I didn't spend a great deal of time with my great grandparents, but the time I spent with them was such a treasure.
I've been thinking of them today. They lived a humble, resourceful life in a small house, kind of a shack really, filled with homemade quilts and a woodburning stove and an older than old oven that always had the smell of bread and yeasty wonderful things coming from it. There was a root cellar that I was terrified of and a garden that was bigger than the house. They lived within a hundred steps of a lake where they fished and there were choke cherry trees that grew along the banks that my great grandmother made into jelly.
My great grandmother, Mary, grew tiger lilies and day lilies and peonies that were a riot of color. I loved the smell of her kitchen and of her. She was my very favorite relative ever.
I never minded when she called me by my mom's name by accident because I knew it tied me to her by the thread of generations and family.
I'd sit at that small kitchen table and gaze out the window at the garden and eat chocolate-covered graham crackers that she always seemed to have on plate on the table. I'd lie on the bed in the spare room and sink into the many kaleidoscope quilts and hear the springs squeak with every movement and lie as still as possible and listen to the noises of family and conversation as a hum.
I once asked my great grandpa, Wencil, how it was that he was so old- he understood that I was really asking how it was that he was still alive. His answer was, "A beer a day. A beer a day." And then his face cracked into a smile and he laughed.
They played cards and were always smiling and laughing and enjoying visitors and family. They spoke English with lovely, thick Minnesotan accents and Bohemian. Frank was Czech and Mary was Czech and German. I have yet to try my hand at making kolaches, but she would make them by the hundreds- Prune, poppyseed, and apricot were the flavors she made. None of the kids liked the poppyseed, but I pretended to like them because Grandma made them, and partly because it was unusual, and I was a kid who wanted to be seen as an individual, I was a bit of a rebel, so poppyseed it was. In pretending to love those poppyseed kolaches, they became my favorites. I crave them at Christmas every year and miss them so much.
One of my second cousins decided to give Grandma a modern makeover one year, and I remember mourning the loss of her yards of dark blonde and gray hair that she'd bundle into twists and braids on the top of her head. There was a name for that bun, I seem to remember she'd do two of them sometimes. The loss of a memory... I wish I could remember the Bohemian name for how she did her hair!
I started thinking of my great grandparents when I was cleaning the shed today. Looking at the hoe, I thought of how my great grandpa, in his nineties, didn't care for a cane. Well-meaning friends and family members would bring him canes, and they'd sit there by the door. I think there was even an unused walker. He'd go out to the garden with his hoe-- using it as a hoe, but also as a cane of sorts. Sometimes, he'd lose his balance. Grandma would see him from the window when he'd fall. He'd crawl back to the house and get to his feet again. Grandma would laugh at him. It became kind of a joke. Grandpa never complained about the days that he fell. It was just part of life. And seeing Grandma laugh, I think was worth it for him.
On June 28, 1985, Great Grandpa fell down in the garden. I imagine that Grandma probably thought it was all normal, even funny until Grandpa didn't get up or crawl back to the house. She called a neighbor and the neighbor called an ambulance and came over. Grandpa was injured. They went in to tell Grandma. They found her on the floor. In her shock, she'd had a heart attack and collapsed on the kitchen floor near the door. She made it through the night in the hospital and died the next day on my 15th birthday and her and Grandpa's wedding anniversary. My Great Grandma, Mary was 89 years old.
I don't really remember much about that birthday other than feeling incredibly sad. I'd never explained how important my Great grandmother was to me to anyone--it was kind of a possessive thing- that time with her was my own- how I felt about her was my own. I grieved alone.
Great Grandpa didn't do well on his own, and had to live in a nursing home. I visited him there. He was never the same. He tried to be peppy and happy, but the happy banter was gone. He lived three years and died within a few weeks of turning 97 years old.
I know that last bit is sad, and I am sorry for that, but to me it is also beautiful in a bittersweet way. Their love, their commitment to each other and to their family was huge. It was palpable and a constant presence in their home. I didn't know why I needed to be in that house and with my Great Grandmother in her kitchen every chance I got, which wasn't as often as I'd have liked. I think I know now though.
I know that growing up with divorced parents, I didn't have a real model for what I wanted someday as far as family- as far as who I wanted to be as a wife and who I wanted as a husband. The world kept trying to tell me that my family was normal, that divorce was normal. It isn't. Until this day, today, I had not really thought on this. My great grandparents were and are the role models I had. I laugh at Chris and tease him just like Grandma teased Great Grandpa. I love company, and even when we have little to offer, I can make it look like a banquet. I value friends and family and my husband, Chris above all else except God. I'm even on the rounder side like Grandma and my hair is on the longer side- I guess I should start wearing it in a bun.
I gravitated toward that house. When my brother and sister wanted to play with cousins and toys, I would beg to go see my great grandparents. It was mainly my mom and me who would go to see them. I was always so grateful for those visits.
That small house near the lake was a haven of normal and constant and timelessness in a world that was abnormal, inconstant and unreliable and moving too fast with no solid, central compass of home. My great grandparents and their home served me well as a model even when I didn't know that that was what it was. It's funny that I stood in my garden shed staring at a hoe today and felt in a very pivotal and powerful way the impact that they had on who I am now and on what I want.
I know for my husband, his Grandpa Al and Grandma Peggy served as his role models for what he wanted. God is so good. Even coming from divorced homes, Chris and I had some pretty amazing people to observe and learn from as far as committed, loving, faith-filled, frugal, good-humoured spouses.
My next order of business is to learn how to make poppyseed kolaches.
