Cherrie was her first name, and I never thought of the word alone. She was my grandma, mother of my mother. Today would be her birthday, born in 1895. She had three children, Gordon who died on the beach at Normandy, my mother who died at the age of 41, and Jack, who died at the age of 60. There were eight grandchildren, and they were the focus of her life.

I never knew Grandma to have a home. She lived out of the trunk of her car, a very independent woman. By the time I came around, she was making a living as a live-in companion to the elderly, and I would stay with her sometimes in the family’s home. Between jobs, she would stay with a member of her own family, always pulling from the back of her car, anything she needed to get by. She came bearing bags of groceries, knitted slippers, new “leggins” to keep us warm, and children’s workbooks. She taught me every game of solitaire that she knew, and had me help her with the Daily Jumble in the paper. Cultivation of the mind, staying warm, and staying fed, were very important to her.

I remember riding in the back of her car to Naples and back, sitting up on a little red stool, so I could look out the windows. There were no seat belts or warnings back then. We would do a word search on the way, finding something out the window to go with every letter of the alphabet. To this day, I think of one house in Geneva as the Knob house. I used its doorknob to come up with the letter K, and she praised me heartily for that. Every summer, she would take a car load of grandchildren on vacation with her. I was one of the youngest, so when my turn came, it was just me and my cousin, Scott, and off we went to the Thousand Islands. She was proud to show us off, but we had to mind our manners, and speak up when spoken to.

My mother died when I was eight, and Grandma came to stay with us for a time. She had just put my sister, Kathy, and me to bed, when she was back at our bedside, telling us to get up, and come see a new television program. This was so unusual, to be invited back out to the livingroom after bedtime. The show was The Flintstones, and it tickled her, and she wanted to share it with us. Around that time, too, we stayed with her at our cousin’s cottage on Canandaigua Lake, and I remember her calling us all from our beds, to come out to the beach and watch a satellite pass over. She seemed to want us to know and experience as much as we could.

When I was in high school, I caught the Greyhound bus to Rochester over winter break, to stay with her at a home in the city. She was taking care of an elderly woman, so it was a quiet time, but comforting, to be snowed in at a cozy house, with Grandma, a deck of cards, and quiet conversation. I remember how beautiful the city streets looked from our second story bay window, and that evening we sat together and watched Ben-Hur as the snow fell.

After I was married, Grandma would send care packages now and then. She sent me recipes, odds and ends of kitchen utensils, a new iron. I think an idea would hit her, and it would go in a box, and sent on its way. I enjoyed writing letters to her, and she would always write me back. A favorite time, was meeting her in Naples in the fall, and having chicken dinner at Bob and Ruth’s in the park. After we ate, she would take us around town, to visit with her homebound friends.

It was hard to watch Grandma lose her independence in her later years. She had fallen on the job, broken a hip, and never really bounced back. After she entered the nursing home, she was found to have cancer, and it eventually took her life just a few weeks before her 94th birthday.

Grandma Cherrie had such an impact on my life. She seemed fearless to me, and showed true grit and perserverance in her life. I have missed her all these nineteen years that she has been gone,  but she left a wonderful collection of memories that will never leave me.

George, Rebecca, and Grandma Cherrie during a visit to Naples, 1978

Posted: August 12th, 2008 under celebrations, nostalgia, family.
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When I walked outside this morning, I was taken away, to another place and time - to Knight Street in Interlaken. Something about the mounds of snow, melting in places, and the air ready to warm, took me to another near-spring day. I remember skipping down the sidewalk in front of our little house. I can hear my mother’s voice. It must have been an awakening for me at that young age, after being cooped up through the winter, because that same feel and memory touches me each year on a day like this.

Posted: March 3rd, 2008 under nostalgia.
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A February 27th doesn’t go by, that I don’t think of Grandpa Dick. I really miss him. He gave a sense of steadfastness, of continuation, of belonging. He was something of the family historian, through his journals, his words. He could tell you so much history of his place and time. Grandpa was part of the community fabric. Everybody knew him. He knew everybody. It was fascinating to listen to his stories, no matter what age you were, you could find the humor or the intensity of his narration, and you had to hear him to the end. He had delivered mail with a horse and wagon in the early 1900’s and stayed with the post office into the 1950’s. He had so much to tell.

Grandpa was born in 1892, he was 61 when I was born. I always remember him looking the same throughout my life, though I do remember him becoming lamer as the years went on, and his glasses changed prescription, so that his eyes seemed bigger, more magnified. He had a bald spot on his head, and he carried a cane, sometimes leaning on it while he visited.

