My grandmother was perfect. When I was five years old, she was about 100 years old. As I grew, she got somewhat younger.

She was comfortably fat. She wore what we would call 'shirtwaist' dresses. I never saw her in a pair of pants. EVER. EVER.

We bought them at a local store. She had broad shoulders, and a really comfortable belly. She wore a rolled up nylon stocking on each foot. Didn't trust pantyhose, they were too new. She wore a full girdle every single day of her life.

She wore housecoats (similar to a robe, only made of cotton and snapped up the front, flowery or paisley patterns) around the house. Never saw her 'nightclothes'. And, pink worn out chenille slip on fuzzy bedroom slippers.

Got dressed every single day of her life. Wore a hair net.


Taught me most of what I know. Except, I never could fry a potato to save my life. I learned every tidbit of cooking she taught me. Except for those damn potatoes.

Her house, smelled like heaven. They had a mail slot on the front porch, next to the door. We used to run up there and lift the mail slot to see what smelled, and guess what was cooking. There was ALWAYS something cooking. Always.

Gram never bought a loaf of store bought bread. She found that habit to be pretentious and totally unnecessary unless you were one of 'those' people who were too lazy to bake your own bread like you were supposed to.

She always, 100% of the time, unless the Bishop was over, wore an apron. I have her apron. I stole it right out of the house after her funeral. It was all I wanted. To me, that apron WAS my gram, and she is with me to this day when I wear her apron.

Gram didn't work outside of the home. She ran a small farm, smallish cause it was 'in town' as opposed to out of town.

I lived there for quite a few years. She pretty much raised me. My father was extremely abusive and my mother was not strong enough to stop him from beating the hell out of me regularly. Gram's house was where I had a permanent bedroom in the basement, where there was NO heat, and the bed had 1,000 pounds of quilts on it. To this day, to REALLY sleep, I MUST have at least three quilts on m bed. Weight. I need weight to sleep LOL. Now, I am 52. But when I lived there, it could have been the early 1900's. We lived without inside plumbing for quite awhile. Then, we finally build a bathroom off the kitchen. The year was 1961. And, we weren't in backwater Mississippi or Louisiana either. We were in Northern California, where the neighbors had telephones already LOL.

They had a Black and White TV. Early on, they came out with this filter thingy that you actually put over the screen of the TV, which was supposed to make the TV shows in color. Funnily enough, it actually worked LOL. She had a piano in the living room. Doilies on the arms of the 'chesterfield' (east coast name for a sofa', and all the chairs.

Her house was totally spotless. Every single thing was taken down off the walls WEEKLY and dusted. Beds were made to perfection each and every morning.

She used to take her stove apart monthly and clean it....with GASOLINE and a steel wool pad. Can you even imagine cleaning a GAS stove with GASOLINE>??? But, buddy boy, I was out in the yard with her doing it.

On the perfect Grandma porch, we had steel furniture, the old people kind of chairs that are bent sort of, and rusty, and rocked and usually had cushions on them. It was a huge brick porch with a half wall surrounding it, covered.

Gram taught me the secret to light and fluffy bread. It's in the kneading. She taught me the recipe, a BIG secret in our family, but not so hard. Bread back then was, as she used to say....to be eaten WITH eggs and milk, not to contain them. Pretty simple actually. Flour, yeast, salt, butter and water. Thats it. She taught me the secret to light and flaky pie dough. It's also easy as pie, pardon the pun. Here is the secret. DON'T TOUCH IT WITH YOUR HANDS. The heat of your hands melts the shortening. The secret to pie dough is that the shortening little tiny pieces have to stay solid until baked in the oven. You mix the shortening into the flour/salt mixture, add ICE WATER, and knead it quickly with cheap white cotton gloves on. That way your body heat doesn't melt the shortening.

I miss her a lot. She died when I was 22. There is a bit of a weird thing with that as well. We were quite close. She had a heart attack when I was 12. I was very worried about her. She told me..”Dawn, I will NOT die until I have held your firstborn in my arms.”

I went ahead and moved to Hawaii. Years later I came back. She was still hanging in there doing her Gram thing. Healthy as a horse.

I got pregnant when I was 21. Christmas came and went.....St Patty's day...(their wedding anniversary), then, shortly after, she had a stroke. She was in a coma. She went into hospital. I was blooming right along, due in June. They brought her home from hospital long about May. Gran Da wanted her home where he could look after her. I went over to visit and would sit by the bed, telling her about the pregnancy, how I felt about the baby etc.

She didn't come out of the coma at all. She never moved, just laid there with her eyes sometimes open, sometimes not. She had five children, they all stopped by. All of the grands came by. She had lots and lots of visitors. Never showed an expression, didn't move her eyes. We sat and held her hands. No responses.

I went into labor in the due course of time and had a wonderful 7# 10 ounce baby girl (who will turn 31 this year...YUCK!!)

When I got out of the hospital, I went home. The next day, I felt up to it, so I dressed the baby in a cute outfit and drove to Gram's. I went into the bedroom, sat in the tall backed wooden chair next to the bed.


There were various family members about, visiting. They made over the baby a good bit, then I leaned over the bed, and laid the baby on Gram's belly, put my mouth down to her ear, and said, “Gram...I had that baby. It's a girl, you should really see her, she looks so much like you.”

Her eye's Popped right open. People's mouths dropped. My aunt fainted. She whispered in a dry and crackly voice...

“help me sit up”. I leaned over and took one arm while holding the baby. Grand Da held the other, and we helped her to sit up. She said...”Give me that baby”. I handed her my two day old baby daughter. She held her four about 10 minutes, looking down at her and stroking her little head. She gave her back and gave me a kiss. She kissed her husband of 63 years...and said “I'm really tired, I think I'll take a nap now”.

She never woke up, and died later that day.

I miss her still. And it's been 30 years.