GRANDMOTHER'S THIMBLE

The dresser in my room and the mirror behind it are covered with memory jogging treasures.  There are pictures of my parents and grandparents.  The oil lamp that sat in the middle of the dining room table as I was growing up, the sole remaining plate from my mother’s wedding china, the three girls on a sled, given to my mother by a neighbor when she was a little girl, around 1914.  Among all the items on my dresser the one that stands out to me the most today is my grandmother’s thimble. 

It could use a bit of a cleanup.  I’ve let it turn dark sitting on top of my dresser as a layer of silver sulfide formed on its surface from oxidation.  But something my grandmother left me that has never tarnished is the cherished memories of our time together.  I’ve carried them in my heart for over 60 years, and they are as bright and shining as ever. 

Grandmother’s thimble is a constant reminder of what I loved most about her, that dogged determination of hers to remain cheerful and productive in the face of constant pain.  

“Do you know what keeps a strapless bra up?” 

Of course, I knew the answer because grandmother had told this joke many times.

“Gravity!

And of course, I played along – “gravity?”

“Yes, the gravity of the situation.”

Grandmother loved to tell that corny joke over and over, and we laughed every time.  I heard it countless times growing up, and it was always accompanied by her sweet smile and twinkling eyes.  It’s that silly joke, more than anything else, that reminds me of grandmother’s ever-present sense of humor in defiance of her constant pain from crippled legs and arthritic joints. 

My grandmother’s birth name was Elsie Senn Wolverton.  Her eyes were again sparkling as she told me that her middle name was changed to Sin because she had been such a naughty little girl.  Elsie’s eyes always sparkled when she was joking. 

They twinkled when she blamed little mishaps in her home on the fictious radio show characters Fibber McGee and Molly. If something was misplaced it was because Fibber McGee and Molly were playing tricks on her.

Aside from her twinkling eyes, the first image that pops into my head when I think of my grandmother is of a very plump old woman sitting in her rocking chair, wearing a navy-blue dress with white polka dots and big white buttons running all the way down the front.  She was wearing a long-sleeved white sweater and a hairnet holding her wavy gray hair in place.  It’s no mystery why this image is so detailed and familiar, I see it often in a photo of her that I’ve carried with me for decades. 

The most striking detail of my grandmother’s everlasting image is one for which I don’t need a photograph.  It’s held fast in my mind’s eye as well as in my heart, and that’s her ever present sweet smile.  Another constant presence in the background of my memory was her crutches. 

She couldn’t walk without them.  Later she was confined to a wheelchair.  Although she was in a lot of pain whether sitting, standing, or walking, she always greeted me with a smile on her face, a twinkle in her eyes and a trick up her sleeve. 

Another favorite picture I have of my grandmother was taken when she was sixteen years old, wearing a high collard print dress, holding a flowered parasol over her shoulder.  I mistakenly referred to her parasol as an umbrella once.  She informed me that it was not an umbrella.  Umbrellas were for keeping dry when it rained.  Parasols were what ladies carried to keep their faces from getting sunburned.  Though I suspect, given my grandmother’s nature, she may also have used her parasol as a prop when striking a flirtatious pose.  In this photo, however, she was not flirting.  She was staring directly into the camera with a look that left no doubt she thought the world belonged to her.  She was strikingly beautiful.

Grandmother had thick black hair and dark eyes. She said she was part Cherokee and certainly looked as if she could have been.  She was born October 17, 1887, and grew up in the Southeast corner of Kansas, near Indian Territory, the home of the Cherokee Nation.  Then again, maybe she was just messing with me, and her little fib was one of her tricks to capture the attention of her granddaughter, forming one more special connection between the two of us. 

There is also a family portrait I’ve taken with me throughout the years of Grandmother standing behind Granddad who is holding their son on his lap.  The two-year-old chubby-cheeked dark-haired boy sitting rigidly upright on his father’s lap is my dad.  He was an only child.  He is wearing a high-collar, long-sleeved, checkered dress, with a dark belt around his waist and dark trim on the front running the length of the dress.  He has a fixed stare.  No bubbly, bouncy little boy in this photo.  Maybe it was the dress, but back then little boys wore dresses until they were school age.  The flat expression could have been the result of having to hold still for so long for the photo, or possibly because the man on whose lap he was sitting was a stranger. 

Grandmother’s expression was subdued and expressionless.  Though still beautiful, gone was the look of confidence expressed in the photo taken when she was sixteen years old.  The family photo gives no clue as to her circumstances or her state of mind. 

Apparently, granddad was so unhappy to learn grandmother was pregnant with my dad that he abandoned her for two years and had just returned when this photo was taken.  If any sparkle was present in grandmother’s eyes at this time in her life it didn’t show through in this picture. 

Obviously, this wasn’t the grandmother I knew.  It was over forty years after that picture was taken before I was born.  Whatever was happening at that time in her life was in the distant past and in no way put a damper on her future sense of humor, which was firmly entrenched within her by the time I came along. 

Grandmother greeted my brothers and I the same way every time when first arriving at our house for a visit.   

Grandmother: “Who’s little boy, are you?”

My older brother: “Yours grandmother.”

