a FINE Maw Maw

My sisters, Melanie and Margaret, and I were chatting last night about our grandmother Peggy.  They don't remember much; she died when they were still young, and to be honest we haven't talked much about her in our family. I remember her as a loving force in my life.  She didn't have a maternal bone in her body.  I don't remember her ever telling me to brush my teeth, brush my hair, put on a sweater - I don't remember her ever checking to see whether or what I had eaten or concern herself with its nutritional content, but I remember that she loved me.

She passed away shortly after I turned 15.  Because of a series of tragedies leading up to her passing, these long years I have deprived myself of happy memories of her in what I thought was a show of solidarity to her sons.  I only just recently began pulling these treasures out of my locked box for consideration.

She wanted us around her, her grandbabies.  She would come and get us, if our parents wouldn't drive us, to San Antonio when we were very small, then to Dripping Springs when we were older.  She invited us to her house what seemed like every weekend, and she wanted us to spend all weekend with her.  She took us everywhere she went, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio... I have no idea now the nature of these trips; I have vague recollections of family members in some destinations, but I don't really know where we were going, just that we were with her.  I remember stops at countless Pizza Huts and Dairy Queens in small town Texas; I have snipptets of memories of dim restaurants seated next to my beautiful MawMaw laughing, her eyes sparkling.

She would get up on a Saturday morning and tell us we were going to KMart to shop - it was her favorite place for everything, like my Target.  She decided on one of these occasions she would have us sit for portraits at the KMart Photo Center.  I laugh outright at the photo result - me in stubby pigtails, Pippy-Longstocking style, directionally misaligned, one to the sky, one to the floor - I laugh in embarrassment and real gratitude to a Maw Maw who would take me looking like that to KMart and see in me a girl beautiful enough to sit for a portrait.  She always made me feel so ENJOYED.

These are my treasures, these memories.  In the short time I had with her, she never made me feel like she'd had enough of me or could use a break from me or had more important things to do.  In some ways, she was still a child herself, and certainly our teeth really would have "rotted out" and our eyes really would have "stuck that way" if we hadn't been forced to go home on Sunday afternoons, but... teeth can wait.

You lift my feet off the ground, you spin me around, you make me crazier...

Recall Aunt Mamie? She’s a brazen girl, shocking, full of life. She lives life out loud. At the age of three she shook her bootie through the house singing “I love rock & roll, put another dime in the juke box, baby…” at the top of her voice in a flashy, sequined bright blue tutu. She completely lacked self-consciousness. Her whole childhood was a hands on hips, spinning, dancing, singing affair, and she still lives life that way.

One snowy day in Colorado, my now 9 year-old Julia was about three, and she put her hands on her hips in a flashy sequined hot pink tutu and shook her bootie in the kitchen to ‘N Sync (“it ain’t no lie, baby, bye, bye, bye”) and I was struck with the truth of genetic fidelity in a family tree. She couldn’t possibly have known of her mimicry of her beloved Aunt, and yet there it was, full in my face, so funny and so familiar to me.

This morning I lay in bed while Julia performed Taylor Swifts’ “Crazier” for her daddy and me. She’s preparing for tonight’s talent show try-outs; she’s planning on singing for her entire school. Her little cherubic face, all freckled, red hair – she sang out with her whole heart, a real performer. And of course it brought back so many images of Mamie, the consummate performer herself, not the least performance of which was belting it out onstage at her own wedding reception…resplendent in her white gown… jazz ensemble behind her…love song to her new groom.

What brave girls, Julia and Mamie. I wish I could be like them, but my genes tend to the careful, watchful, thoughtful, and wary of what others think of me genes. How I admire Mamie, Julia, and obviously other ancestors in our family, living life out loud, not afraid to make people look at them and laugh, and sometimes even be brazen and shocking. They bring such joy.

Someone's in the kitchen with Hannah... and it's not me

It's a sweet afternoon to watch my 11 year-old's daddy teach her how to make alfredo pesto sauce.  She's working on meeting her goals for her Faith in God for Girls - one of which was to make dinner for the family - and has created the menu for this meal with much anticipation.  I don't remember ever being excited about learning to cook, but I do remember always being in the kitchen.  I just learned it by immersion, like a foreign language, seeping into my pores with the smell of garlic.

I'm guilty of not involving my girls in the cooking.  I'm afraid of nearly-lost finger tips (yes, that's me) and knife-in-toaster jolts of electricity (again, me).  I think they'll learn to cook... I hope they'll learn to cook... Will I have to send them to cooking school, like Mom had to send me to sewing school as a result of her childhood sewing injuries?  Just watching Hannah wield that knife makes my stomach turn.

She smartly sasses me with, "Aunt Mamie let me cut the vegetables when she was here."  I silently curse Aunt Mamie, and tell Hannah it's only because Aunt Mamie's precious perfect-fingered daughter is only 2.  "Just wait." I say.  I know it's true, too.  And so the brave Daddy will teach her to stir over a hot stovetop just like he teaches her to be safe and strong in so many other ways, and I will watch with gratitude... and pray.