grandmothers | grandmothers
May.10.2013
I never called either of them "Nana." Odd, after all, because that's what I had Ida Mae Glick call her grandmother.
But calling either of them that was as impossible for me as calling either of them "Bubbe."
They were not my Bubbes. They were Mildred and Betty—my Grandmas.
Mildred was...
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Apr.27.2013
Yesterday I found a yellowed piece of paper interspersed with some old photos of the house I was forced to sell a few years ago and a single Polaroid from my one and only wedding. Sometime in the past 30 years, I tossed the paper in the box, where it remained, unfolded and unread. My...
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Feb.05.2013
It just so happens that today my beloved Kelyn (that's my daughter, in case you don't know that fact) came in talking about school and used another of my favorite Southernisms in her description of the day's events. This set my mind to thinking (as minds in the South are liable to do)...
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Nov.01.2012
You know I was lucky enough yesterday to sneak away from the painting and just sit quietly in the garden. The pansies are out in their yellow, red and blue faces, cheery as always and I was reminded of my Nana. I adored my Nana, she was such a patient person, she would listen carefully...
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Mar.30.2012
First of all, I want to tell you that I am approaching feminism from a very personal point of view. My first feminist was my grandmother. She was born at the turn of the century and she was only 16 years old when her mother committed suicide by hanging herself. My grandmother, Mary Wetzel, ...
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Mar.28.2012
In a few days I will go see my paternal grandmother, probably for the last time.
Katie Bell House will turn 107 on April 8 of this year. Up until a year ago, she was remarkably spry and, as my mother says, “with it.” But old age hit her suddenly and without mercy. She began to forget things...
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Mar.21.2012
Once upon a time, when I was pregnant with my second child, I began making dresses, lots of frilly, beribboned, and flounced dresses. I had lots of material, a gift from my mother, and plenty of time, and so I cut and sewed and accessorized the dresses with buttons, ribbons, and embroidery. I even...
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Feb.03.2012
Some people are down right mean, I don't care if they are your relatives! Then there were my other grandmothers, such as Tiny Grandma, my mother’s grandmother. She was also meaner than a snake, even if she was in a wheelchair! You dare not hand her your baby or she’d pinch
them, just to make...
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Feb.03.2012
Some people are down right mean, I don't care if they are your relatives! Then there were my other grandmothers, such as Tiny Grandma, my mother’s grandmother. She was also meaner than a snake, even if she was in a wheelchair! You dare not hand her your baby or she’d pinch
them, just to make...
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Dec.31.2011
“Ask the birds, ask the beasts and they will teach you.” - Job 12: 7-10,
My two grandmothers were in many ways women who could not have been less alike.
Our paternal Grandmother Menzies (hereafter Grandma M) had been born in 1896 in the Los Angeles of orange groves and blue skies, the...
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