Grandmother: "And who’s little boy, are you?”

My younger brother: "Yours grandmother.”

Grandmother: "Who’s little girl, are you?"

Me: “I’m Daddy’s little girl!”

Not only did she never get upset with me, but she also always gave me a piece of candy just like she did my two disloyal brothers.  Plus, I got one of her big smiles as an additional reward for my stubbornness.

Other than this little routine that we had, I don’t remember much about grandmother before the accident.  Grandmother and granddad were driving from Oregon to visit us in Washington when granddad swerved to avoid hitting something in the road and their car went over a cliff.  The doctors told granddad that without surgery grandmother would be crippled for the rest of her life.  He refused to give his permission. 

I would like to think his callous, life-altering decision was because he was afraid that he might lose her to risky surgery.  I’ll never know why he made that decision.  Nor do I understand why the decision was granddads to make instead of grandmothers.  Maybe she was incapable of making it at the time due to her injuries.

Nevertheless, Grandmother wasn’t one for pity parties.  She carried on with crutches and corrective shoes, pain and immobility, and later a wheelchair as if they were all simply a normal part of life.  She even wove her condition into her always present humor. 

For Monmouth’s centennial parade in 1956, she wanted me to push her in her wheelchair as she carried a sign that read: “The old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be.”  

Grandmother came from old pioneer stock.  She simply kept moving forward despite hardships.  Crutches and pain didn’t stop her from rolling up her sleeves, putting on her apron and canning huge quantities of vegetables from Granddad’s vegetable garden. 

Granddad’s garden was so big that today there is an eight-unit apartment complex complete with parking lot built within the same space that held his garden.  Grandmother canned every bit of it by herself.

She taught me how to make soap using lye, wash clothes using an old ringer washing machine and how to embroider.  Together we snapped green beans and husked fresh ears of corn. 

She stood in the kitchen, her crutches leaning against a wall in the corner, while she cooked for what seemed like hours.  She made the world’s best chicken and dumplings, baked umpteen pies and with the leftover trimmed off pie dough, she made cinnamon sugar swirls.  I think I liked those little swirls even better than the pies. 

When she wasn’t hobbling around in her kitchen, she was sitting in her creaky old wooden rocking chair doing what she called handy work. Or sitting at her old foot treadle-operated Singer sewing machine.  Yes, that machine was old even in the 1950s.  There were four small drawers in the cabinet that I just knew contained mysterious and magical little treasures. Her sewing companion was her yellow canary.  Its cage hung on a pole, in front of the window, above and to the left of Grandmother’s sewing machine. 

Her gnarled old fingers didn’t stop her from constantly working on one project or another – crocheting, darning socks, mending old clothes, or embroidering.  I remember being mesmerized by the movement of her deformed fingers as she nimbly worked her sewing needle in and out.  How she got that old thimble to stay on the tip of her finger above her huge arthritic joint, I’ll never know.

Her limited mobility didn’t stop her from playing games with her grandchildren.  Sometimes she would have us lie across her lap, belly down as she rocked gently in her rocking chair.  With us in this position she would count the bones in our backs.  This was a calming, relaxing little back massage that settled us down when we got a little too rambunctious on cold, rainy days. 

Grandmother had lace curtains on the windows along the front of her house.  Sometimes she’d say those rainy days were the perfect time to wash her curtains.  Rainy-day curtain washing was a fun activity. 

Washing lace curtains was far more involved than just tossing them into the washing machine and hanging them outside on the clothesline to dry.  Lace curtains were delicate and would tear if not handled carefully.  They also had to be stretched as they dried, or they’d shrink and end up terribly misshapen.  Grandmother had a huge wooden frame that the curtains were attached to for drying. 

When my parents first moved to Monmouth, Oregon, I was just four years old.  We lived in a small trailer for three years in the side yard of grandmother and granddad’s home.  This was the beginning of the close bond between grandmother and me.  Even after we moved out of the trailer and into a house two blocks away, grandmother and I spent part of nearly every day together.  But our time together came to an end way too soon.

When I was 15 grandmother’s health failed her.  Her doctor said that someone needed to spend the night with her, and if she wasn’t any better by morning, she needed to go to the hospital for surgery.  I was the one who spent the last night of grandmother’s life with her. 

As grandmother’s pain-filled moans and labored breathing filled the air. I knew in my heart that grandmother needed to go to the hospital, and that she might not be coming home again. 

I spent a sleepless night on the sofa in her living room with those lace curtains at my back, lost in my memories of all the precious time we’d had together.  

Grandmother’s heart gave out on the operating table the following day.  One day before her 79^th birthday.

As for that middle name, I found the correct spelling when I was researching her family history.  Grandmother’s middle name was spelled Senn, not Sin. 

Though I’ve been to Hell and back multiple times in my life due to ill-conceived choices I’ve made, I’ve always come out wiser and happier.  It’s not because of pills or alcohol, or because I finally got it right, but because of the sense of humor and positive attitude I learned from my grandmother.  I’d like to think her mischievousness lives on in me. 

I’ve even thought of changing my middle name to Sin, in her honor.  I have no doubt her twinkling eyes would be shining down on me if I were to do so.