It's Mother's Day (he wrote, belaboring the obvious) and on this day I think of my Mom, who was as fine a person as ever drew breath. My parents have been gone for some years now, and I still think of them every day. And, today, my wife will be fielding Mother's Day calls and texts from our four daughters and our grandchildren, and our two daughters with families will be doing likewise. It's a grand old tradition, and most mothers deserve the little bit of extra attention.
While Mom deserves the extra remembrance on this day, I always think of my grandmother. Grandma Baty was the only grandmother I knew, as my paternal grandmother died suddenly in 1944, three years before my parents married.
My grown daughters, all four of them, are often bemused by the fact that three of my four grandparents were born in the 19th century. Grandma was the exception, having been born in 1901. In her life, she saw America go from a mostly agricultural nation to a superpower. She saw air travel go from a subject of fiction to a jet-propelled fact, although her feet never left the ground; in fact, in her 87 years of life, she never left eastern Iowa. She saw two world wars, and during the second, she saw both of her sons march off to war, along with a son-in-law and the young man who would become a son-in-law - my Dad. World War 2 was hard on the young men of small towns like Troy Mills, Iowa, and quite a few young men that our family knew never came home, and two of my uncles came home after serious wounds. She raised six kids during the Depression on a 50-acre farm in eastern Iowa, and she would remind you of that fact at any opportunity; they were, as she pointed out, hard times.
But Grandma was strong.
When I was very young, I remember my grandparents at family reunions. Grandpa Baty took enormous pride in his large family, and at family reunions would go from person to person, telling jokes, remembering old stories, and engaging his singular wit. But Grandma always was focused on the future, even in her later years: Who was expecting a baby, who was joining the service, who was graduating high school or college, and what their plans were, who was moving away, who was coming home.
Then, in 1975, Grandpa died. Grandma turned the farm over to my uncle, but she never slowed down; she moved into a house trailer on the property, where my aunt and uncle would be close by, and stayed there. She took the loss of Grandpa hard, but she picked up and kept on. It was a bad time.
But Grandma was strong.
Throughout the Great Depression, Grandma maintained a huge vegetable garden to feed the growing family. During World War 2, that garden became a Victory Garden, and continued to put out bushels of potatoes, onions, carrots, tomatoes, and more. When the war ended, though, she announced to Grandpa that henceforth she would grow only flowers, that they would buy vegetables at the store. Grandpa was not, at first, agreeable about the idea. He would have preferred to keep growing as much of their own food as they could.
But Grandma was strong.
She got her way, as she generally did, and above, you can see the results: Grandma, in her 80s, still growing flowers.
Later in her life, Grandma took to brewing homemade wines, which was interesting as she was a lifelong teetotaler. She made plum wine, dandelion wine, mulberry and blackberry wine, and would give it away to anyone in the family who asked for it. My wife, even now, here in Alaska, follows my grandmother's technique for dandelion wine, modified only slightly. And if any of her big, strapping grandsons would act up - say, like trying to find out what would happen if one shot at a sweaty old stick of dynamite with a .22 rifle, as my cousin and I did one day, she would have not hesitated to cut a switch and whup the tar out of us. She was a tiny woman, never more than 5'10" and 95 pounds, and we were big, tough rural kids.
But Grandma was strong.
Her strength saw her through the stroke that paralyzed her; after that, she only had limited use of one arm, but her mind was clear; she spoke only with difficulty, but her mental clarity was unaffected. She did, though, lose her independence, requiring full-time nursing care, and that was too much; she died a few weeks later.
I can still hear her voice, as clearly as though I had just spoken with her. And I still remember the advice she gave me on parenting, the best parenting advice I've ever received; I was 20, about to become a father, and nervous. She told me not to worry. "Hug them, kiss them, and feed them, and they'll turn out fine."
She was right. It worked. It still does.
See Also: Parenting and Grandparenting: Can You Overthink Them?
What We Leave Behind: Nothing Will Be As Meaningful As Our Children
Grandmothers can and should be a big part of any young person's life. I was fortunate when it came to grandmothers - but then, my children were, as well, as are my grandchildren - at least where my Mom and my wife are involved. My Grandma finally passed away in 1987. I was in my Officer's Basic Course at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, when my Mom called with the news. There was no big funeral; we don't do those in our family. There was a small memorial with my Mom, her five siblings, and the sons- and daughters-in-law, and Grandma was buried in the little community cemetery, next to Grandpa, and only a few yards away from her parents.
Thus, the wheel turned. But I remember Grandma, especially on Mother's Day, and that's a pretty good legacy.
And, to this day, a little bit of Grandma is still with me.
