Love. Gram.

Grandma Connors sent this mimeographed essay from the Burlington Free Press sometime in 1975. It was written by Patsey Gray, then age 9, and Gram thought it summed up our relationship.

Girl Gives Her impression of Her Grandmother

A grandmother is a lady who has no children of her own, so she likes other people’s little girls. A grandfather is a man grandmother. He goes for walks with the boys, and they talk about fishing and tractors and like that.

Grandmas don’t have to do anything except be there. They’re old, so they shouldn’t play hard or run. It is enough if they drive us to the market where the pretend horse is and have lots of dimes ready. Or if they take us for walks, they should slow down past things like pretty leaves or caterpillars. They should never, ever say “Hurry up.”

Usually they are fat, but not too fat to tie kids’ shoes. They wear glasses and funny underwear. They can take their teeth and gums off.

It is better if they don’t typewrite, or play cards except with us. They don’t have to be smart, only answer questions like why dogs hate cats and how come God isn’t married. They don’t talk baby talk like visitors do, because it is hard to understand. When they read to us they don’t skip, or mind if it is the same story again.

Everybody should try to have one, especially if you don’t have television, because grandmas are the only grownups who have got time.

I would add that grandmas should have white hair and squishy bodies that are comfy to snuggle against when a child is tired or just because. They should cook big meals and sew doll clothes, even if turning the tiny sleeves on Barbie’s dress sometimes causes the grandma to swear out loud.

Grandmas will always have cake donuts waiting for you after church on Sunday, and they never worry that you might be watching too many cartoons. If you want a tuna sandwich for lunch every day for an entire summer, a grandma will make a tuna sandwich every single day. If the following summer, the daily request changes to butter-and-jelly sandwiches, the grandma will stock up on grape jelly and never once mention fruits or vegetables. She should not run out of Hawaiian Punch or ice cream cones.

Grandmas are not cool and don’t keep up with trends, although a good grandma will wear footie pajamas if they are a Christmas gift from you. A grandma’s furniture is old and so is the music she likes, which can only be found on AM radio. She knows how to make things with needles and yarn and will teach you if you want to learn, no matter how many times she has to show you how it’s done. She won’t mind if you make “soup” with whatever smells good from the spice rack and never complains that it’s wasteful. Grandmas like to do things that require sitting still, like reading with you on her bed and stroking your arm until you fall asleep even though you are far too grown up for naps.

A grandma won’t tease you (much) when the clay you found in the yard turns out to be cat poop. If you fall off your bike and run to her for comfort, she might accidentally hurt your feelings by asking if the bike is okay — but she’s only trying to make you laugh so you’ll stop crying. She knows you are more important than a bike. The only time a grandma will get upset is if you don’t come when she calls and you make her worry. A grandma believes you are the best person she has ever met, even when you are not so sure of it yourself.

I don’t know if they make grandmothers like this anymore, but if you can find one, you are very, very lucky.

Love, Gram — Part 3

As a little girl, I never thought much about the fact that Grandma Connors and Gramps lived in a rented apartment instead of in a house they owned, like we did. I didn’t wonder why she still worked in the elementary school cafeteria after she was well into her 70s. And since I never saw my mother pay her for taking care of me, the fact that she might have needed the money never crossed my mind. My mother explained several years later that funds were tight in the Connors house because for most of their marriage, Gramps couldn’t stop gambling with the grocery money.

Gramps was gruff and not very talkative but their marriage was no worse than my own parents’, as far as I could tell, except that they slept in separate rooms because, Gram said, he snored. She cooked his meals and cleaned the house; he drove her to the grocery store and the hairdresser after arthritis made driving herself too painful. They didn’t exchange much in the way of conversation except what was necessary. It didn’t look like a happy marriage, but from my skewed perspective, it looked normal.

During senior year of high school, I was madly infatuated with a boy named Paul. I’d been accepted to a college on the other side of the country and suddenly felt torn about leaving. As it turned out, Paul wasn’t nearly as thrilled about me as I was about him, but it felt like love for a little while. Since Gram was the most loving person in my life, I figured she knew a few things about the subject and a few more about what to avoid. So I asked her how to tell if love was real and what was a good age to get married.

(For the sake of their privacy, I’ve used initials instead of names in one paragraph. R and L are Gram’s daughters. M and G are her sons-in-law.)

