She's Got Personality

My grandmother holding Mom as a toddler. I think that's Aunt Mildred behind them.

This weekend I found myself asking Mom about my grandmother. I wanted to know what her personality was like.

"She was a lot like me," Mom said as she showed me her latest sale finds now displayed in her China Hutch. "She wasn't very learned. She wasn't exposed to much (small town life)."

"So, she had common sense?" I asked, not knowing what a small town mother in her sort of home environment would be like from day to day.

"She knew how to survive. She wasn't giddy, maybe more serious."

Mom told me about life lessons her mother had passed on to her:

When my grandmother's eighteen year old sister died six weeks after having her baby girl, Vera, the dying girl's husband promised to never marry again. The young mother passed away leaving baby and husband. Vera was raised by my great-grandmother and her father moved to Kansas City but visited often. He stayed involved in his daughter's life and he remained alone for years and years. He eventually married when he was in his fifties, but he lived most of his life with that promise to never marry again. "Never make promises to someone who's dying," my grandmother said.

Because small towns are at times difficult places to live if you are poor and "live on the wrong side of the railroad tracks." Cruel words can be a heavy weight if you carry them. "Like water off a duck's back," is how to react to such words according to my grandmother. Let them slide right off. This is useful for any weight someone tries to place on you with their words or judgments. My mom has often asked me, "Lori, have you ever seen water on a duck's back?" And, I know she's telling me to just let it go. People say unkind things but we don't have to carry them. If we do, we'll drown in them. It is best to stay above them.

My Aunt Mildred, Mom's older sister, was a "scrappy" child and would often find herself in a fight of some sort. One day while Mildred sat at the end of the long table in Mom's childhood home my grandmother was trying to explain to her how to "say what you got to say, but with tact." Mom was observing Mildred talking over her mother not listening to the gem she was trying to pass along to her daughter. Mom was sitting on the step at the kitchen threshold taking in her mother's words though they were not directed at her. She's told me this story many times. Hmmm, mabye I need "tact" as well!?!?!

After gleaning these stories, Mom told me about her cousin that had seven or eight kids and a rather vocal mother-in-law who thought her grandchildren were unruly. In the MIL's opinion there were too many kids in the family. The family was Catholic and this cousin's view on family life was "you get married and you have children". Many people think Brian and I are Catholic with our turn around of children! Anyway, this cousin was fed up with all the comments about her many children and their behavior so she asked her MIL, "Just which kid do you think I should have never had?!?! Show me and I'll just knock them in the head now!" Mom heard this story from an aunt when she was a child. Years later when my sister was getting married an engagement announcement was put in the local paper. An elderly woman who lived in the area called Mom saying, "I think we're related!" Mom in the midst of the chaos in her own life at the time went to visit this older lady. While there she heard firsthand about her aunts from this cousin and was amazed when the woman said, "And, so I said, 'Just which kid do you think I should have never had!?!?! Show me and I'll knock them in the head now!...'" Mom had met the woman she heard about so many years before as a child. I told Mom next time we get an ugly response to our little crew of children I'll tryout this response.

So, it was getting really late as Mom and I were standing in front of the China Hutch talking. She said I was falling asleep standing up, but I was totally awake. Totally. I told her I wanted to write all these stories down. She said we wouldn't get to it. HA! There you go, Mom. I wrote it down.

The next morning I asked Mom whose personality I have. She said, "You have your own. You're just greatly influenced by your mother."