When the lights in my little brain started to flicker on as a small child, some of the first moments I recall are with my Grandma Doris. I vividly remember a skinny grey-haired old lady in funny glasses with an animated face and her hands on her legs walking around making silly sounds. I try to imitate her because it looks so fun. Who is this odd person who gives me her full attention and affection I must have wondered. It’s my nana, or so we called her. This is the woman who tells me to count my blessings instead of whining. A few days later, my mother finds me alone in my room saying Mommy, Daddy, Michael, Auntie Karn, Nana, Grandpa on my fat little fingers.
This was one of the first lessons I learned from my grandmother….gratitude. To be grateful for what you have. She was just grateful to have a name. She loved to tell the story of being called Baby Girl for several months. I guess when you have eight names you either run out of favorite names or don’t have the energy to name a child; but anyways, as she tells it, the census taker came to her childhood home in downtown St. Paul and was taking inventory of the household. When he found Grandma was called Baby Girl he insisted the child be named, so her mother asked the census taker to do it. He said he always loved the name Doris and because she was born on the first of May that could be her middle name.
This past summer after I told Grandma I was going to have my gallbladder removed she asked me if I was scared and I said, not really, just nervous about waking up after the anesthesia. She looked at me and just said, “I wouldn’t be nervous about that, when you wake up you should just be grateful that you woke up!”
It wasn’t easy to make Grandma laugh. Hers was a hard won authentic laugh that started out very slowly and sneakily made it way from her mouth to her eyes. If you made her laugh, it was like winning a blue ribbon at the state fair because it would make her bright blue eyes twinkle and you knew you had earned it because she never laughed to be kind or polite.
Grandma was resilient, tough, and often stubborn. Maybe because she was born the eighth of nine children and had to fight just to survive and be fed at the dinner table, maybe because she was born during the first World War, maybe because she was an adolescent during the Depression, maybe because her father died when she was only eleven years old…maybe all of these factors gave her a boxer-like exterior. One of her favorite questions was, “Do you want a little red box?” God help you if you said yes, because she’d punch you in the nose. When I introduced my husband Al to her and she started in with that question, I quickly prompted him to “Just say no!
In January of 1995 I visited Grandma and was nestled into the far corner of her kitchen table where Grandpa used to sit. As I glanced over to look at all of his old pipe smoking paraphernalia that she had kept years after he passed away, she confided in me that she had quit smoking. “Why?” I asked. She was nearly 80 years old. Why quit now? She had smoked a pack-a-day of unfiltered Chesterfields for over 60 years. She told me that because of the recent ice storm, she wouldn’t drive and refused to ask someone else to purchase cigarettes for her bad habit, so she just quit. When I asked her if she missed smoking or was having any cravings, she looked at me blankly and said, “No.” I pointed out that she was holding her sausage like the cigarette of a 1940s Hollywood starlette and begged to differ. I was and continue to be inspired by her resolve and so very grateful she did quit smoking. She proceeded to live over ten more years to attend her grandchildren’s weddings and to meet and play with (on the floor I might add) three great-granddaughters.
Grandma loved reading. She could whip through books as though she was a living breathing library. I remember fondly receiving Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, Heidi, Little Women, and the entire Laura Ingall’s Wilder series from her as a girl. When I was a teenager, she started lending me her favorite books as though she was introducing me to her old friends: Gone with the Wind, April Snow, Jubilee Trail, and The Thorn Birds. She cultivated my love of reading and writing. It was a rare occasion when I mentioned a book that I had read and she hadn’t. A few years ago I read The Feminine Mystique and asked Grandma if she had read it. Her response was, no, I didn’t have to read that one, heck, I lived it.
She often told the story of how she had to leave her telephone operator position when she married and was pretty bitter about that because she loved connecting callers to each other. I loved hearing her tell the story of that slow Sunday afternoon when all of the lights on the switchboard lit up and she asked one of the callers what was happening, why were all these calls being made at once. The lady said Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese. She said the girls worked for hours trying to connect everyone to their loved ones to make sure they were safe or to talk about the events of the day.
A few weeks before Christmas, mom and Grandma visited the hospital gift shop where she thoughtfully picked out three beautiful angel tree ornaments for her great granddaughters Ellie, Madeline, and Cameron. One said hope, one faith, and the other joy. I’d like to share this poem I wrote as I reflected on the gifts she has given the girls and to me this Christmas.Grandma was tough, she was stubborn, resilient, funny, and smart; but most of all she was grateful. And for all of these traits she has taught me to be, I am grateful to have known my Grandma Doris for nearly thirty-five years. Thank you all for being here today to celebrate her life and to live in hope, faith, and joy.
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