But my grandmother is, at 89, not altogether here, either. She lives in the same town as I do now, but I haven't seen her for several months--not because I wouldn't like to, but because I don't think she'd know me if I stopped by her place alone. She doesn't always know my dad these days. Usually she thinks he's her brother.
My parents had stopped by this evening. They were dropping off their dog, because he'll be staying with us while they're out of town for Thanksgiving. Dad said that he was going to see Grandma, so I decided to tag along. She seemed to know Dad today, at least intermittently, and she recognized that I am family.
Though she's well cared for in an assisted living facility now, Grandma's conversation always returns to how she hates the place (and then back again to how much she loves it) and how unhappy she is. To distract her from the negative thinking, my dad started asking her about her uncles and aunts. We found then that she actually enjoyed talking about people she hadn't thought of in years. She even said it was "fun."
Bits & pieces I want to remember:
Dad asked her the names of all her uncles, and she remembered her father's brothers, Carl and Otto (and, with some prompting, older brother Hans), and her mother's brothers, Harry, Chris, and Charley. He asked her who her favorite uncle was, and she quickly said it was Carl, because he loved children. Otto, she said, was very intelligent and liked kids well enough, but he probably didn't know all the children's names. Carl loved to play with all the kids when they would visit, especially Grandma and her sister Dolly.
Of her aunts, she said that the ones who never married were the most fun, because the others "didn't get so attached." Her father's sisters Maggie and Daisy and her mother's sister Annie were all sure to spoil the children. They saw the aunts when they would make trips to Turner County once each summer, but Maggie and Daisy would sometimes visit their farm, too. Aunt Mary, who lived nearer to her, was "no fun," and Emma, though "nice," got after the kids a lot to behave.
She remembered her maternal grandfather, Thomas Thomsen, as very quiet and nice, and she thought he was probably quite good looking when he was young. He was, as she said, "a dark man" (and photographs would suggest that he was dark-skinned, for a Dane). He liked to drink, though it was something of a ritual to him and he didn't overdo it. He made his own liquor in the basement, and everyone in the family would sample it. He would refer to it as "a bit of schnapps."
Clearly she was very fond of her mother, Martha. She spoke of how her mother cooked so much--big meals of meat and potatoes, all her own bread, and caramel rolls. Then it would be time to go out to the barn (which was "half a block long") and milk the cows. Grandma and her siblings would argue about who would milk which cows, because they knew that some gave much more milk than others and were therefore much more work, and by the time they'd finished arguing about it, her mother would have milked them all. They'd skim off the cream to sell (sometimes they had to bring it to town, but sometimes it was picked up by the dairy man) and feed the milk to the pigs. They had a lot of grocery money, she said, and never wanted for food.
Grandma loved cats when she was a girl. They always had a lot of cats on the farm. They had a dog named Buddy who herded the cattle.
Her stories are a little hard to follow, because she forgets who she's talking about and drifts into stories of another family member, but when she tells them, I can see the memories are as clear to her as though they were yesterday.
At one point, I filled in name that she couldn't recall, and Dad reminded Grandma that I "know all about the ancestors." Grandma looked right at me and asked "How do you know all that crap?" (Ha!)
I should go to see Grandma more often... Next time, I want to bring some old photos to see if they unlock more stories.
Grandma & Dad
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