The Grandmother
by
Anne Myatt

She sits by the fire
On a cold winter night
Telling tall tales
by the flickering firelight.

Her hands nimbly knitting
Her Eyes weave their spell
Her words sending shivers
as shadows rise and swell

She tells of wolves in winter
Of children trapped in fear.
Of nights so long remember
and lonely sounds to hear.

Her words weave their visions
wide eyes in tiny heads
"Time to stop my little chickens
Nighty night, go to bed"

Grandmaw

 
  Only in later years have I come to realize all she meant to me -- 
and did for me, and her other grandkids she raised 
along with her own offspring still at home.

        It was during the Great Depression, and Grandpaw passed 
away when I was just a kid, leaving it all 
in Granny's hands to manage, somehow, and see to it that all 
us youngsters were fed, clothed, diciplined and 
had a halfway decent upbringing.  She had her work cut out for her, 
but she was equal to the task.

       Grandmaw was one-quarter Cherokee.  As she grew older 
I thought she looked a lot like the Indian (Native American) 
on the old Buffalo nickel.  As long as I knew her she complained of
various and sundry ailments, looking through an old doctor's book 
and declaring that she had symptoms of just about every ailment listed.  
You could tell by the way she worked from sunup to after
sundown that she was fit as a fiddle, however.

       She was up before dawn to milk ol' Lovey the cow, feed the chickens, 
slop the hogs; then into the kitchen to start breakfast 
for a housefull of sleeping offspring and grandkids.  
Along with making fresh biscuits, fried middlin' meat and gravy, etc.,
she had to pack school  "dinner buckets" for a  whole passel of us youngsters.
(Lunch was dinner and the evening meal was supper.)  
The school lunch was usually a piece of the middlin' pork 
or jam or jelly on biscuits. Now and then we would find one 
of those yummy fried apple pies in our "dinner bucket"; 
sometimes made from dried apples, 
but - oh my; my Grandmaw could make 'em good!

       In the summertime we alway had a big vegetable garden, 
sometimes a truck patch and a blackberry patch. We youngsters
were some help, but most of the work fell to Grandmaw -- and she was kept
busy tending the garden, picking blackberries, harvesting some fruit 
from trees on the place, canning and preserving the produce in various 
ways well into the fall. Money to buy food was very scarce, 
and Granny knew she had it to do or we'd go hungry during the winter.

         Granny carried over a lot of superstition from her Cherokee grandmother,
but back in those days the hill folk carried a burden of superstitions,
including belief in ghosts, omens, dream interpretations,
bad luck signs and such....  She had no inferior complex 
even with her low estate as far as life's material things were concerned.  
She knew her value, and expected a goodly measure of
respect from us youngsters.  She was high spirited in her youth,
and maintained enough of it in her later years to evoke respect
and fear of her in us children.  Her name was Jenny, and I 
remember her telling us about when Grandpaw was courting her 
they had a lovers' tiff and she left him and went to a pond
and threw her big hat out in it -- then went and hid. 
Grandpaw (whose name was Sam) came looking for her, 
saw her hat out there in the pond and began to yell "Oh Jenny! Jenny!" 
He thought she had drowned herself.

         There were twelve children of that union, with ten surviving. 
Most of them had married and left home by the time I 
came into the picture; two daughters and three sons
still living at home. Part of the time she had six of us grandkids to raise. 
In the winter she didn't quit working when the harvest was either in mason jars,
dried or buried. You could hear her in a back room making her old Singer
sewing machine hum, sewing quilt pieces together or making clothes for the girls. 
The old saying "Idle hands create mischief" didn't apply to my Grandmaw!

    Finally, way after dark, after all her work was done, she would plop down
in her rocker, heave a sigh, and begin to undo the knot
of hair on top of her head, let it down and comb and brush it. 
It hung three-fourths of the way down her back. When that was finished
she would lean back in the rocker and close her eyes.  The physical exhaustion
of the long day's work claimed her. Very soon we'd see her
with her mouth gapped open, sound asleep and gently snoring.