1936: Grandma, Isa & Aiti (my Great-Grandpartents)
Minnesota
While I was in my upper thirties my brother, Mom, and I moved our Grandma to So. Cal. from Seattle. Grandma's only child, my Mom, felt it was better that she live her remaining years in Huntington Beach, close to her immediate family. In the end, California is where Grandma died, but, that's not where she's buried.
Grandma was an only child who grew up in a small Finnish community in Minnesota. She went to a very small school, married, and eventually left for Washington State.
Mom & Grandma
When I came on the scene in 1960 Grandma was married to my Grampa who was a verbally abusive man when he drank, which was all the time. Grampa owned a Texaco gas station where my Dad worked for a short while before he met and married my Mom. One summer when I was five my brother and I were playing with matches behind my Grampa's Texaco station and got caught. Grampa slammed our heads together so hard I saw stars. I had instinctively placed my hand between the two headed slam and broke the fancy Go-Go ring I was wearing. The ring left a dent for days. Looking back, I understand completely that my brother and I deserved it.
Another time, while my brother and I were in Seattle for the summer, Grampa held a knife to my brother thumb threatening to cut it off if he didn't stop sucking it. My brother squirmed in his lap screaming and crying, "No, no, no!!!" Finally Grampa let him go and my brother ran out of the house on Queen Anne Hill peeing his pants. I ran after him because I sucked my pointer and thumb together! I'm not sure that was deserved.
After the Texico station Grampa got a job at Boeing. Then one day he had a stroke on the job and died. I don't remember the funeral.
After Grampa passed away Grandma became our only custodian while we were in Seattle. She was easy going and didn't like disciplining. Grandma also maintained the nastiness kitchen in all of history. She didn't cook much, so, she had stale food in every cabinet. There were countless times I'd find a box of cookies, or other sweets, and excitedly grab a handful only to find they expired a year ago. "Yuck!" I'd shout.
Once a week my brother and I would pick fresh berries from the trails behind Grandma's house and I'd bake pies. I was a good cook. From the time I could reach the stove I was cooking dinners for my Mom and brother because Mom worked all day, I also cooked in Seattle. I'd cook what ever I could find that wasn't growing fungi or was as hard as a rock. I also kept the house clean while my bother and I were there. All Grandma had to do in compensation was to put up with all the jars and boxes of critters I kept in the house over the summer.
Grandma's view on Queen Anne Hill
One year Grandma retired from the Bon Marche after mega years of employment. They gave her a bouquet of flowers. After that I remember her sitting on the couch watching TV game shows and drinking Vodka and grapefruit juice. She was a good humored person with a lot of grace in her understanding, but, she during this time she nurtured the fears she had been taught over the years of abuse and lack of appreciation. Grandma became a homebody with a little white Spaniel and a pissy black cat. It was soon after this that my brother and & stopped going to Seattle for the summers. I was around 12.
Years after Grampa's death Grandma remarried. After Grandma's second husband died she remodeled her basement and rented out the space. One of her renters rob her. Along with other things, he took all the jewelry my Grampa made during his rock finding days. I'm still upset about that. It was at this time I started realizing she was full of dispair and depression, but, I was involved with my own teen-age life and rarely visited. I kept up with her through letters. She'd write me, in her failing handwriting, about all the card games with her neighbors and Elks club dances she'd attend and get drunk at. They were the only times she'd get out of her house.
My Mom's Austin Healey
Aiti in the back, Mom in the driver's seat,
& Grandma in the passenger seat
A long time ago (when I was around five and after my Great-grandn parents moved to West Palm Springs Florida) my Isa tried to teach my Aiti how to drive. While pulling the car into the garage Aiti stepped on the gas instead of the breaks and drove the car through the back wall of the garage. Isa died from the injuries and Aiti never drove again. When Grampa tried to teach Grandma how to drive he shouted so much at her she developed a phobia behind the wheel. It wasn't until years after his death that she finally got a license and a Ford Taurus, but, she still had her renters drive her around in her own car. They also used her car for their own needs taking advantage of Grandma's hospitality. It was my Mom who turned the tides on driving. She broke the cycle and bought fast cars like Mustangs and Healeys (she's had two Healeys, an Austin and a Jensen, and she's had numerous Mustangs). Mom was all about road trips and rally races. I'm grateful she changed the course of my impending history with cars, because, the truth is, I drive just like her. Eventually my Mom decided it was time to move Grandma to California. She was going blind and deaf, and had stopped cleaning her house, cooking food and washing her clothes. Grandma rarely got off the couch for anything. She had gained lots of weight and lost lots of muscle, so, around 1998 my brother, my Mom, and I flew to Seattle to help pack her boxes and bags.
