Isle of Remote

100 Things About My Grandmother:

1. She was the twelfth of thirteen children
2. Her father was a very literate Baptist minister
3. When she got married, there were so many people in the church she could hardly get in
4. She was born in North Carolina
5. She was a single parent in the 1940s - a time when it was very, very difficult to be so, especially for a woman of color
6. She left school in the eighth grade to work to support her brothers and sisters
7. She was a foster grandparent
8. She has three children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren
9. While she was working as a foster grandparent, the teachers wanted her to help teach the kids to read and she said she couldn’t cuz she had only gone to night school, so she could only read at night.
10. She made the best cakes and chocolate chip cookies.
11. Every night, even when she could barely walk, she would get down on her knees and pray
12. She wouldn’t let my mother have chocolate cake at her wedding because, well, it just wasn’t done.
13. She always wore a hat
14. We always laughed at my mother because she wears the ugliest hats!
15. Her house was always spotless, but never unwelcoming
16. She worked most of her life as a housekeeper
17. She never drove
18. The first time I ever heard her swear was one Christmas when my mother gave me the album, Rapper’s Delight and she said “What kind of music is this? They said ‘damn’!”
19. She saved every greeting card
20. She used things until they couldn’t be used anymore. Her soapdish is the same as I remember as a child.
21. She grew up in the Depression era - she washed Ziploc baggies, reused aluminum foil and cut the recipes off of every food package. She saved bread bag ties and pieces of string from packaging
22. At the age of 73 she left the home she’d known for the past 60 years and moved to California
23. She attended every single one of my major life events
24. She never drank or smoked a cigarette
25. She traveled a lot, mostly to see family but she did go on vacations to Aruba, Bermuda, Canada…. But she never went to Europe
26. When I was born she and her sister would only call me by my middle name because they thought my first name was “horrible”
27. The house she grew up in is still in the family
28. Once, when we were driving around town in a not so nice neighborhood, she read a billboard that said ‘Live! Nude Girls!’ and she said, “Do some of them have dead girls?”
29. If you did something wrong when we were out to dinner she would pinch you.
30. We would talk on the phone for hours
31. She would get embarrassed when my mom and I would laugh at the funny greeting cards in Hallmark, then she would want to read the cards
32. She didn’t like cats because she said they were always watching you
33. When her kids were small she worked three jobs and would get home just in time to make sure the kids got off to school
34. She was the stereotypical grandmother in that all the things she wouldn’t let her own children do, she would let her grandchildren do with relish
35. She wouldn’t play cards
36. During a thunderstorm we had to turn off all the lights and not talk on the phone
37. Whenever you couldn’t find something she would say to go to the cupboard and turn a drinking glass upside down and then you would find it. None of us know the history behind this, but we know she learned it from her mother
38. She was in labor for over 24 hours with my mother
39. She’d tell you you needed to watch your weight then make you dessert
40. She loved accessories: hats, gloves, shoes, purses
41. She always voted because ‘people died so she could vote’
42. Our last night in New York we spent at her house and she made duck for my mother because it was her favorite and the fluffiest lemon meringue pie. She didn’t like to cook
43. She never went to bed with dirty dishes in the sink
44. She had a subscription to The Daily Word for at least as long as I’ve been around
45. When my mom was in college in Ohio and the mail delivery was quicker, she would mail my mother biscuits and butter and cake and it would get there the next day
46. She was one of those people who always balanced their checkbook, changed the batteries in her fire alarm and kept all her warranties and instruction books
47. Whenever there were other cars on the road she always said there was a lot of traffic, even if we were moving at 80 mph
48. She could shop all day (and not buy a thing)
49. She loved to look fashionable, unless it came to skirt lengths. She hated for her skirts to be too long or too short (which meant above the knee)
50. Whenever she packed for a trip none of her clothes would be wrinkled
51. A few years ago she got a credit card with a $20K limit - it made her laugh
52. She loved to go to the lunch counters and restaurants in the pish-y posh-y department stores
53. She crocheted for a while and did latch hook rugs. She always felt like she did a bad job at both
54. Whenever I went to her house after school she would have a yummy snack waiting for me, even if she wasn’t home when I got there
55. She was upset when my mom legally changed her name even though she agreed it was a horrible name
56. She rarely ever took a picture with her teeth showing
57. At her eightieth birthday party she opened gifts for over two hours
58. She would always find out the one thing I wanted for Christmas and manage to get that for me every year
59. One of her favorite desserts was apple pie, and no matter how full she said she was she always had dessert. And she’d give you a look if you suggested leaving the table without!
60. She was always worried that her writing was bad so whenever she wrote a letter she would double-check it and check her spelling with a dictionary
61. She said it was bad for us kids to wear tennis shoes all the time because it would make our feet spread
62. We always talked about taking a cruise around the world together if I won the lottery
63. She would never play the lottery because it was gambling. Even when she got a bunch of lottery tickets as a bithday gift she didn’t claim the money
64. Her favorite car was a Jaguar. She wanted one with a chauffeur
65. I still have the gold cross pendant she gave me when I graduated Kindergarten. She would always ask me where I got it
66. My last day at home before I left for summer camp I would spend at her house
67. Her favorite flowers are yellow roses
68. She loved fish, just about any kind
69. She had a scar on her arm that she said she got from her sister when they were kids
70. She never left the house looking anything less than 100%
71. She paid for her own funeral
72. She rarely wore makeup, and when she did it was lipstick and that was a very natural brown tone
73. I once gave her a makeover and she thought it was silly to have so much makeup on
74. She loved going out for dinner
75. She had a game closet just for the grandkids
76. She wouldn’t eat spaghetti in public because she said she could never get the noodles on the fork
77. If I ordered a drink and it came in a cocktail glass she would sniff it to make sure it didn’t have alcohol in it. If I ordered a cocktail she would just ask me what it was.
78. She always accused me of driving too fast and on “two wheels”
79. She loved doing word search puzzles
80. One of her favorite shows was NYPD Blue - I think she had the hots for Henry Simmons. Quite frankly, who could blame her?
81. Her bedroom furniture was the same set she got when she got married
82. She couldn’t wash her hair in the shower because she hated getting water in her eyes. She would wash her hair in the kitchen sink
83. Food is supposed to be HOT (like with steam)
84. After we moved to the west coast I would spend summers with her in NY or we would meet somewhere
85. She could remember nearly everyone’s birthday
86. We used to watch Lawrence Welk together every Sunday
87. She spent a lot of summers in the Catskills and Poconos
88. She is named after her mother
89. She could be unbelievably stubborn
90. She loved Christmas lights
91. She didn’t like having her picture taken
92. She worked at a preschool just after retiring
93. She fell asleep during just about every movie she tried to watch
94. She loved Billy Graham, Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caeser and Nat King Cole
95. When she was really sick and had fallen, the paramedics were questioning her memory - asking her name, age, birthdate etc. She answered everything until they asked for her address. She said they should know because they came to see her
96. When she went on vacation to Aruba she put on her bathing suit and went to the beach. She didn’t know how to swim and was probably a little afraid of the water. She would wade out to about her knees and have her picture taken as though she had spent time in the water.
97. We used to have a family reunion every year and relatives would show up from all over to our small town. No one would stay in a hotel. I remember going to her house one morning to pick people up for the picnic and there were about fifteen people sleeping all over her one bedroom, one bath apartment.
98. She always worried about her weight
99. She always got everything done that she was supposed to
100. She lived a long, hard life that was full of good times, family and memories - November 16, 1916 ~ December 14, 2004