Today is my Grandma Charlotte's birthday. She would have turned 95.
I had two remarkable and very different women for grandmothers. My Grandma Charlotte was proud, loving, loyal, glamorous and stubborn. Both of my grandmothers could dress it up and turn heads, but where my Grandma Mercedes had a down-to-earth beauty, Grandma Charlotte seemed to personify that willow-waisted chic of the forties and fifties. This was a woman who wore pearls and pumps to the most casual of occasions. Even her house slippers had a heel! She was from the "keeping up appearances" generation and it showed. Her life skills reflected her generation as well. She played Pinochle every Friday with friends and could shuffle cards so quickly and sharply that you barely saw her hands move. Fitted sheets were as crisply folded as flat ones, a skill I have never been able to duplicate.
Oh her first date with my Grandad, she mistakenly thought he was from Royalton, PA...the wrong side of the tracks. They were on a blind date, out with another couple and she said, "Good evening," when he picked her up at the door, and "Thank you very much," when he dropped her off. Not a word in between.
She worked for the State Police of Pennsylvania for 26 years. When she finally retired, several years after my grandfather, she quit cooking too. From then on, crackers and cereal were stored in her oven. She was the oddest character about food. She liked her steaks well done and has had chefs in upscale restaurants ridicule her choice. For most of her life she didn't eat "fowl." No chicken, turkey, duck or bird of any kind. As a child she'd heard a sizzle from a chicken roasting in an oven and swore off them ever since. Christmas dinner for my grandmother consisted of a side plate with a (well-done) piece of ham, and a bowl of mashed potatoes over which she poured white shoepeg corn cooked in milk and sugar. She wouldn't even eat the chestnut stuffing we cooked independently of our Christmas turkey. I make her recipe for sandtart cookies at Christmas. Hers were so thin you could see through them, but she always said they were, "not as thin as my mother's."
She loved shrimp cocktail, Brandy Alexanders, Lambrusco with ice cubes, and would order fried oysters just to eat the breading.
Her thoughts on a good marriage, when she learned that Neel and I were engaged, were, "He always had his money, I always had my money, and I bought all his clothes." She was a marathon shopper and a clothes horse in her own right. When she and my Grandad would come to visit, my Grandmother always seemed ultra lady-like, mysterious almost. She had a special pink suitcase just for her cosmetics, a special silk pillow and billowy nightgowns, the likes of which I'd never seen on women my own mother's age.
While she always seemed so ladylike to me, it was clear that she and my Grandad had some rollicking good times together. They loved to travel and photo albums were filled with shots of trip after trip, all with great captions like, "The Gang, Recovering." or "The Compleat Angler." Under several photos of my Grandma is the name "Butch" in quotes. Neel will love that one. He feels that no one in Central Pennsylvania is called by their true name. "His name is John, but they call him Pete." My dad was Skip and my grandma was Chots.
After ten years of marriage, when she hadn't been feeling well, she walked up the street to the family doctor. Her doctor laughed and said, "Charlotte, you don't have the flu. You're pregnant!" She looked at him, said, "You're a goddamned liar," and walked out the door. He called out to her, "See you next month!" She wouldn't turn around and speak to him and she refused to believe him. When my dad was born, it was deep, deep summer. The hottest part of the year. Grandma raved about the then-tiny Hershey Medical Center. They brought her steak and ice cream and gave her back rubs every day for a week.
Grandma holding my dad at four months old.
Of course she was something of a liar too. Neel likes to say, about Grandma Charlotte, that while she was a cup half empty person, she'd tell you that it was half full. If she were still alive, she would tell you that my Grandma Mercedes had joined us on a family trip to New England (she hadn't). She would tell you where my Grandfather was when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (whereever she said, he wasn't), and she would tell you that there were 250 cows in the field we'd just passed when there were only maybe a dozen. This was to win one of those pass-the-time road trip games (whichever side of the car counted the most cows won), and she always won.
My grandfather had a massive stroke on my birthday in 1992. It nearly killed him. He was mostly instutionalized for the remaining 12 years of his life. Before he went into the hospital, she'd never paid a bill herself or even written a check. For the last dozen years of their nearly 69-year marriage, she went to see him at the nursing home every day. Going up just after lunch and coming home right before dinner. Of course she also liked to say that she hadn't been "shawpin'" since Grandpa's stroke, even though my father and I stood by, okay, we encouraged her to get some new things many times.
She loved my dad so much, and was so proud of him, even when she didn't always understand him. I often think that generation gap is one of the biggest. The parents who were coming of age between the two big wars, and the children who came of age during Vietanam. From the fifties on at least, we have rock and roll to unite us. During Hurricane Agnes in 1972 she dreamed of running water and got out of bed only to step into ankle deep water. My grandparent's house was the highest on the street and every night the neighbors would gather therr while they waited for the flood waters to receed. She lived exactly three miles away from this place, and when the accident occurred she and my Grandad came to Tennessee and stayed with us for a week.
She was a great teaser and could handle being teased as well. How many times did we jump in and say, "Mind the step." as we left her house, knowing that if we didn't say it, she surely would?
She was one of the most stubborn women I've ever met. I think the whole chicken thing is pretty good evidence of that. She managed to be too sick to attend my Grandfather's funeral, and she died exactly one year minus one day after he did. I think she felt that she couldn't face the anniversary of his death, so she made sure she didn't have to.
This is the house she lived in when she died. She and my Grandad lived there for most of my childhood and adulthood. I love it that my own house has that same sharply pitched roof. When we'd come and visit, every morning we'd congregate on the front porch, read the paper and have TastyKakes and Uban Coffee for breakfast. I can still call up the smell, the feel of the green shag carpet, and the way the light looked with all of the curtains drawn all day. She always had Moyer's potato chips for us, licorice all sorts and Mexican Hats. A few weeks ago, I was walking out of Jean and Paul's kitchen, down the steps to the backyard, and I was instantly back in the basement of that house. The steps looked the same and the creak of my tread was the same, instantly recognizable.
Oh how I miss her. She drove me, well she drove us all crazy at times, but I sure miss her. That's how death works on you I guess. You go along living and accepting both the grief and absence until suddenly you'd give anything to rush back to that place where you can smell her Coty face powder and take a shower in the bathroom with the flamingos on the shower stall and the shower head so low it hits your shoulders instead of your head. We all had so much fun together. Happy Birthday, Grandma. Love you...
Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 02:00AM 
