Grammy

by Amy Martin

I grew up with Grammy’s stories. She was a born storyteller, transforming the mundane into the magical as she wove tales about her siblings and growing up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania during the Great Depression, living through World War II, being a mother, a potato picker and her practical jokes that spanned nearly a century. I have heard her anecdotes many times over the years and cherish that she is able to share these same stories with her great-grandchildren.

Tell Me A Story

Sitting delicately on the couch, propped by pillows and swaddled by afghans, Grammy sat quietly. Her arthritic fingers curled around the crochet needles as her hands created chains of soft wool. AJ, Katie and Nathan, her great-grandchildren, galloped into her sanctuary and jumped on the couch, launching her balls of yarn into the air.

AJ, our oldest, looked at her and said, “Grammy, tell us a story from when you were little.” The kids had a curiosity that ran deeper than the present, and Grammy had been pestered many times about what the world was like many years ago. She was ready.

A Story About Cora Eva Geneva June

“I don’t know if you know the historical origins of my royal name,” she said as her great-grandchildren eagerly leaned in, ready to be wrapped in the yard of her not so tall-tale. “There was a blizzard, back in 1927. My mum drove five miles to the Penn Mary Hospital in a horse and buggy, heaving with labor pains and struggling to stay warm against the wind that carried her cries far away. Eyelashes thick with snowflakes and wondering if she should have just stayed home, the world was a snow globe on the day that I was born.”

Grammy explained that she was the youngest of ten children. However, her Mum wasn’t sure what to expect as this was the only baby she had in a hospital. “Mum was an excellent cook and gardener. She knew how to drive a team of horses to help plan the spring crops. What she was not good at was filling out paperwork,” Grammy’s parents asked the nurses to fill out the birth certificate with their daughter’s name: Geneva June. However, in a crazy plot twist, the villainous nurses secretly named the child after themselves. By the time Grammy realized her legal name was Cora Eva and not Geneva June, she was twenty years old and applying for a marriage license. “I decided to embrace my destiny and live up to my name,” Grammy said as she sat up a bit straighter. “And that is how the world was blessed with Cora Eva Geneva June.”

Royal Pranks

Nathan was sitting quietly and staring at the floor when Grammy asked what he was thinking about. “The battery died for my video game, and I’m just a little bored,” he replied.  Grammy looked up from her crocheting. “Oh, there is always something to do. Do you know that being bored was not an option on the farm 90 years ago?” This caught Nathan’s attention as he asked, “What did you do for fun?” Grammy patted the couch beside her as she said, “Why don’t you sit here, and I’ll tell you about it.”

Living on the farm meant everyone had chores to do. However, her brothers and sisters made sure there was also time for fun. “We played with wheel rims waiting to be repaired in the barn. We used sticks to guide them on crazy obstacle courses.” Grammy sat up a little straighter as she said, “We were the original American Ninja Warriors, but we used chickens and hay bales instead of balance beams and warped walls.” 

Grammy told Nathan they used to play a lot of baseball, too, just like he does. “The only difference is that we had to make our balls from rags and string. Our bats were sassafras roots, and they packed a wallop! Especially if you could find a root that wasn’t too crooked.” As Nathan leaned into her, Grammy told him that they went sled riding with home-made toboggans and played checkers and jacks to help pass the winter. Jumping in the hay mounds was her favorite thing to do in the summer, as girls were not allowed to go swimming with the boys.

Grammy explained how her older brother made wooden stilts. “They were just for the boys to use, as it wasn’t lady-like to be galivanting around the yard on stilts. I gave Mum a heart attack on more than one occasion with my skirts tucked into my apron, balancing six feet up in the air. I was a ballerina on those stilts,” Grammy’s giggle accentuated the long-forgotten memory.

A century ago, a common Halloween prank was to move the outhouse back about three feet from the hole. “Us kids would hide in the bushes and wait. The best Halloweens were the ones with a full moon, so we could see their faces before our victims fell in the hole,” she wheezed into a fit of laughs as she hit her side with her browned and wrinkled hand. “Who knew it would still be so funny, this many years later.” Settling down a minute later, she looked Nathan in the eye and grinned, “We all got whoopings on Halloween every year, instead of candy. I sure do miss those days…”

Cora Eva Geneva June and her great grandchildren

April 1, 2019

“Moooooom!” Katie screeched from the basement. Grammy was sleeping soundly in a chair but jerked awake as Katie’s war-cry shook the walls. Grammy looked up, clapped her crooked arthritic hands together in glee, and then immediately dropped her chin back on her chest as she pretended to be asleep. Katie’s face was contorted in anger as she waddled into the living room.

I sighed while swallowing a laugh. I should have realized it was the end of March last night when Grammy hobbled up to me, grabbed my arm for support and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to need a pair of everyone’s underwear.” With a wink, she told me she was making the family matching crocheted underwear for Christmas this year and needed to make some patterns.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked as I grabbed Katie’s boneless form into my lap. She snarled, “Someone put mustard in my unders!” I looked over at Grammy. Her chin was still resting on her chest, and she had pulled the afghan up to conceal part of her face.  I could see her shaking and I knew she was laughing.