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January 18, 1980

Hi, darling –

I can hardly wait to see you and you probably can’t wait to see your nephew. Just think, I’ve never had a niece or nephew. Wonder if I was cheated.

Now for your questions. I was 26 years old when I was married. If I had waited until I was 30, would I have come to my senses? R. was 23 and L. was 24. Both girls knew they were in love with others before that, but then broke it off and felt awful at the time. Then M. and G. were the right ones for both, and they are happy as most. Probably with a few bad days now and then.

Of course there is such a thing as love at first sight. Oftentimes the second and third sight isn’t so good, as your own family has proven. I do think it’s wonderful to have such a nice guy as Paul and a yardstick for comparison. As you go on to college and meet other guys, you may wonder. But if you look to God for guidance, and if [Paul] is the right one for you, you may at times be at the end of the earth from each other [and] you will come together somehow.

Seventeen and eighteen years old are wonderful years to wonder, compare and learn — not only studies but how to live. Find your true values and live up to them. I have often said that one has to live a lifetime to before one learns how to live. Your generation has it all over mine and your mother’s. You question and dream all you want to — that’s good, for if you are to live up to your dreams, you are aiming high. I am so glad that you are going on to college. Not only will you be able to carry on if need be, but you will be on an equal place with your husband, no matter how high he goes in his chosen profession.

Perhaps your mother and I didn’t make a mistake in our mates. We have some wonderful children to prove that it wasn’t all wrong. But looking back, I wanted [my husband] to understand my wants and feelings, with little consideration as to his feelings. Lack of communication and understanding.

My hand is getting tired and I can’t read my own writing so better close this for now.

Loads of love,

Gram

P.S. Write when you can and whatever you feel like. I’ll try to answer. If I can’t, Striper [the cat] will help.

Love, Gram — Part 2

This is another letter from Grandma Connors. It’s not dated but based on the subject matter, it’s probably from the mid-1970s when I was 12 or 13 years old. In an earlier letter, I had asked Gram how old she was the first time she kissed a boy.

Gram was born in 1896, so her standards seemed impossibly high in the wake of the free love era of the 1960s. No kissing? Still, I respected her opinions and tried to understand the spirit of what she said, even though I didn’t always subscribe to the same views.

Now as an adult, I read her words as metaphor. These days, Mr. Right doesn’t usually care if you’re a little shopworn and if that’s the deal-breaker, then he’s not the right Mr. Right anyway. But beyond the morality, Gram was saying something about how I should think of myself and expect to be treated. She wanted me to know I was valuable, so I wouldn’t give away too much for too little.

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The question you asked me — answer is 16. I also played a game with several women with that question. All answers were 16 or 17, and then not everyone, until Mr. Right came along. I picture it like this.

A beautiful gown was being made and in the process, different people came in, handled it, even tried it on, until it was soiled and torn. Then the one it was meant for saw it at a distance and was delighted until she came closer, and altho she felt badly, didn’t take it and the poor dress just hung there. So it is with us. We are soiled and when Mr. Right comes along, because of being soiled, he too may not want us.

So, honey, keep as sweet as you are. And it’s so much better to have a boy want to kiss you than to kiss you and then not want you.

Wish we could talk things over. A letter may not answer all you want to know. But I try. So all problems will get the best answer I can give. Not Dear Abby, but dear Grandma.

Love and then some,

Grandma and Striper

Gram & Striper

Love, Gram — Part 1

Ethel Jones Connors was the only grandmother I remember, and although we were not related biologically, her love was a powerful anchor in my life. Her belief in me was unwavering, so strong that I still feel her influence just about every day.

When this letter was written, my parents and I had recently moved from our hometown in New York state, where Grandma Connors lived, to Arizona. I was 11 years old and had complained to her about how strict my mother was about…well, everything.

Gram and I wrote letters to each other for almost two decades, until she was in her mid-90s and no longer able to hold a pen.

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Thursday, May 31, 1973

Dear Michelle –

It was just great to hear your voice Sat. night. I just wanted to reach over the miles and hug you. I miss you so much and realize that you are growing up. And you know, when I look back a hundred years to when I was around 12 years old, I think it’s a hard time between being a little girl and a young lady — and [I can remember] a few years of my mother saying “no” more often than “yes.” You can imagine I was a little self-willed.