My brother & I at Grandma's house
Going through Grandma's house was interesting. As we pulled out old and funky items Grandma would tell us a story about it. There were so many memories in her boxes and closets that bought laughter and tears to our small intimate family. When I pulled out an old softball glove of mine Grandma told me of my first game at 7. I was asked to fill in for a friend of mine who lived down the street and who was sick. She played in a Seattle summer league for 12 year old girls. I was assigned left field and took to it like a natural. Catching fly balls became one of the funnest things I did. Grandma told me that once the coach taught me how to hit a ball I was hitting them out of the park."Then you ran like a Chita." she told me. Grandma was always proud of me. I loved her for that. I played softball for that team every summer I was in Seattle after that.
Once all her 'keepers' were loaded up, and her house placed up for sale, I looked through her living room window for the last time. Grandma had two large windows that came together at the corner of the room and house. When you looked through them it seamed there was a chunk of corner missing from the house. Though them were the spectacular views of King County Washington. As a child I would stare out these windows for hours. Sometimes birds would slam into the glass and drop to the porch. The sound of the bird hitting the glass echoed through the house. It was an awful sound. When I heard it I'd go running out to save the stunned flyer. Sometimes I had to bury it. As I said before, Grandma always understood my compassion for nature and never argued when I'd bring wildlife into her home.
My Grandma's one car
When we moved Grandma to Calif. she knew she wouldn't need her car. There was no way she was going to drive in So. Cal.! So, Grandma sold her chaperone vehicle to my son Shaun. Mark and he drove it across the lower 48 to NC. In this picture of her Ford Taurus the trees in the back ground were planted by my Grampa from seeds he brought back from Finland. I put this in the blog because the trees are unique to the area and are flourishing...much like my memories of Seattle. Before I left to go back to NC I took a couple of pine cones from these trees and tried to plant the seeds from them in my yard. They never sprouted.
Grandma died years after we moved her to Calif. and Mom took her back to Seattle to bury her. I didn't recognize anyone at the funeral. "Once they moved her to Calif. she went down hill fast." I heard a lady tell another lady. No one talked to my Mom, my brother, nor I.
When the service was over I went to say my last goodbye to a wonderful woman who didn't know how to make her own life exciting because she had so many fears, but, could make the lives of two young kids completely adventurous. When I saw her face in the coffin it didn't look like her, it was bloated with hardener and layered with makeup. I touched her hand and found it cold like marble. I knocked on her arm and heard a sound much like one would hear while knocking on a door. I was inwardly relieved at the sight. The body was only shell, the Soul is not. If Grandma was standing beside me, (and I believe that's possible) she would have agreed. Then she would have said like she always did, "You're all right Tammy."
Grandma will always be alive. She lives in the hearts of those she left behind like me. The truth is, that even in all my Grandma's depression, fears, and sadness, she somehow found a way to make me laugh. And I believe that if she saw herself looking like a bloated plastic mannequin she'd have a good laugh with me. "Bah to it all." she'd say.
Grandma didn't care about the flesh, she believed the tabloids, she said sex was only for the birds and the bees, "pooh-who to it," she'd say. And she didn't care about God. Grandma cared about my brother and me. She cared enough to tell us all the time "you're good kids" and we believed her. Aiti gave me a love for baking, Grandma gave me assurance that I was someone interesting. What a gift! Thank you Grandma.
Mark
me, my brother
Shaun, Mom, my sister-in-law
my Mom's husband, Grandma, Sarah
& my niece.
Grandma: You disappeared from before our eyes, and we turned back grieving,
only to find you in our hearts forever,
breathing.
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