I can see Grandpa in his recliner chair in his livingroom, watching a football game on a Sunday afternoon, or at his desk in the corner, the one with the cubbyholes, that I thought was so neat. He wrote in his journal there, recording the comings and goings, the births and the deaths, the weather statistics, the years the lake froze over - he could tell you each one. I can see him getting in or out of his car. He would sometimes pick me up after school, waiting out front, with the engine warming. He would never forget.

I can see Grandpa at the lake, checking the rain barrel, carrying out the corn cobs or watermelon rinds from dinner. He could line peas up on his knife, and slide them into his mouth, just to make you smile. He methodically would wipe the gummy ketchup from its lid, so that it was always tidy. You could count on it. The cottage belonged to him and Grandma. He had built it. It was a great gift they shared with the whole family.

Every birthday, till he went into the nursing home, Grandpa would send me a birthday card, and started it out “Jan, old girl” or something like that, and it would warm my heart. I miss those tokens of his affection for me.

Today, my affection is for Grandpa, his birthday, never forgotten.

Posted: February 27th, 2008 under nostalgia, family.
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I started cleaning out my desk a couple of weeks ago, at which point I pulled out my 1973 diary, thinking it would be interesting to read. I stuck it in the headboard bookcase above my pillow. One day Dad asked me if he could read it, as he had noticed it there. I hadn’t really spent any time with it, but Dad took off reading and was soon through the entire year. He asked if I could pull out 1974, so I did. He was reading through that one night, when he came upon the time period where I had started the crewel embroidery picture of a grist mill. I worked on it, sitting by a pond in a field in Oklahoma while Dad fished. I remember that well. It was my first project, and my one and only time to do crewel work. There was a complimentary picture that Dad thought we should have, and I remember going to purchase it. I remember Dad framing both pictures. I have never remembered actually doing it, and according to my writing, that was because Dad embroidered the picture. He read me the part where I said I was very amused to watch him at work on it, which I’m sure I was. All these years later, 34 to be exact, the two pictures hang side-by-side over the piano, the grist mill done by my hand, the windmill done by Dad’s. I totally forgot, but now you know.

Posted: February 23rd, 2008 under nostalgia.
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Yesterday one of my co-workers brought in the Ithaca Journal. She had gotten it free with her coffee that morning. She knew that I read the local paper during my lunch, and thought she would share news from Ithaca with me too. It instantly brought back memories of another time.

I was maybe twelve or thirteen. My dad had taken on a newspaper route after his job of delivering the mail. He always had a second or third job I think - something to help with the family expenses - 4 growing kids and 2 adults. He finished up on his mail route mid-afternoon, about the time I would be getting out of school, so he asked me to ride along and help deliver the papers. We would go to a little office the Journal kept on Main Street in Trumansburg. It must have been an afternoon edition. Dad would visit with the other delivery people, we’d load up our papers and be off on the road. He taught me how to fold the papers in thirds, and tuck it together, something the customers seemed to appreciate. I loved watching him shove the folded papers into their red boxes, and drive off to the next one. It was effortless motion for him, as he did it all day on the mail route.

I can remember certain back roads in Trumansburg, route 89, and the road along the lake to Sheldrake. We would stop at the little store at the four corners at Sheldrake and Dad would drop off their papers and come out with a couple of Slim Jims, one for him and one for me. Dad would be whistling, or the radio would be playing - he let me choose the station. The one song I specifically remember was ‘Happy Together’ by the Turtles. We’d finish up, and head home, just in time for dinner. It’s a special memory of a time spent - just me and my dad.

Posted: January 12th, 2008 under nostalgia.
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We headed off to Ithaca this afternoon to see a movie, Letters from Iwo Jima, just one of many movies we can’t find here. It was cold and icy walking the streets, but a nostalgic setting for us. Many winter Saturdays in the 60’s, Dad and I would be dropped off in Ithaca for a date at the movies - I remember Love Story, James Bond, The Graduate - Dad remembers more. There were four theaters then, only the State remains now, and it doesn’t do movies anymore.
Being in Ithaca with the family was always a day’s outing - Home Dairy for lunch, the stationary store, below street level, where I chose the paper I would write love letters on, the jewelry store where I bought Dad’s wedding ring, the shoe store on the corner where they would actually measure your foot and help you try on shoes, the bookstore where I bought Lois Wise poetry, the department store where I bought a blue checked winter coat on layaway while I was in high school. Around the corner is the clerk’s office where we applied for our marriage license.

The Commons were not there. It was just a street with traffic, and the excitement of a city, and especially pretty in the snow. When we were young, not yet married, I always imagined us living there,  shopping there, walking the streets together there - and so whenever we return for a day, I feel we are back home.

Posted: January 27th, 2007 under nostalgia.
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