Sometimes when the present day seems too stressful I pull out memories and examine them again, closing my eyes, trying to remember the light, the scents, the feelings.
They are not always "happy" memories. Sometimes they are bland. Sometimes they are sad. Sometimes they are funny.
When I was 12 years old I spent a week staying with my grandmother, in her small house in Dallas, Georgia, just the two of us. I missed the large Victorian home where she had lived with my grandfather in Atlanta. They had sold that house a few months before Papa died, and moved to Dallas to be near her brother. The Dallas house was tiny and the drive to it was unutterably boring, a long expanse of pine trees alongside the road.
Seeing my grandmother without my grandfather was so weird.
We ate chicken every day, in one form or another. Fried chicken. Baked chicken. Chicken salad? Not sure. I just know that for months afterward I didn't want to see a piece of chicken. It was cheaper than beef and she was on a tight budget.
We went to the "beauty parlor" so I could watch as her incredibly thick hair was washed and set. Once a week, she got it washed and set, into a style that seemed more architectural and sculptural than real hair. She told me I should never wash my hair more than once a week or it would dry out.
She also lectured me on the right way to wash my face -- hot water, Ivory soap, cold water. I had to demonstrate mastery of that skill. (I washed my face that way for years afterwards.)
I spent a lot of time watching TV. There were no other kids to play with, no nearby cousins. I played with the little electronic organ someone had given her. At home I played the piano, but I didn't really like the organ.
Mamaw read the newspaper every day, cover to cover.
She cooked her dinner right after lunch, then put the lids on the pots, left them on the stove, and turned off the heat. Around 5:30, she turned the heat on under the food and heated it back up.
She took a nap right after lunch, although she didn't use the word "nap." She sat on the sofa and "rested my eyes."
I got lectured on "the bad disease" while watching an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. I realized she was talking about venereal diseases and quickly told her we had already learned about those in school, and she looked horrified. "I dated a boy once and Daddy had him investigated. He had the bad disease and Daddy wouldn't let me date him after he found out. You must never date anyone with the bad disease."
I recounted this later to my mother and she rolled her eyes and laughed.
I was also lectured about carrying coins in my underwear, so I could call my father to come pick me up, if I was out somewhere and got into trouble. She told me about a date where a boy had tried to kiss her, and she had had to get some money from her underwear and call her father. "Never let a boy kiss you! NEVER! IT MAKES THEM GO CRAZY!"
Mom and Dad both thought that was hilarious.
The most profound memory was one morning seeing her struggling to put on a corset. She was about 75 years old. She always wore a corset. Putting it on by herself was a gymnastic and engineering feat I still marvel at. Mamaw was not athletic. I was worried she was having some kind of fit when I heard her grunting and huffing, and I threw open the door to her bedroom and saw her struggling into that corset.
I wrote a poem about it years later.
Mamaw had a profound belief that no lady went out in public with a jiggly bottom. You wore a corset or at least a girdle. She lectured my poor mom on that unmercifully.
What amazes me now is that she was born in 1899, and I was born in 1962, and our relationship connected me to someone alive and cognizant before there was such a thing as a television, or refrigerator, or a computer. She had doubtless been hugged by people who lived through the Civil War, and decades later she had hugged me. She was my connection to a past that has always fascinated me.
Mamaw was a fireball of energy. She was incredibly smart, and funny, and I miss her every day. I have an audio file on my desktop and I listen to it sometimes, delighting in hearing her voice again.
God bless us all, she says, forever, in my heart.
