Today is all about my memories of grandma, as I will be attending her funeral.
She would have been 101 at the end of this month!
Due to the rift created in the family by my mother, I haven’t seen my grandma in many years. After I learned of my mother’s death, I never renewed contact with grandma as she had dementia and wouldn’t even have recognised me. I thought it might be upsetting for her; and for me! I didn’t hold anything against her; it was just the way things were, all of us victims of my mother’s mental illness.
My Memories of Grandma
I’m looking forward to the eulogy today and hearing about my grandmother’s life, perhaps adding some new stories to my own memories of grandma.
So many thoughts stream into my head, full of memories of grandma. Her awesome jam tart (how I wish I had the recipe!), and how she would make roast dinners for our birthdays when we were kids. She made the best chocolate fudge and coconut ice ever, and always wore an apron when she cooked – I’m pretty sure she called it a pinny.
There was a little step ladder in the pantry to help her reach items up high, as she was barely 5 ft tall! She was also quite cuddly and round – no need to wonder where I got my own apple shape from 😉 . Yet despite all I’ve heard about carrying weight around your middle being bad for your health – she didn’t do too bad, did she, almost making it to 101!
I remember her taking me to Toombul shoppingtown (as it was known back then), and buying me donuts or a bag of Jelly Tots as a treat.
Visits to grandma’s house meant collecting and cracking nuts from her macadamia nut tree, in a vise on grandpa’s tool bench under the house – or else trying to smash them with a hammer out on the driveway. Or, plinking out a tune on the organ (with the headphones in so we didn’t drive everybody else mad). When I was small, Grandma had a jar full of old beads and buttons, and we spent many happy hours stringing them into necklaces. As I grew older, I loved reading all her old copies of women’s magazines – especially the English ones.
We children would squabble over who got to sit in the two luxurious recliners in the lounge. Watching TV there was a real treat too – seeing our favourite shows in COLOUR!
If we were really lucky, we would be allowed to play in the caravan in the backyard and use it as a cubby house.
My grandma was a gifted seamstress, working fulltime as a dressmaker even after her children were born – unusual for the forties and fifties. She made clothes for us when we were children, and knitted our school jumpers for high school out of soft acrylic instead of scratchy wool. Having lived through the Great Depression, she couldn’t bear to throw anything out, so I remember cupboards jammed full of clothes and shoes from decades past. Sometimes she would make some of them over for us.
Both of my grandparents played lawn bowls, and grandma was even “Madam President” for her club at one stage. I still have vivid memories of grandma wearing her bowls whites.
She wore glasses – at first, the cat’s eye glasses so popular in the 60’s. As I got older, Grandma grew her hair really long and wore it in a bun, sometimes letting us brush and play with it. She never seemed to have enough room on her fingers for all the rings she wore on her heavily-veined hands. These days when I look at my own hands, my veins are starting to look the same …
We used to joke that grandma could talk under concrete (hmm wonder where I got that from!). She liked to doodle while she was on the phone, creating intricate, heavy patterns with a biro – something I also seem to do, quite unconsciously!
And when we were naughty or cheeky, she used to playfully call us “you little houssenchaiser” (I’ve spelt it how it sounded) – I’m told it was a German swear word, along the lines of “you little pooper in your trousers”. I still use that word today when admonishing my kids … perhaps one day they will use it with their children. Memories of grandma will live on!
Farewell grandma, I’m remembering the good times.
Do you have any similar memories of your grandma?
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