Pondering: first impressions

Ponderings on the day of March 17, 2011 by a granddaughter/great granddaughter.

Granny R.

When I first was aware of her, she lived on 8^th Street in a small town in Tennessee with her daughter and son-in-law.

She was my paternal great grandmother.

 She carried an already slightly bent over, thin body frame. She had a scary place on the left side of her face, the temple area. It was as if it was her skull you were looking at, I believe it was, I believe it was a cancer.

She walked with a cane. She kept her, then white, hair wound into a small bun at the nap of her neck. She usually was dressed in a house dress of sorts, but with a long thin flannel robe over sometimes.

 As you entered the front door of the house, there was to your right a closed off bedroom.  Granny sat in her arm chair with a footstool in front of it, beside the window on the driveway side of the house, on the right side of the living room. Her bedroom was in the next room as you would go thru the house, you would walk thru her bedroom and on into the dining area, then you could either turn left into the kitchen, or continue on straight into her daughter & son in law's bedroom and the bathroom was off their bedroom to the right.

It was as if her days were scheduled.

You never turned the television on until time for her “stories” (As the World Turns), about 1pm. When the stories were over, the television went off again, not to be turned on until the evening news hour.

At about 10-11am, bowls were pulled from the refrigerator, bowls covered with aluminum foil, foil that had been re-used so much their color had changed from a shiny silver to a mid gray tone. The bowls were set inside the oven and heated to warm until time for the noon meal. The meal consisted of the leftovers from the meal of last evening.

As these bowls heated in the oven, the evening meal cooking was started, after their completion the bowls were covered with aluminum foil and left on the stovetop until cooled, then refrigerated until time to warm for the evening meal.

After clearing the noon meal, cleaning the dishes, the dining room table was set with plates, utensils for the next meal.

Then time was taken to again retire to her chair in the living room.

She would unpin, and unwind her small bun, comb her white hair with a comb, catching any stray hair to dispose of. She rewound the bun and secured it with her hairpins.

1pm-2pm seemed to be the time for a snack, which was enjoyed weather permitting on the front porch seated on the glider rocker. Her’s  was almost always a snack of a 10oz bottle of coca-cola along with her prized bag of Lay’s Potato Chips. The chip bag, after opened and some chips removed for her snack, the bag top would be twisted round and round until just tight enough then held thus with a newspaper’s red rubber band until the next day’s appointed snack time. After snacking and watching the traffic. (The porch of the home was about 40 feet from the roadside.) Granny would retire once more to her window side chair, to nod off and on until time to heat the evening meal before her daughter & son in law arrived home from their jobs.

About 3-4pm the evening meal foil covered foods were removed from the refrigerator and placed into the oven for a slow warm. When this meal was completed, cleared and cleaned, and the leftovers covered with their treasured foil coverings and placed in the refrigerator, all would retire to the living room, and the television would be on a bit with whatever her daughter & son in law would care to watch. Most times the local news. But included in the tv use was Granny’s caution of using the tv would run the “power bill” up.

It would not be long before Granny would be ready to end her day, and I was told they usually heated a brick wrapped in a flannel blanket to lay underneath the covers in her bed, so as to heat where her feet would lay.

I have seen her seated on the edge of her bed, unpinning the hairpins to release her white hair for sleeping.

Granny I.  (Granny R's daughter)

To begin, I will try to stay focused on her only, just mentioning those around her, and later explore their interactions with each other, also what I have discovered in my adulthood, I will try to withhold and keep this as a young granddaughter’s rememberances).

A small woman in stature, slender, except for the small belly where she had probably carried both her babies, 2 sons, both live born. I remember her being a working lady, but she never drove an automobile. She carpooled before the word carpool was an everyday word.
Her mom Granny R. lived in the house on 8th Street with Granny I and her husband Paw I. 
All 3 meals were cooked from scratch, no store cans were opened and heated.
I remember her applying lipstick, when I was a child, I know I made a funny expression. I asked my mother,"why does Granny leave a gap in her upper lip line of lipstick she applies?" "does she know she does that?" Mom laughed and said that was the style when Granny was younger. I thought that was the weirdest look ever.
She also kept her dentures "false teeth" as we called them then, wrapped in a kleenex and in the refrigerator, until she we out of the house.
I remember, every day it seemed, she had her hair pincurled  and wrapped in a scarf.
I don't remember much interaction with Granny I. when I recall being at the river as a very young child, but I have seen photos where we are all there.

When my Daddy went missing, my Mother actively participated in searching for him. She, took Granny I, along with us kids, and I remember driving and driving, trying to spot his car, everywhere she or Granny could think of he could be we went. We were not the one that found him.

I can still see, her reaching down for a piece of clothing from a basket, finding 2 clothespins from a type of apron holding them, and stretching to pin the clothing to a line, so it could hang outside in the sunshine to dry.