also chased them over climbing equipment, Such happy memories.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I only knew one grandmother, Lillian, known
as Nanny, my mother’s mother. A widowed school teacher (I knew neither of my
grandfathers) she came to live with us when I was born. We shared a room until
I was about six, when my parents built an addition on to the house for her so
that she could have her own space. She was the gentlest person I’ve ever known,
although she must have been really tough to have raised four kids mostly on her
own during the Depression. She was unfailingly kind and encouraging to me and a
good buffer between me and my mother, who was a much more demanding
personality. She taught me to read and to be interested in the world and we had
many adventures together. She died at 86 and I still miss her.
JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What are your memories of a grandmother - or grandfather?
Julia, much love to you, your daughter and daughter-in-law, and Paul…who like all wonderful grandchildren will soon outgrow “little Paulie” (it is true that all grandchildren grow much faster than we believe they will.) Grammy was always a safe haven…cookies in the cookie jar, broiling steaks in the coal stove, letting my cousin and I set the table in her 1812 home with all the china and silver that had been there since 1812…even the finger bowls, teaching me to sew, wallpapering and painting her home, and teaching my mother to wallpaper hers. And always being a cheerful pitstop on my way home from college, when my bladder would not have survived the 15 minutes to get home. Elisabeth
ReplyDeleteMazel tov, Julia!! May little Paulie live a long, happy and healthy life! Congratulations to Victoria and her partner, too. How lovely for them to make a family together.
ReplyDeleteYou will so love being a grandmother, especially with them living so close by. I was Zak's only babysitter for many years, and we still have such a special bond.
My dad's mother was strict, and cranky, and not maternal in any way. But I was very close to my mom's mother and dad, and lived with them for a time when I was in second grade. Grandma raised ten kids--her own nine, plus a foster kid for awhile--and she had love in her heart for everyone. Unconditional love is a powerful thing, and it helped overcome a lot.
Her mother-in-law, my great grandmother Charlotte, or Lottie, we called Little Grandma because she was tiny. And elegant, with close-cropped white, marcelled hair, and a trim figure. She was an amazing baker, and brilliant seamstress who lived in a tiny house with a big yard full of peonies. Aunt Dodie, whose house we went to after school to wait for Mother to get home from work, was a nurse with Wednesdays off. She would bring Little Grandma to her house and they would bake, and we would smell the aroma of the bread fresh out of the oven a block away and start running for a slice of warm bread dripping with butter.
I have a photo of my two grandmothers and Little Grandma with my younger sister on her First Communion day, in 1961. I am about the age my great grandmother was then, and my grandmothers were both in their late 50's. It is shocking how much older they all look than we do today at the same ages!
Congratulations Julia.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I never knew either of my grandmothers. My father’s mother died before I was born.
I was born on my mother’s mother’s birthday and she did have a chance to hold me, but passed away several months later at what would be considered a young age. Today she would have been able to have a much longer life with the medical treatment that is available.
I did know about her though. My mother told many stories so I knew a lot about her. She married my grandfather when she was about fifteen. It was an arranged marriage and my grandparents only met shortly before the wedding and didn’t know anything about each other. Fortunately it was a very happy marriage. They were married for fifty years and very much in love with each other.My grandmother would always make dishes she knew were favorites of my grandfather. My mother
would often see them holding hands.
My mother regretted that she couldn’t duplicate some of the recipes her mother made because nothing was ever measured, it was a little of this or that. It was how something looked or tasted.
I always appreciated when my mother told me I was like one of my grandparents in some way because I knew it was a compliment.
Oh Julia!! Congratulations to the new family and to the new grandma! So great that you are close enough to be more than a holiday grandmother. I was lucky enough to know both of my grandmothers and my Grandma Thompson's mother too! My Grandma Thompson raised 12 children and had 36 grandchildren. Of course, she had her favorites--like my cousin Dale, who she raised until he was six years old, but she had enough love for all of us. She was the postmaster of a one-room post office which sat on the corner of their property, a wonderful cook, no-nonsense, and I loved her dearly. My Grandma Church was a sweet person, cowed by a domineering husband, but she told stories of my dad as a child. Long after her death, her daughter-in-law gave us "Homer's Box." Homer was my dad and the box was filled with clippings from my dad's time in the service, a telegram he'd sent saying he was coming home, and letters commending his unit's service from the general in command. It was such a vivid reminder of her love for him.
