Photo Credit — Cross, Roselle Theodore, 1844–1924 / Flickr / Somebody else’s ancestors
I’m the firstborn of my mother who was the firstborn of her parents and her father was the firstborn of his parents.
And this gave me the privilege of growing up with lots of grandparents. I thought everyone had two sets of grandparents and a smattering of great grandparents. I didn’t understand why we were so much closer to my mother’s parents than my father’s, although once I found out that “daddy isn’t your real daddy” certain things began to make sense.
At any rate, I still had strong relationships (healthy and otherwise) with my grands and my great-grands well into my teens. That’s also probably why I believe old people are by far the most interesting people. Excellent news for this almost-but-not-quite old old woman.
And, I gotta tell you, those old people had some damned cool homes.
My mother’s parents were Gramudder and Bompy. I take responsibility for “Bompy” since I’m told I couldn’t pronounce Grampa when I began talking. Bompy stuck and everyone in the family called him that or Bomp for the rest of his life. My younger sister, Kelly, coined Gramudder and that one stuck as well.
I defy anyone to tell me that Jason Remington was not my “real” daddy and his parents were more prosaically known as Grama and Grampa Remington. Grampa Remington had worked for the Allegheny National Forest and he and Grama always lived in remote rural areas within the forest. Grama Remington only had one eye because, she told us, a boy hit her in the face with a toy wagon when she was a little girl and put her eye out. She baked the most delicious bread, put up homemade strawberry jam, and always had Hershey’s miniature chocolates and kisses for us. She was the nice Grama.
Gramudder, not so much
Gramudder was the scary Grama. Here are a couple of her “sayings” that will indicate how un-Grama-like that woman was:
Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets full first.
You’d bitch if you were hung with a new rope.
I hope your face freezes that way (when one of us was crying or pouting).
Touch that and I’ll break your arm.
That last one wasn’t a saying and she meant it. I know because I touched that and about lost my six-year-old arm.
Her stepmother was also her aunt. When Gramudder’s mother died, her widowed husband did what was not uncommon in those times, he married his dead wife’s sister. So while the grandkids and great-grandkids called her Grama Lu, the kids all called her Aunt Lu.
Grama Lu lived with her only biological son, Aiden, in the most amazing house. The house used to be attached to what had been the only store in town for ages and had what seemed like ten bedrooms upstairs. When everyone was “home” for Christmas and there was no more room at Gramudders, we kids were farmed out to Grama Lu’s. The bedroom we slept in had two enormous double beds that seemed like they were miles apart and the room was filled with boxes of old seashells and postcards. There was a television that was only the cabinet and screen so we could play TV and put on shows for each other.
The house also boasted a long wrap-around enclosed porch lined with dozens of flowering houseplants. Geraniums, different types of lilies, and many, many, many African violets.
I always wanted to talk to Grama Lu about what it had been like to be a little kid before there were cars and what it was like to always have horses for getting around (yes, I was one of those horse-crazy girls). She was far more interested in the moon landing and actually owned commemorative plates and spoons. Go figure.
When she was in her late 80s, she took a bad fall and broke her hip. While in the hospital she developed a high fever, her hair fell out and all the far-flung Dibbles made the pilgrimage home to say goodbye to Grama Lu. Not only did she pull through, when her hair came back in it was brown and stayed brown until she died when she was 104 years old.
Coming to America
Bompy’s father was Grampa Nick who came to America as a nearly penniless cast-off from his illegitimate father in his teens.
Grampa Nick had an almost cartoonish Italian accent and, as a grape-grower, he would help himself to the produce at our local corner grocery store when visiting and pronounce it “no-a good-a”. I could have died on the spot of mortification but when I’d tell the grownups about it later they’d laugh uproariously.
