Things you remember about your grandmother

Used to leave food out on the counter, only covered by a napkin. "It's still good! Eat it."

Wanted us to leave the room when "her stories" came on...Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty.

Would ALWAYS get up and change the channel when a scene of a woman giving birth was on.

When I was six years old and visiting my grandmother's home, she slapped my hands, took my Old Maid cards away from me and hissed, "Cards are the tool of the Devil!"

We never really became close.

She fucked her daughter's husband.

Oh OP the WIG. she would wash the wig with dry shampoo, and the poor rag turned RED. she kept wearing it until my parents refused to be seen in public with her. Her cook/maid Eleonore had been Rita's chambermaid when Rita was married to Ali Kahn, and on sundays, Eleonore would go to church in Rita's old dresses, (that she had given her after wearing them, like, once) and my Grand-maman would be all giggly. She never did any house chores ever. Never cooked. She had a special made to order cupboard to accomodate the dirty dishes when Eleonore had her day off. She would go to her country house in Burgundy, from Paris, in a TAXI because she didn't want to be on a train with strangers, even in 1st class. She would take me to the theatre every wednesday, and then to a tearoom rue de Rivoli. She was very loving. I loved her so much.

She and her sister Alicia trained me in the art of seducing rich, older men who would then make me their mistress. I was 15 at the time.

I learned to read by the age of three sitting in her lap.

4711 applied liberally in the summer.

Her green and white 1956 Packard, one of the last ones.

Her winter rental in Surfside, FL - she got the same apartment every year - on Collins at 83rd Street. No Champlain Towers then. And the train ride to and from Miami every winter when we’d visit her.

The widow pack: all her card-playing widowed girlfriends. She taught me how to play bridge and poker.

Chinese food for lunch in Coolidge Corner: 99 cents. Jack and Marion’s (for wonderful deli) any time.

She loved my Mom, her only child, and she loved us. Miss her lots.

R5, I think we can all agree that job training is important. It's good to have a career.

Thank them for taking an interest in your well being.

And NO fucking topaz in your jewel collection. Ever!

"See you in the wash!"

Sea Monkeys and an Orange Julius

Endive and the change jar

My first memory is of my grandma singing Away in a Manger to me before a nap.

I loved her.

Easy for you to say, R7. I almost choked on those wretched ortolan bones.

She would sometimes stumble and call me “Lee” the name of her youngest of eight children, but she would quickly recover with my name.

Her sewing box was magic, and when my baby blanket’s yellow satin binding wore out she drove me around town to all the sewing notions shops until we found just the right one to replace it and she fixed it.

We went to her house to watch the first time man walked on the moon because she had a color television.

Myself and three of my cousins who were all around the same age and the youngest in our families slept over one weekend. Of the two field trips she took us on one was to a local winery where during the wine tasting we all were given grape juice, much to our chagrin and the other was to a whiskey distillery, where we tasted nothing. She was very anti alcohol and would never even allow beer or wine in her house. Why she took us to these locations I have no idea.

Every year I was the grandchild that went to her house and put up and decorated the artificial tree with the color wheel, set up the Christmas candle chimes with the little angels and laid out the miniature Christmas village.

Even though she had 32 grandchildren she made me feel like I was her favorite, but I think there were many of us who felt that way.

Hardcover book about her heroine, Princess Grace

Fluffy pancakes, never knew how she did that

Vanity table with velvet covered bench and a drawer filled with those sort of A shaped hair pins that make no sense

A cigarette in a manicured hand, always

Mustard yellow suitcase

Jiffy cakes mixes (she had black coffee and cake every day for breakfast since the age of 16)

Delicious homemade soup, pie and fudge….everything she made was wonderful

Bath oil that came in a little gelatinous ball where the “skin” melted away in the hot water. Also bath oil in the form of white square rectangular blocks

Bright green Prell shampoo

R12, when the cigarette ash combined with the baking powder in the batter, the result was extra leavening.

Like a mother to me …read the Good Book every night..no TV…simple country people…loved her .

Well, fuck you then, OP!

Didn't have a grandmother. One was murdered in the Holocaust. One died a year before I was born.

R16 🙄 Well, there goes the thread.