ReplyDeleteYou are going to be such a wonderful grandma, Julia!!
Congratulations, Julia! You are going to love being a grandmother. I wish you and your family all the good health and happiness in the world!
ReplyDeleteI was very close to my mother's mother who used to take the train to New London to come and stay for weeks at a time. I can still picture her coming out of the station carrying her little yellow suitcase.
Grandma was born in New York as were most of her dozen siblings. We would go to NYC to visit her on school vacations. Every Wednesday, her sisters would come by to play cards and the apartment would ring with their loud conversations and laughter. She always took us to see the Christmas show at Radio City.
She baked great cakes and pies and cookies. I know how everyone feels about lost recipes. Her sugar cookies were divine.
The apartment I grew up in was just steps from my father's mother's grocery store. The market was very popular because my grandfather had a slaughterhouse and the store's tiny meat department with the walk-in refrigerator and my dad behind the counter bantering with all the locals while he prepared their exact orders, was more than most small grocery stores could offer. Grandma was always busy in the store, or busy in her kitchen at home. I probably spent as much of my childhood in her back yard as I did in mine. She didn't have as much time to fuss with me as my grandma from NY, and her English wasn't as good, but she knew that I liked my mashed potatoes with chicken fat and salt and that I'd try anything she cooked or baked.
I am glad that I knew both of my grandmothers. It's just too bad that now I can't ask them more about their lives. I have questions.
I never met either of my grandmothers; one was long dead before I came along, the other had basically abandoned my moother when she was seven. I do have fond memories of my great-grandmother (who raised my mother), a schoolteacher who became one of the first female school board members in the state. She was born shortly after the Civil War ended, which gave me a link further into the past than most of my friends had. I remember her wood stove and her home-made biscuits, with the ever-present jar of honey on the kitchen table. One of her projects was to read the HARVARD FIVE-FOOT SHELF OF CLASSICS from start to finish, borrowing each volume one at a time. Her curiosity never ended, lasting until her death at age 96. My maternal grandfather had also died in an exposion when my mother was very young. My father's father was a hardworking Yankee with a great sense of humor who wouild read mystery books in his spare time. He worked many jobs but was basically a truck farmer. My father was one of nine children and I had well over thirty cousins, so the time I spent with my grandfather was limited, but visiting my grandfather was always a treat.
ReplyDelete(I suspect that Kitty felt she was a wonderful grandmother because she wanted to give our grandkids something that she never had. In truth, Kitty was a great grandmother because she was at heart a loving, caring, and compassionate person who could communicate with children with respect and at a level they could appreciate and understand.)
Chiming in late on this - deepest congratulations! What an adorable tiny foot.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to everyone, Julia . . .
ReplyDeleteMy father's mother's family was from the south . . . she was a wonderful cook . . .
My mother's mother was a no-nonsense woman who had worked for the telephone company; when we were growing up, we spent every Saturday visiting her . . .
What I remember most about both of my grandmothers is how much they loved us . . . .
My father’s parents died in the 1930s so I never knew them. My maternal grandmother lived in Chicago so we only saw her when we visited her from California. I remember her as baking tasty coffee cakes and cookies. Aside from that, I remember her being old and a little scary in the way old people seem to little kids. Unfortunately, my mother’s father died when she was a baby and my grandmother had to go to work to support them. She wasn’t the warm, sweet kind of grandma (or apparently mother) one likes to picture.
ReplyDeleteJulia, congratulations to your daughter and daughter-in-law on the arrival of their son. And many congratulations to you on becoming a grandmother! I predict that you will enjoy your new role. — Pat S
Congratulations to you and your family on the new addition! My own children only have dogs, but I won’t go so far as to say I am their grandmother.
ReplyDeleteI had the country grandma and the “city” grandma. The four of us kids stayed with them for a week or two every summer spending half the time on the farm with Dad’s parents and half the time in town with Mom’s.
