I lie in the shade of the great tree, sunlight peeking between the leaves and the cool breeze was tickling my face. The smell of the roses next door carried me to a memory of my grandmother. Grandma always smelled like roses and lavender. I can remember laying in the shade with her during the summers as I when I was a child. She would tell me stories of her adventures.
Grandma was the first woman in her family to drive. Her father, a farmer, did not feel a woman’s place was behind the wheel of a vehicle. She of course went right out and got a job delivering mail in rural Texas where they lived. The last of a long line of children, she got away with more than her siblings would have. He was angry but nothing much came between “Ducky” and her father. “Ducky” was the nickname everyone called her. It fit her personality and humor.
She was a character. Her life went through turmoil with the times in which she lived, but she was not defined by the standards and limitations of the females around her. During the war she moved to Long Beach and became a riveter making ships and airplanes. I can’t look at “Rosy the Riveter” and without seeing my grandmother’s face there. She worked almost every day in her life.
As a child she would fill my head with ideas and perceptions which were beyond my age. You will see me quote her often as her wisdom has become my own. When other kids had grandmothers telling them to eat their veggies, mine was insisting that chocolate was in fact a dairy product. My mother would shake her head as Grandma passed out the Hershey candy bars that were always in her purse. You could count on her for a chocolate fix just as you could always find frozen strawberries in her freezer.
Nobody did things like my grandmother. That is simply a fact. I came home one day to announce I wanted to be a cheerleader but didn’t know how to do “the splits” and of course she got up and demonstrated. I remember standing there with my jaw dropped as she looked up and caught my expression. She laughed and said, “I de-clare” which was one of her favorite expressions. We laughed at that many times. I never did learn to do the splits, but I learned to use that expression of hers for many things.
My grandmother taught me many things about life. She insisted a woman must have emergency money nobody else knew about, and she said that I should never depend upon a man or anyone else to take care of me when I grew up. Never leave the house without a plan to get back on your own and never trust a man with your heart or your bank account. In retrospect I suppose I should have listened to her more carefully. Life has a way of putting blinders on us.
I spent many Saturday mornings with her when I was little. We would get up and put our “duds” on, then lipstick, of course, and then went to Dairy Queen for her to have coffee with her friends. My grandma was a firm believer in never leaving the house without lotion on her elbows. No woman should ever have scratchy elbows, apparently, and I confess that I can’t leave without that lotion to this day. I am convinced that none of her friends had elbows as smooth as ours.
After my parents had moved our family far from that small community in rural Texas, we would receive letters from Grandma written on a Dairy Queen napkin. Her beautiful handwriting looked so out of place on such a bizarre thing as a napkin. I would read her letters and then admire the beautiful Spencer’s Script of her handwriting. I would imagine her sitting in the Dairy Queen on Saturday mornings and writing us while waiting for her friends to arrive for coffee, and then close my eyes and will myself to be there next to her. Opening my eyes and finding me still in California was sad.
The smell of roses will always take me back to her. Hershey bars and the Dairy Queen will always make me smile and remember her laughter. My smooth as silk elbows and my independent spirit are testimonies to how much she is still with me today. Memories do stand the test of time. I can still see the sun touching her face between the shadows of that great tree, our family tree.