Grammy threw the blanket into the air and whooped, “April Fools!” as Katie crawled deeper into my armpit. “Come here, child,” Grammy said as she pulled Katie into her own frail lap. “Didn’t you think the prank was just a little bit funny?” Kattie shook her head stubbornly from side to side. “Tell me what your brothers did when they got dressed this morning,” Grammy beamed as a smile broke out on Katie’s face when she told Grammy of their reaction. Grammy clapped her hands again as she puttered, “Oh, that just made my day!”

Her laugh was infections, and soon Katie was giggled with her until Grammy suddenly gazed off in the distance. “Grammy?” Katie said, noticing the fun moment was over. Grammy looked at Katie and grabbed her face tenderly with liver-spotted hands, “This world can be hard. Sometimes you have to make your own fun.” Katie solemnly held her gaze until a sly grin grew on Grammy’s face as she said, “What do you think your dad is going to do when he realizes I pranked him too by sewing the fly shut on his boxers?”

April 2020

We were unable to travel to see Grammy during the pandemic, so Grammy continued her stories through phone calls and letters.

Dear Kids, 

We miss you and wish you were on spring break with us. Do you like taking a break from school? I bet you miss your friends and teachers. Grammy’s hands hurt today, so I am going to write her letter for her.

AJ asked Grammy what she did when her family was at home with the measles. It was actually scarlatina that kept them home. In 1933 and Grammy and her twin brothers started first grade together, along with the other kids. They went to school in the fall. However, in November, the kids in school started to get sick, including Grammy’s sister, Helen.

Helen had a bumpy rash all over her body, a sore throat, a fever, a red face and tongue and an upset stomach. Every family that had sick kids had to go into quarantine. You guys know all about that!

The only person that could leave the house was their dad, so that he could work and get food. Quarantine was a little quieter though 87 years ago. Grammy’s school didn’t have e-learning so they didn’t have homework. She also didn’t have anything to read because the family was too poor to afford books and being in quarantine meant no trips to the library. The kids still had the barn work and house chores to do, but they played a lot of card games and checkers. They couldn’t go to church and there was no tv to watch. Christmas came with no presents, not even from Santa.

Right when Helen was feeling better, the winter snow came. That year they had a lot of snow, so much that they were snowed in for weeks at a time. The kids missed so much school, the principal told them to just stay home for the rest of the school year.  Grammy said that she felt like she was trapped on the farm that entire year. The next school year, Grammy and the twins went back to first grade, and started all over again.

Love,

Mimi, Pappa, and Grammy.

Psyanky and Pandemics

Eight days after COVID-19 shut down the world, we did the only thing we could think of. We crafted. The kids asked me how I learned to make pysanky. I explained that Ukrainian Egg decorating, or pysanka, had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries. “Grammy actually taught me when I was your age, like her mother taught her,” I said watching the kids as they carefully held their raw eggs.

I explained that eggs symbolize new life, new hope and the coming of spring. The egg also symbolizes Easter, the Resurrection, and the promise of eternal life. “People have been making eggs this way for over 2,000 years,” I said as I carefully demonstrated how to heat the kistka over the flame. “Legend has it that as long as pysanka are decorated, goodness will prevail over evil throughout the world.”

Holding his egg stead on the table while trailing wax over his egg, Nathan said, “We better keep decorating these eggs!”

The smell of beeswax took me back to my own childhood. I remembered sitting at the dining room table, covered in newspaper while Grammy patiently showed me how to pattern eggs. “Did you know that Grammy learned to create pysanky when she was also quarantined as a child?” “No,” they exclaimed. “Tell me more.”

Family Tradition

Tap tap tap…the kistka scratches against the delicate eggshell, leaving a trail of wax,

intricate and rich. Flames dance over the funnel and I scoop the hot liquid,

 taking me far from pandemics, ventilator shortages, and economic failure

as I sketch flowers of growth and love. Tap tap tap… takes me back to

my childhood. Tap tap tap…with my grandma, nails-stained ochre and umber,

like my son’s pudgy digits now: he holds a raw egg, tongue out,

sketching an ichthus, sealing in color like his great grandma did, 87 years ago

as she tapped against words like scarlatina, blindness, and hunger

while pine needles of health, stamina, and lasting youth

took shape on an egg.

Tap tap tap…we pattern the once naked egg, now embossed

with dandelions. Feathery tops carry wishes onto a velvety ground

of nothingness until a dying star explodes giving birth to nebulas

that ride on stellar winds, attesting to God’s love

as we hide from germs and close schools.

Tap tap tap…fine net lines crafted with a small kistka,

a rooster symbolizes an abundant life with the blessing of children.

Tap tap tap…mushrooms push against the soil in a field of manure,

born of the dark, erupting into the world while

Tap tap tap…thoughts tug at a fishing line, and I haul them in

through the unfamiliar oxygen as blessings rain down.

psyanky

October 2019

Katie and Nathan had been gone for about half an hour. I was about to look for them when I heard the click of heels and the jingle of bells coming from Grammy’s closet, waking her up. “They’re in your closet again. I’m sorry, I’ll go clean it up,” I said. “That’s ok, let them play,” Grammy said with a smile. “I can’t wait to see the fashion show.”