But I understood the reason when I had to repeat the same with my girls. They too found it difficult to agree with me as to what they wanted to do and what I thought was right. I had to call it the rules of our house, not the rules of others. There was the subject of dress and makeup, the places they wanted to go, and things they wanted to do — also some of the people they wanted to go with. And especially  boys. They had to learn that brothers and other boys are two different things. They had to learn not to be too free or the boys thought them bold and would take advantage.

So many lessons to learn. And I was thinking, “I’ll bet Michelle is finding growing up a bit difficult too.” But you are a leader, darling, so set the right pace and others will follow and respect you too.

Boy, I didn’t realize I was writing a sermon.

[The next page of this letter is missing, but she always signed it...]

Love,

Gram

Grandma Connors in her garden

Before Handwriting Becomes Obsolete

I’m wrestling with a different post that refuses to come together, no matter how hard I type and re-type. You might be surprised at how much not-writing happens in my writing process — I frequently am. In hopes of trying to jumpstart that piece, I started digging around in the Archives. The Archives is my mother’s 1940s-era suitcase where the sentimental stuff lives. Tessa’s newborn-size Christmas dress is in there, along with my son’s favorite stuffed turtle and the heart pendant that my first boyfriend gave me for Valentine’s Day in 7th grade. I rediscovered Dad’s WWII dog tags next to a photo button of my mother from the early 1930s. But the best stuff is in here.

Once while snooping around the farmhouse, I discovered a cigar box in the top drawer of my parents’ dresser. It held a collection of cards and letters that my outwardly pragmatic father had saved, most from his children. Over the years, I kept track of that box, even when I had to snoop for it in a new location after we moved to Arizona. Eventually, the one-box collection expanded to two. He kept all the cards the boys sent him, along with a Father’s Day card I made in kindergarten that looked like a construction paper shirt and tie. He also saved a note from his best friend, who called him a shithead for standing up the guests at his own birthday party, and a letter from my brother Dan taking him to task on another matter. He cared about all of it, it seemed, even the unpleasant parts. So from my father, I learned the sappy habit of keeping cards and letters.

Most of the things I’ve saved are from my late teens and twenties. If you and I knew each other in the 1980s, something you sent me is probably in this pile. There are letters from my brothers, written when I was a teenager and they’d already made the great escape into the adult world, offering encouragement, warnings, and even money if I needed to get away from home for awhile. (An offer of cash is a rare and startling event in the Yauger family, so that’s probably why that note made it into the Archives.) My mother wrote me letters when I went on religious retreats, and my grandmother wrote to me because we were 3,000 miles apart for nearly twenty years.

In high school, my best friend and I used to write to each other every day during class when we should have been doing something, you know, academic. We’d pass each other the notes in the hallway and still have plenty to talk about in the car on the way home and on the phone that night. When we were juniors, she joined Amigos de las Americas and spent the next two summers teaching dental hygiene in a village in Honduras. I saved a lot of those letters too, especially from the summer after we graduated because I knew things would never be the same again.

The great thing about this pile of paper is how much more it means now than when I saved it. My Aunt Anne, who died forty years ago, signed my autograph book and I tore out that page to keep. It’s the only piece of her handwriting I have. Aunt Tess sent a get-well card when I was hospitalized during sophomore year of college. It has a cute cartoon kitty on the front, holding an umbrella to keep off the rain, and the printed sentiment offers get-well wishes. Inside she wrote,

Dear Michelle,

What kind of a stunt is this at the end of the school year? A tough way to get out of exams…

Aunt Tess had been a nurse, and this was her brand of sympathy.

I kept all the letters from the first boy who ever loved me back, along with another pile my friend Brett wrote from his drug treatment program in New Mexico, a few years before he died in a motorcycle accident. I have 30-year-old letters from Elaine, notes from David, and cards from Shari and Celene, all made sweeter by the fact that these people are still part of my life, even if from a distance.

When he was 7 years old, Sam handmade seven Mother’s Day cards for me. I also have an apology he wrote on another occasion, folded into a paper airplane, and launched from his bedroom doorway since he was in exile there at the time. And in 1999, Tessa wrote this note for no reason at all.

Dear Mama,

I love you very mach. I well love you for the rast of you’re life.

