MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER (Biographical)

My maternal grandmother came to live with us in her late 60s, as I recall.  She had fallen earlier in her life and broke her leg which wasn’t set properly.  The result was that she had a leg with edema, very swollen, and could walk only VERRY SLOOWLY.  On many Sundays after church, we used to go to a cafeteria called the Quality Tea Rooms in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up.  I loved to go to the cafeteria because of their chicken pie that was famous.  Somehow it became my duty, trial is a better word, to accompany my grandmother through the line and help her.  For a small boy it was real agony as we inched along.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Though she was a trial for my mother, my maternal grandmother was total love to my older brother and me.  She never did any discipline and was a refuge from the cruel outside world.  I would go to her room at night, and she would peel a Delicious apple or an orange, and we would listen on her radio to Amos and Andy or Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, or other such programs.  Once a month, she would slip me a quarter.  I never wondered where she got the money.  Years later I learned that my mother first slipped her the money.  I could tell her my problems, and she would always find some explanation that eased the pain of it all.  For example, once I told her I thought I was crazy.  She replied that as long as I thought that, I must not be because crazy people don’t know that they are crazy.  I was well into my 30s when I read a book my niece gave me called I Never Promised You A Rose Garden and found out that was not so.

Well, sometimes we would get together in the mornings and drink coffee.  Mine was heavily laced with milk.  I told her once that I couldn’t drink coffee with her anymore.  She asked why.  I said because my parents were afraid it would stunt my growth.  She said, “It never affected me.”  I was maybe 15 years old before I realized she was only something like four foot eleven.