Grandma B. taught in a one room schoolhouse until she married. She did farm work and was an excellent cook and an award winning baker. We had many birthday cakes she made. Remember the doll cakes? She had a vegetable garden, crocheted, and wrote weekly handwritten letters to our family. She always put two dollars in our birthday cards. At Christmas we always got socks and a hanky along with a doll for the girls and a truck for the boys and coloring books and colors. She made clothes for our Barbies and my disinter and I each got a small suitcase of outfits she made for our Chrissy dolls too. It felt more relaxed at her house. She came to take care of us several times when my parents went on trips or my mother was ill. She kept a daily diary.
Grandma Chris was an Avon lady. She had a flower garden and always took peonies and ferns to several cemeteries on Memorial Day, which was my oldest sister’s birthday back before they made it a Monday holiday. We played Avon lady in her attic with the little white sample lipsticks. We went with her on her deliveries around town, walking along stone walls along the sidewalks. She got a 3 wheeled bicycle and would give my little sister and me rides in the big basket on the back. She knitted. She played the organ at home and taught Sunday school at church. Her cooking and baking were okay. Her letters were typed and done with carbon paper to her three daughters. She also kept a daily diary. We felt more like we had to be on our best behavior at her house.
They were both very loving and kind, but each showed it in her own way.
Congratulations to you, Victoria and her partner on your new grandson.
ReplyDeleteI never knew my grandparents, but I did know my great-grandmother on my mother's side. We would go visit her and I was the one who sent to the store to get her favorite "Social Tea" cookies. She would make her tea with her silver spoon (which I have) and eat her cookies. She would also sneak Hershey chocolate pieces to us. She told us about her family and how they disowned her when she married her husband (she was Irish and he was Black), but her stories made her smile and she loved my mother. When my mom passed, she was laid to rest with my great-grandmother.
Blessings Julia and the new parents! I became a grandma two years ago today. I felt completely loved by both my grandmothers (Mama Dot and Mama Ruth) in different ways.
ReplyDeleteMy father's mother, who lived two towns away from us near Pasadena, was elegant and reserved, liked her cocktail before dinner and used a cigarette holder and a silver lighter (the smell of a lighter still brings her to mind). But she was also an excellent cook, picked and squeezed oranges from the back yard every morning for breakfast, and made a mean guava jelly. I memorialized her as a young lady PI in the 1920s in my historical mystery A Case for the Ladies.
My mother's mother was little, never smoked or drank, and lived in the Bay area. She would take the train down once or twice a year and stay a couple of weeks, with the loudest snore I'd ever heard. She would iron everything in the house, bake from scratch, and sew and crochet. I still remember her teaching me how to thread a needle. She wore sausage curls and blue rayon dresses - I never saw her in pants. Every year she would sew us new nighties for Christmas. She is memorialized in a couple of short stories where she and Dot are PIs together in Pasadena in the 20s.
Edith, your grandmother who never smoked or drank just brought me the “story told memory” of my Grammy…she smoked only when alone and under stress and when the coal stove was in use for her to dump the butts and ashes in before anyone would see them! Elisabeth
DeleteJust yesterday I was thinking about my grandmother, my mother’s mother. Her name was Sadie. Born in Texas and married in Guthrie, OK, she and my grandfather plus her sister and sister’s husband homesteaded in Montana early in the last century. She had four children in that cabin, none of the mod cons of course.
ReplyDeleteDuring WWII my mother and I moved in with them while my father went off to war. So during my formative years I was very much influenced by her. It’s no wonder I am a southern cook! She was also Chair of the Nemaha County Democratic Party and every morning she put the flag up on a pole in the front garden. She taught me to say the Pledge of Allegiance, mostly to hear me say “and for the Republicans for which it stands!”
She read to me daily and introduced me to poetry, Greek and Roman myths, Shakespeare, and current fiction. She took me with her to roll bandages for the Red Cross. She wept when FDR died.
Sadie Belle Zumwalt Duckers was born in 1892 and died in 1979. Ive missed her every single days since.
Congrats and welcome Paulie! He's so lucky to have a grandma nearby.
ReplyDeleteMother's mother: lived in California and couldn't travel, so we didn't know her well. She sewed us dresses for Christmas and sent a box of shelled walnuts. Champion gardener. Hummingbirds would land on her finger.