Love, Tessa

Gosh, let’s hope so. By the way, her spelling has improved considerably since then.

Handwriting has gone out of vogue, much to our collective detriment. We email and text and, uh, blog. But we don’t pour out our thoughts on paper with a pen, risking the possibility of phrasing something imperfectly or writing our sentences a little less than straight across the page. Most of the mail comes in window envelopes now and none of that is worth keeping for posterity. I wonder what our kids will do when they want to remember parts of their lives that have passed into history — check their saved text messages?

So as I look through this pile of love I’ve saved over the years, I’ve decided to share some of it with you. You may never have known my grandmother or my mom, but their letters  say more than I ever could about what kind of women they were. It may be cheating, since it’s not my own writing, but this is my blog so I can do what I want here.

Here’s a quick one, a note between my dad and me written during my freshman year of high school. We hadn’t been speaking much for about six months, and even when I brought home a report card packed with A’s, he made no comment as usual. So I left the report card on his desk with this question written in pencil. His response is in pen on the right side of the paper, and it was the only time he ever said he was proud of me. I doubt if it would’ve had the same impact in an email.

What I Learned This Week

Sorry for the blog-gap this week. I had half a post written on Monday but was interrupted.

This is my 20-year-old son’s car. He was making a left turn with the arrow when a driver from the opposite direction ran her red light. The final tally of vehicles involved was four, including the two cars she hit after she and Sam collided.

As car accidents go, it could’ve been much worse. One person went to the hospital with back pain. No one went to the morgue. The responsible driver had insurance, so Sam’s car is already at the shop for exploratory surgery on some internal damage you can’t see in the photos. There are a few transient inconveniences, like the loss of wages from not having a vehicle to make his deliveries, and uncertainty about whether the car can be repaired at all. But these are minor problems compared with the catastrophe it might have been if the timing and physics had been even slightly different.

Tessa and I stood on the corner with Sam for a couple hours while the police officers, paramedics, and tow truck drivers did their thing. The red-light runner’s car ended up on the curb, opposite the side of the intersection from where she’d started. All her airbags had deployed. A man from another vehicle was loaded onto a backboard and taken away in an ambulance. Tow trucks hauled off two of the four cars. The investigating officer took statements from everyone, asked a lot of questions, and wrote his report. My contribution to this process was that I did not succumb to the urge to throw up. Because even though Sam was standing beside me, perfectly intact, this event was obviously a near-miss. Tragedy just had lousy aim that day.

So I’ve been kind of a wreck all week, too, and it’s taken until today to shake it. I understand and even accept mortality — but not as it applies to my children. And I do not appreciate randomness, even though it persists in the universe without my permission. Most of the time, I keep these notions buried in a jar in the back yard because if I allowed them to lounge around the front of my awareness, it would be impossible to let anyone I love out of my sight.

My reaction to a stranger having opened this Pandora’s box of scary thoughts was to aggravate my son with suggestions and helpful advice. If I couldn’t control the universe, I could at least control how Sam managed it. Right?

Did you call the insurance company yet?

I talked to your Uncle Fred. He had some ideas about negotiating with the insurance company. He says…

Don’t forget to tell them you need a car for your job. I know you’re too young for a rental but maybe they’ll let us take the rental so you can use one of our cars.

Weren’t you supposed to call the insurance company back today?

Ask them about compensating you for the days you’ve missed at work.

I really think Mike ought to be with you when the adjustor comes over to look at your car.

Honestly, it didn’t seem annoying while I was saying it.

But it must have sounded like a dentist’s drill to Sam because he finally had to call a halt. He hadn’t asked for help, he pointed out, and he would handle this situation himself. Probably not the way I would do it, but it was his car, his job, and his problem to work out as he chose. In essence, I was fired.

That being the case, I was left face-to-face with my fear about losing him and saw that it had been the compelling force behind all my “helpfulness.” Some people drink or shop, while I manage difficult emotions by doing something. That’s probably why my house is so clean. I saw all of this truth, clear as day — right before I stuffed that fear back into its jar and dug a new hole. Sam’s moving on, and I need to, too.

So that’s what’s been happening around here. One wrecked car, one uninjured young man who’s taking charge of his life, and one mother who is learning to let go of the reins. All in all, not a bad week.