On my grandmother
Aug. 12th, 2009 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutI don't have any photos or similar to post.
She died the morning of her 63rd anniversary.
She was very traditional, a nondenominational Protestant who believed very deeply in God. Her family moved from Wisconsin to Arizona when she was a child, for health reasons; it's in Arizona that she met my grandfather. She had more siblings than I know how to count - seven? Eight? She was the youngest. She never went to college. She was a housewife, and also a professional potter of some local repute.
Her father, I believe, was the model for the Coca-Cola Santa. You all know that story, right?
We weren't close. My immediate family had a fraught relationship with this particular set of grandparents. When I was twelve, I stayed at their house in Newman, in the Central Valley, for a month. Mostly I remember the awful water with the visible mineral flakes and the restrictions on what I could eat (not because of my weight or anything, just because this was the way they were), but I also remember a lot of hours spent in her pottery studio, and brewing sun tea on the back porch by the pool, and also cooking the darkest and moistest zucchini bread ever in their solar oven.
But it was all a long time ago. I know she loved me, but not as I am. Really, as adults, we had no way of relating to each other as we were. She tried, when I was younger, and I appreciate that. In return, I did my best to be the dutiful granddaughter once in a while.
I am glad she had a chance to meet the twins before she died.
She died the morning of her 63rd anniversary.
She was very traditional, a nondenominational Protestant who believed very deeply in God. Her family moved from Wisconsin to Arizona when she was a child, for health reasons; it's in Arizona that she met my grandfather. She had more siblings than I know how to count - seven? Eight? She was the youngest. She never went to college. She was a housewife, and also a professional potter of some local repute.
Her father, I believe, was the model for the Coca-Cola Santa. You all know that story, right?
We weren't close. My immediate family had a fraught relationship with this particular set of grandparents. When I was twelve, I stayed at their house in Newman, in the Central Valley, for a month. Mostly I remember the awful water with the visible mineral flakes and the restrictions on what I could eat (not because of my weight or anything, just because this was the way they were), but I also remember a lot of hours spent in her pottery studio, and brewing sun tea on the back porch by the pool, and also cooking the darkest and moistest zucchini bread ever in their solar oven.
But it was all a long time ago. I know she loved me, but not as I am. Really, as adults, we had no way of relating to each other as we were. She tried, when I was younger, and I appreciate that. In return, I did my best to be the dutiful granddaughter once in a while.
I am glad she had a chance to meet the twins before she died.
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Date: 2009-08-13 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-13 07:33 pm (UTC)But it was all a long time ago. I know she loved me, but not as I am. Really, as adults, we had no way of relating to each other as we were. She tried, when I was younger, and I appreciate that. In return, I did my best to be the dutiful granddaughter once in a while.
I feel you on this. I feel this way a lot about my paternal grandparents, esp. my paternal grandma (who, for the record, is still alive, but who I don't have much of a relationship with).