Father's mother: she taught us "Daisy daisy give me your answer do" and other songs while we helped her with the dishes.
Congratulations, Julia! How wonderful!
ReplyDeleteMy paternal grandmother died before I was born, and my memories of my maternal grandmother revolve around her having dementia. She would tell me stories of her youth over and over. I was little and fascinated and never minded the repetition. Also, I soon realized I could tell her stories of my make believe friends (I was creating my own fiction even back then), and she would never remember or know that I was "telling lies," as my own mom called it. Grandma died when I was 10 or 11. Much later in my life, I realized my sitting with her, swapping tales, was a blessing to my mom because it gave her some free time. Grandma and I basically babysat each other for hours on end.
Congratulations to the new parents and to you, Julia, on your new status as Official Spoiler of Paulie (OSP, for short)!
ReplyDeleteI was rarely on the same continent as my grandparents, so while they were always loving when we visited, our relationship was not a very familiar one. We met my father's parents first; when we later met my mother's parents they were the "new" grandparents and my father's parents became the "old" grandparents. We, therefore, called them Old Granny and Grandpa, and Mum's parents New Granny and Grandpa. It was perfectly logical and reasonable to us kids, but Old Granny NEVER liked it!
Congratulations Julia and Moms – your little grandson will be loved!
ReplyDeleteHallie – what is the difference between chopped liver and liver pate – which I love. Should I try to make it?
Grandmothers – 2. My father’s mother lived next door and was always a part of our lives. She also was or wanted to be a mother to my very shy mother who moved to small town Louisbourg from small farm PEI. She was the keeper and teller of my mother’s secrets. She was the maker of all holiday dinners – much to, I am now sure, my mother’s jealousy – I think she wanted to cook them too, but always let Gran do it. She made raisin bread on some Saturdays, and always said “I have too much, maybe you can take a loaf”.
Grammie lived in dirt-poor PEI. She farmed, she had a lazy lout of a husband, and together they had 9 children – my mother was the 2nd oldest, first girl. She was afraid of us, for in her mind we were posh – not likely! As a kid she scared me, but by osmosis I learned so much from her about cooking, sewing, life and love. My mother would frequently ask, especially when we took up farming “how do you know how to do that?” Somehow Grammie lived in me. She also made the very best canned chicken (chicken bits cooked in a tin can to preserve it for the winter – absolutely no kin to ‘flakes of chicken’). Her bread was made once a week – seven dbl loafs at a time, and dry, dry, dry. It did make the best toast cooked in a wire-thing over the wood fire in the kitchen stove.
Congratulations Julia! That tiny foot photo is classic!!
ReplyDeleteI only knew one grandmother, known as Nanny, like Deborah's. My direct experience with her was mostly very positive, but she was a tough old gal and I know a lot of "interesting" stories about her, also. In terms of direct experience, I stayed with her for a week each summer from about age 6 to 11, and thoroughly enjoyed learning how to find and harvest wild asparagus, how to shuck peas, driving out into the country to explore places of interest, and eating her wonderful cooking. Her house was right by the locks on the Muskingum River in Zanesville, Ohio, and we would sit on her porch for hours watching boats go through the locks. She was kind but firm and I really enjoyed the time spent there.
Her life story, though, is the stuff of novels. Raised in a "holler" in West Virginia, she married very young to a mean, no-good, low-life of a man. She stayed through the beatings (and birth of her two sons) but finally left him when he got her little sister pregnant. She left her boys with her nearly-as-brutal father while she went to Ohio to find work and build a new life for them. There she met the gentle, kind man I knew as my grandfather, and he finished raising those boys as his own. She had a gracious, charming manner, and most people who met her casually thought she was quite a lady. But she also had a rapier-sharp tongue and could (and often did) put anyone in their place.
Two last funny things about her: She was a smoker and went to her grave convinced that her husband didn't know she smoked, though of course he had to know. Whenever he left the house she slipped into the bathroom, opened the window, and quickly smoked a cigarette, blowing the smoke out the window. Then she brushed her teeth and sprayed air freshener in the bathroom. Also, she was of the old-school upbringing that a lady didn't drink alcohol. Well, except for medicinal purposes, of course. Nanny went through a lot of medicine. In fact, both my dad and uncle made it a practice to smuggle her a carton of cigarettes and a fifth of whiskey whenever they visited.