Grampa Nick was married to Grama Mary (and divorced from Grama Lena who was Bompy’s mother) and the two of them would scream at each other in Italian whenever we were there. In my world, first, there was screaming and yelling, then there was hitting. So my sisters and I would cower while Mom would reassure us that “this is how they show they love each other”. Grama Mary taught us other valuable lessons. She never gave any of the daughters, granddaughters, nieces, grand-nieces, or other assorted family and friends the same recipe for her famous lasagna or red sauce. That way no one could make it as good as she did.
Also - and she was serious enough about this to stop cooking for ten minutes and sit down to tell us this - we should always remember to let the men think they were in charge and, in the meantime, we were the ones really taking care of everything.
Oil paintings and dead animals
Grampa Nick was a grape-grower for Welch’s who had planted an orchard around the house he and Grama Mary lived in Silver Creek, New York. He was also an amateur taxidermist and wildlife artist. His house was filled with the smell of linseed oil and turpentine with the most astonishing collection of stuffed, dead animals in every room.
I loved that house at least as much as Grama Lu’s.
Grama Mary always poured watered wine for us kids at meals and it wasn’t until many years later I realized why that was the only place I ever felt relaxed as a kid.
Grama Mary died when Grampa was in his early 90s, I think, although I was grown and off making my own messes by that time. I heard it third hand that when he was 98 he remarried without telling the family to a 65-year-old woman. He didn’t like her “god-a damned-a dog-a” but she “had-a a nice-a soft-a ass-a”. He, like Grama Lu, lived to be 104 and the nameless bride with the nice soft ass kept everything in the house including my cedar hope chest. That’s life.
Grama Lena and Prince
Ok, she called her walker Prince and would pretend it was an unruly horse when we’d come to visit her huge old house right by the railroad tracks outside of Olean, New York.
She was enormously fat with hairs growing out of several large moles on her chin and we adored her (years later an oil painting of her and Grampa Nick as a young married couple surfaced after someone’s death and she was a stunningly beautiful slender woman with grave, brown eyes and he was the very definition of dashing. Time is brutal). Grama Lena also gave the greatest bear hugs in the world. Nothing felt better to kids whose nearly-sole experience of touch was being back-handed, smacked, or outright strapped with a leather garrison belt.
The railroad was less than thirty yards from her back porch and we’d race out to get the conductor to blow his air horn when the train would come thundering by several times a day. They always would.
When Grama Lena died my mom got picked to go and clean out that massive old house and for some weeks in a long-ago summer we stayed at Gramudder’s and drove over every day to sort out a life’s possessions. At first, there was a lot of help as everyone even remotely related to Grama Lena appeared to assure my mom that “Lena always said I could have this”. I could be wrong, but I think Mom just let them take what they wanted. Why fight? It all had to go.
Then in the evening, with Mom and Gramudder having a beer or three while smoking endless cigarettes, we’d all go through the piles of family photos that somehow never made it into any photo albums. Some photos had names and dates written on the backs and those that didn’t result in hours of guessing games.
The most curious thing I remember was finding a number of photos that had been torn in half. Someone was missing and we’ll never know who.
The lessons?
Well, Grampa Nick always told me that if I’d “just-a learn-a to make-a pretty-a pictures-a” he’d give me “all-a my-a oils-a”. I never have learned to paint or draw pretty pictures or write pretty stories. I’m not even that much of a fan of pretty pictures or paintings that go with the sofa.
But somewhere in this apartment is a small oil painting he gave me of a cardinal in a tree in autumn. It’s only when you take a moment to really look at it that you realize that cardinal is nearly as big as the tree.
We don’t value our old and it’s our loss
They may seem feeble, forgetful, weak, and confused but, trust me, they’ve been through shit that would have any of us screaming in the night. We need them much more than they need us and we walk away from them at our peril.
Obviously, this is a ridiculous over-generalization, but I’m forever grateful that I grew up around opinionated, stubborn, curious, funny, strong old people who lived the way they wanted to live and were loved for it by us foolish, flighty, and ever-so-flawed youngsters.
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