Katie emerged from the closet. She was wearing a wool pencil skirt pulled up to her armpits, Mary Jane 3-inch pumps, a poncho, and an ivory lace slip transformed into a veil that flowed behind her. Looking far grander than his normal six-year-old self, Nathan was behind her wearing shiny stirrup pants rolled into a fat sausage at the waist, a tweed blazer, and a pillbox hat balanced on his head. “Guess who is going to prom tonight?” Nathan said proudly, trying not to lose his hat. “Oh my, you clean up nicely,” Grammy laughed as she clapped her hands at her great-grandchildren.

“Tell me about your prom?” Katie asked, leaning in for a great story. “Oh, I never got to go to prom. We just had dinner each spring. All the boys at our school were drafted for the war. It was just us girls that graduated,” Grammy said with a far-off look in her eyes.

“I graduated in 1945. We were the last class to get a high school ring because of the war. The boys were gone, fighting, so I helped dad farm. I drove the homemade tractor. My brothers cut the top off a Model A car before they left, knowing dad would need extra help with everyone leaving. That tractor had two transmissions and dad called it a one-man-walking-tractor-plow because we hooked the walking plow up to that beast of a machine. Dad would walk next to the plow and help guide it while I did my best to drive the tractor. He said I was the only one who could make a man push a plow up a hill and then run down the other side.” Grammy wheezed as she smirked and hit her leg. “I came close to rolling over him a few times, but he was really good at getting out of the way.”

Grammy then went on to tell the kids that is when she started wearing her brother’s jeans to work outside. Her mom did not approve, but she told her mom that it is hard to spread manure, make hay, clean the barn, and butcher in a dress.

Harvest of War

 (Cora Eva) Geneva June bloomed in the moment when the boys were harvested

for war, forcing her to deadhead dreams of escape,

and prune pranks and adolescent milestones from her life.

Trading dresses for discarded overalls,

she was enlisted on the home front.

She drove homemade tractors with false bravado,

fingernails caked with manure.

Sunlight streamed through barn slats,

revealing soggy hay and decayed hope.

As compost blanketed plants, she kept the farm soil watered

with tears, while the fields blossomed in myrtle.

 With candles in the window to welcome the broken and sore,

she planted the boys in coffins, finally home from the war

Spring 2022

Grammy seems to be slipping a little farther away. “How are you today, Grammy?” I ask. “I’m not honestly sure,” she tells me. “The world is moving so fast, and sometimes I feel like I just want to go back to what I know.”

“Can you hand me a blanket, AJ?” she asks my son. AJ enthusiastically grabbed her a quilt, patched together with memories and fading thread, and Grammy enveloped herself into it. “Did you know that this quilt was made from flour sacks and my sister Helen’s Sunday dinner tablecloth? For years, that Sunday dinner tablecloth was saved for special occasions.”

AJ leaned into her. “Do you mean like Christmas and Thanksgiving?” Grammy just chuckled and shook her head. “Christmas yes, but not Thanksgiving. That was the worst day of the year for us growing up. They shut the coal mines down that week, and our family had to use the few extra days to do the annual butchering.” Grammy shuddered and twitched her mouth. “Thanksgiving was a bloody awful day full of hard work. Each year we killed one pig and one cow. We cut the meat, then smoked it in the smokehouse. There was beef to can in jars, fried ham that went in the spring house, and crocks full of meat that were covered with fatty fryings and placed in the basement to keep cool. Do you want to hear about it?” AJ nodded as he snuggled in next to her. “Sit right here and I will tell you all about it….

Into the Crocheted Forests of Her Mind

Because the present no longer appeals, her mind meanders

 limps and sprints to the summit of Nolo Hill, still braided

with fossils adorned by her child-sized handprints.

The tablecloth lace catches her attention.

It reminds her of homemade rag and twine baseballs,

 pinochle marathons, willow bats and burlap bases,

Hay mounds and snowmen, lots of snowmen. Grandpa’s annual boil of

sassafras roots in the old, copper cauldron, and suddenly she’s gone…

A solitary traveler cloaked in red, moving deeper

into the crocheted forests of memory, following the smell of

wool and kerosene to another Thanksgiving long ago.

 Hands deep in chest cavities pull steaming organs into the golden fall air.

 Kettles boil magenta in the yard when the iridescent stench of butchering

binds the family together. On this holiday of leisure,

they will smoke, pickle, and knit a cornucopia that will provide memories

through the lonely winter months of life.

 Friday dawns, the morning after, where they will bow their heads in thanks

 for the rare mound of buttermilk pancakes, sizzling on a cast-iron skillet,

 greased with a fresh, pink pig’s tail. Their elbows touch on roughhewn boards,

thankful for this bounty,

each other.

 On gnarled, arthritic feet, she hobbles toward the bacon-scented memories of her past.