The more I write about her, the more I remember! I will stop here, but honestly, I feel like I could write pages.
Congrats to the new parents and to you too Grandma Julia!
ReplyDeleteWhat do I remember about my (maternal) grandmother? She had a lead foot. The only person I know who could make the 90 minute drive between her house and my house in 45 minutes.
One time, she and I were driving back from a funeral. She's driving and we're coming to a merge. An 18-wheeler going full bore is coming from the merge lane. My grandmother doesn't slow down and I'm holding on for dear life. I said to her, "Grandma, that was an 18-wheeler!". Her response, "I had the right of way." To which I replied, "Yeah, but the truck would've hit the passenger side FIRST!" I didn't ride in a car she was driving for 20 years after that.
I also remember how she hosted the annual family Christmas Eve gathering for years. She was cooking up a storm in the kitchen at the house in Newton and continued for years after that when she moved to Natick.
I remember how she stopped letting people buy her gifts for Xmas except for me. Or the time we got her the Xmas gift she jokingly said she "wanted". THE EXACT gift. She had said the year before she didn't want anything and then said, "unless you are going to give me $1,000 dollars, I don't need anything." In our family, that's "Challenge Accepted". So the next Xmas Eve gathering, we gave her a box that contained 1,000 one dollar bills that everyone in the family had chipped in to give her.
She was responsible for me getting back into reading. Yes, the books of Robert B. Parker, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton were the first books I got into on my own. But on one of her break the laws of physics trips between her house and mine, she brought a big bag of books for me. I don't remember most of them, but the one I do remember was on the bottom of the bag and led me into a decades long love of the author's books. The book was John Sandford's RULES OF PREY.
Those are some of the memories I have of my grandmother and there are many more.
I love the lead-foot grandma who also gave you a love of reading. My grandmother Dot was the driver in the house, never my grandfather, but I don't recall her speeding.
DeleteWelcome baby "Paulie". It's so fun to get to know a new little one!
ReplyDeleteI only really had my grandma Helen, mom's mom. She and grandpa Ed were a big part of our lives. She was from Texas and always called us "sugar" and was very loving. She had Juicy Fruit gum in her big purse and gave us a piece at the end of every visit. My fondest memories are of the times when we would go spend a week with grandma (just across town, very close to where I live now). She always had special treats for us--Coke in green bottles from the second refrigerator in the garage, watermelon on hot summer days and sweet tea. My twin and I mostly slept on their sofa bed. The process of opening it and closing it was endlessly fascinating. My grandma had been very fashionable as a young woman and was an amazing seamstress. We would take our sewing projects to her house and work on them. We also loved going through her collection of fabrics and all the different beaded jewelry she had. I was always a little disappointed when it was time to go home. Her house was a cool oasis from life.
My other grandma, Kitty Downs Butler, was born in Londonderry and married a Yorkshireman (Frederick--who died in 1955) and lived in Leeds. In the '60s, this meant lots of airletters and the occasional card and a cable (telegram) at Christmas. I only remember one phone call! She used to send a box of gifts for the holidays. She died when I was about 6, so, sadly, I never really got to know her.
Congratulations to you Julia and to your daughter and daughter-in-law. Little Paulie must be adorable.
ReplyDeletePictures required!!
I only knew my father's mother. I met her a few times but she made a huge impression on me that would shape my personality. She lived in Vicksburg, MS and we lived in San Diego. She raised 9 children by herself during the depression after her husband died suddenly. She came to visit us when I was 9 years old and always had something nice to say about everyone. I wanted to change my name to hers - wrote her letters often - and still think of her everyday.
Congratulations Julia ! How fun and exciting for your daughter and daughter in law ! Welcome to ‘ The Grandmother In Love Club ! ‘ Becoming a Grandmother has been the very best part of my life so far ! Such sweet unconditional love you have to look forward to with your new Grandson!
ReplyDeleteBest Wishes To All ! ( Mary E )