#35: In memory of two women who made me
Hi there, and apologies in advance for a sad--but I hope nice--letter. If you follow me on the various services, you probably know that it's been one of those legendary Bond (and Summers) family weeks of the unlucky sort. Christopher and I were at Books by the Banks a week ago Saturday when we got notice my Granny Summers, my mom's mother, had been rushed to the hospital and we would not make it in time to say goodbye even if she was able to hear us. That night we began to mourn her. The next morning, we found out that my other grandmother, Granny Bond, my dad's mom (obvi), had suffered a massive stroke--it's now pretty clear that her reaction to Granny Summers' passing was a trigger. She rested comfortably for a few days then passed away mid-week.
Today we had a joint funeral for them both. Our families are relatively small and very close. They were both 93 years old, both giants in my life. I thought I'd share with you guys what I read at the service. I write things, so I wrote a thing. Here goes...
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The women who made me the woman I am were not famous. They weren’t even alike in many ways.
Granny Summers had a closet full of shoeboxes. She never passed up a sale rack or the opportunity to try a new kind of make-up or night cream. My papaw Wilson, her husband, in fact became very known to the ducks that lived on the pond outside Lexington Mall, because he would bring bread and feed them while she traversed the floor of McAlpin’s and Dillard’s. (He never rushed her, always respected her; relationship goals.) Mom and I were talking the other night and she told me about hearing from a former student—my grandmother was a fourth grade teacher for nearly 40 years—whose sense memory was “she always smelled so good.” Perfume, we agreed. Probably unusual for most people to wear every day back then.
Beneath that always-polished surface was a grit and determination—or stubbornness, all compliments—that I certainly inherited. This was a woman who got a teaching degree when a woman from the hills of Appalachia going to college and getting a degree was practically unheard of. I look at the photos of her and her smiling friends from that time and think that even knowing her as well as I did, how much life she lived that I’ll never know, all the moments of advice she must have given or taken, the little joys and sorrows that were hers alone. I remember discovering as an adult that she’d run away from home to do factory work during World War II, refusing to tell her parents where she was because they’d make her come back, and lived in a rooming house with a bunch of other girls doing the same.
Other things I learned from her: She read the newspaper, cover to cover, every day. She’d let me stay up if I slept over and watch Johnny Carson with her and papaw on Saturday nights, they worked together cutting apples while we watched, so she could make a giant breakfast for the whole family on Sunday mornings: cathead biscuits, sausage, eggs, and of course, fried apples. She took in every stray cat that needed a home, and doctored them herself. I learned that you could have it all, intellect and family and community, that you could have whatever you cared about enough to work for it. She did. Her photo albums are filled with clippings not just about us, but about everyone. Her sense of fairness and justice was so strong—maybe too strong in this case—that she paddled my mom every day when she had her in class, just to prove she wouldn’t play favorites. Mom told me she eventually sent her to Annville Institute after hearing a teacher say they would never give a teacher’s child a bad grade. She believed in doing the work. And she gave me the best Mom anyone could ever ask for and if I start talking about that I’ll never make it through this.
Granny Bond, Iny Bug, couldn’t be much different on the surface. She got dressed up only rarely. She bought Mary Kay or Avon from sales ladies, but only wore it on special occasions. She had an eighth grade education and a devotion to The Young and the Restless that meant she never missed an episode when we were kids. She watched over us until we were old enough to go to school—me and Misti, Brian and Chris—which should probably earn her a nomination for sainthood. That one hour a day when her story was on was the only time she really wanted us to be quiet. She’d break a plate to shut us up if she had to, shocking us into quiet, then tell us to be careful and stay out of the kitchen while she cleaned it up. We played endless games of Eye Spy, ate thousands of hamburgers and dishes of macaroni, plain or with tomatoes. She, too, was a great cook.
From her, I learned how someone could tell a story and make you want to live inside it, make you wish it would keep going forever. She wasn’t a big reader, but she was a storyteller. “Just one more ghost story,” I’d beg, terrified and susceptible to believing every word, and she would. About a witch asking to hold her new son when she was at someone’s funeral and her being too nervous to say no. About houses with mysterious noises when it rained and the infamous “Booger Holler” in Clay County.
But the stories I remember most from her were about her growing up. About her chores on the farm, and how things were back then—apples and oranges at Christmas if they were very lucky. About the boy who got fresh with her so she clocked him with a history book. About being a cook at the school later. And, oh, so many stories about my papaw Elmer and her courting, as she’d have said. She’d describe how handsome he was—“purty” in her parlance—and how he caught her eye when they visited his family’s store. She’d read me from their love letters and I would swoon. They ran off together to get married, her parents disapproving. That story was another edge of the seat one, them driving a borrowed car without headlights, getting stopped by the police and having to have a friend pay the ticket so they could go on. Her parents were so mad they had to wait for months, which they did, before eventually being welcomed back home.
Iny Bug was a caretaker, too, always making time for everyone else. Making sure everyone she loved had what they needed. She took care of her own mother for years. And her sons, her husband, most men could do no wrong in her eyes. I didn’t learn that from her, as anyone here can tell you, but I did learn to be a romantic. That it was okay to be a romantic, to value that kind of love, in a culture that often treats it as both all-important and trivial women’s nonsense. Both of my grandmothers were great relationship models.
I used to skip school—or rather pretend to be sick so I could leave school—to go hang out with Iny Bug. We’d make fried apple pies, pressing the edges with forks, and I’d ask to hear the same stories I’d heard a hundred times before. She made me laugh, always. She was only concerned with being proper when other people were around. In private, she was hilarious. She had anxieties just like I did, and I learned that was okay too, that people would still love you if you were a worrier. From her, I learned how to be a storyteller, how to value stories, to swim in them and never forget. I learned that everyone has a universe inside them, and a million stories they’ve lived, and if you’re lucky they’ll share the best ones with you, the most meaningful to them.
I was lucky, so lucky to have both these women and their love in my life. I imagine you all feel the same way. So let’s all remember them, and tell their stories. They’d have liked that. Tell a ghost story, yours or one your grandmother told you, and think of Iny Bug. And next time you buy a new pair of shoes, think of Granny Summers…but only if they’re on sale.
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Love to all you guys and those you love. And now I go cuddle the cat, who is like...hmmm, I sort of remember you. ;) Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes and support here, there, and everywhere.
G
p.s. Now ahahhhh back to deadline, for the second middle grade edits must get finished STAT! So bear with if I'm slow to answer for the next week as we do that and I begin to catch up.