The Gifts of Four Grandmothers

Tonight I found myself thinking of the grandmothers in my life. When Aaron and I met, we had three grandparents between the two of us. And now we only have one (my maternal Gramma). I've been fortunate to have four grandmothers in my life. And last night, they were all in my kitchen with me.

1

My paternal grandmother died from a brain tumor when I was two years old, so I never got to know her. Mom has always told me that I would have liked her, that we would have gotten along well, because we were so similar. My immigrant grandma was only 4'9" tall (technically, a little person) and felt more comfortable speaking Ukrainian than English. I have no memory of her, of her voice, but I am told she was sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, stubborn. I know little else but that my grandparents fled Stalin's cruelty, and brought with them the work ethic and thriftiness that seems to be every immigrant's story from that era. I have been told that when some high school kids toilet-papered the trees in her yard, my tiny grandmother went outside with paper bags and a broom to collect it (free toilet paper!). As a middle schooler, I started wearing clothing Mom hated: psychedlic florals, polyester, corduroys--but I was told my grandmother would have loved them.

2

On my Dad's side my grandmothering came from his aunt, my grandma's sister. She lived in Chicago, but we visited for holidays. She was a woman whose love was expressed in meals; when you walked in the door, you ate. While you ate, she cooked the next meal. The home video from Thanksgiving 1987 shows how seriously I took this commandment: I am eating in every scene. Stuffing my face. Unabashedly. She always told me how beautiful I was. When she passed away, I felt like I lost part of my Ukrainian self.

But last night, steaming cabbage and frying bacon, both Aunt Anna and her sister were in the kitchen with me, finally sitting down at the table while someone else's feet wore a path between stove and sink. As I separated chicken breasts from skin and bone and tendons, I hoped these tiny women were hungry.

3

My Mom's family has Gramma. Her laugh is like a clucking chicken. She wears turquoise and silver rings. And she bakes cakes. We would drive over to Gramma's house in the summer to cut from the patch of asparagus along the ditch and inevitably find a plate wrapped in waxed paper, waiting for us. Since she had to cut the rounded tops of the cakes to make them flat for frosting and stacking, she saved the tops for us. Sometimes there would be a stack of one flavor; other times, there would be layers of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry or banana, as tall as a big stack of pancakes but so much better. We ate it with our fingers, digging into someone else's wedding or graduation or baby shower cake without having to get dressed up, attend, bring gifts. We watched her pipe borders, scroll names and wishes onto the white faces of cakes, turn out frosting roses in every color onto waxed paper-covered cardboard trays.

And her whole life, this woman has used $25 hand mixers from K Mart. My own new stand mixer feels ostentatious by comparison, dwarfing my old Sunbeam retro model and taking up a good portion of counter space. But I don't think I'll ever make a basic frosting as good as Gramma's.

4

Aaron's maternal grandmother adopted me as a granddaughter early on; technically, Aaron and I probably weren't even dating when I became the third grandchild and, for years, the only girl. When I met her, she was 81 and using a cane. She still drove, but not far. I was the only one who hadn't heard all of her stories, so we would sit together at the kitchen table in Aaron's parents' house, playing dice and talking about the dresses she wore, the music she listened to, the arguments she had with her sisters. She kept her nails painted, curled her hair, wore make up and earrings and rings. She was a classy lady.

At meals, especially holidays, she was a notorious pre-meal food-snitcher. No one ever officially saw her do it, but I may have been known to push a dish into her reach. She had a way of asking for things that would have been annoying coming from anyone else: "I could really go for a cup of tea." Or, "You know what would be so good right now? Yes, that cake. Oh, are you having some?"

As she aged, her body slowed her down, caused her pain, while her mind stayed sharp. Her memory and her hearing were not affected. I wonder sometimes about the whispered things she heard from the next room but never told. I was saddened when she decided it would be best for her to stop driving. Then I watched as she switched from a cane to a walker, and then, nearest the end, a wheelchair. On our wedding day, she was in a nursing facility, so we planned the day specifically to allow enough time to make the drive there in our wedding clothes, show her the video of our seven-minute ceremony, and drive back for our reception.

She passed away almost three years ago. I inherited a green checked half apron and a red floral smock from her, both handmade. When I put the smock on to fry the bacon, I felt like I needed to also put on some eye shadow, paint my nails, maybe put on some earrings. The sound of the bacon frying wasn't enough to drown out the rumbles of thunder from a passing storm, and I thought about how terrified Grandma was of storms, how she would hate living in southern Illinois, with its constant 30% chance of rain.

I gave up on cooking. I ate a BLT. I sat in my red smock, listening to Barbara Walters talk about how someone's life was about to change with over half a billion dollars in lottery winnings, an unfathomable sum of money. And I had my four grandmothers keeping me company.