Lived with us for awhile and her and my mom got into PHYSICAL fights. Alcohol involved yes...but my mom was super self righteous even though she is sketchy as hell too. She passed on (grandma) my love for (at least in the 80's and 90's) and of the Enquirer and she was always the "cool" one. When my parents inevitably went to their weekend swinger parties (or whatever they did) I would get a weekend full of Mama Celeste pizzas, desserts, soda, Doritos,candy, cookies etc and we would watch the NBC Saturday line-up of Golden Girls and Empty Nest. She was a drunk but super sweet.

always bringing out food for us, from cookies to chips to leftover meals she had made with her husband, our grandpa and made sure we ate it all..

always bringing out mr. pibb in glass bottles for us to drink

wanting to teach us how to play cards, even adult games like poker

beyond gentle and kind to us and never heard her say a cuss word or use profanity in any way ever

Lol R13 that was probably it!

She could belch the alphabet after drinking a six-pack of Schlitz.

Memories...

she loved to talk on and on and on.

She was a terrible housekeeper but an award-winning gardener

loved her children but as they became adults she had reservations.

Depression baby so cheap as fuck

had scoliosis as a child that was never remedied. later in life after giving birth to five children and wearing the christian dior "new Look" she became a terrible hunchback. died at 90 because of complications of a collapsed lung and mini strokes

These cigarettes...the cloud design made the cigarette pack always look so inviting...

Also….4 PM martini or you did not want to be around her…

She made the best pecan divinity.

My grandmother tinted her gray hair with a light purple tint. One time a couple of teenagers saw her and said " Hey man, dig the purple hair" it was the 60's.

Her perfume bottles on a vanity in her bathroom. My favorite bottles were anais anais and Chanel no 5 - opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum.

Playing gin rummy with her.

Her 3rd bedroom being a closet because she was such a shopaholic.

Her mac and cheese (yummy) and spaghetti (not yummy - she was a WASP who should NOT have made spaghetti)

Her giant grandma car (Buick, maybe?) that she named jezebel and how she’d fly over this little hill on the way to her church to make us lose our stomachs.

Her favorite sayings:

“I wish I had her car and she had a wart on her nose.” = a lady in a convertible drove by.

“He could have paid a nickel more and got a REALLY blue car” = someone had a tacky color car

“Kill them with kindness” = Thinly veiled sarcasm

Her absolute joy when I bought her a yellow dog Democrat bumper sticker before the 2004 election.

OP here. This was my fraternal grandmother. I didn’t really know my other grandmother. By the time I came along, she lived several states away. I remember her coming to visit a couple of times, but she died when I was in third grade and I don’t remember much about her. She did have a cool name, and by a little Ancestry research, I found her mother had an even cooler name and came from France.

Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, but from what I’ve heard I don’t think I would have particularly liked either of them.

The grandmother I originally posted about was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known, but also one of the strongest. When her gambling addict husband died in his 50s—cancer—she still had 3 of their 8 children at home. This woman had an 8th grade education, married at 16, and had never driven a car. She got her license, a job, went to night school and got her GED (or whatever it was in the 60s) and put those last three kids through college. She retired with a nice pension and travelled extensively. She had 19 grandchildren and like someone said earlier, I think she made each of us feel special. She had an artistic streak that was never fully cultivated, and I think I was the only grandchild who would paint and draw and write with her.

She took me on a trip to Washington, DC when I was 10. My dad was against us going, but my mom overruled. It was great, and I felt special that I was the one she invited. She died when I was a senior in college, way before I came out. I’d like to think she’d have been accepting. After she died, we found she had written her autobiography. One my cousins made copies for all the other cousins. It’s one of my prized possessions.

My grandmothers both taught me to play cards as well!

People always seemed to have packs of playing cards around back then

She would eat peaches on the beach like an animal, the juices dribbling down her chin; then she would suck the pit dry before burying it in the sand. She was a southern Italian with poor table manners.

She watched Golden Girls but called it "Maude".

She wore these crazy bright checked pants in green checked patterns and red checked patterns.

I was her favorite of my siblings, because I most closely resembled her husband / my grandfather.

[quote]People always seemed to have packs of playing cards around back then

Of course. With only three television networks and local stations that signed off at 1 a.m., you had to have playing cards for the nights you couldn't sleep.

Those hours in the middle of the night when there was no television were magical. We were all alone, tucked away in our homes, disconnected from one another. And from advertisers. I miss those quiet nights.

[quote]This was my fraternal grandmother.

R28 PATERNAL grandmother.

Noooooo, R33. He was the brother to his own grandmother. Obviously.

Oh good lord, and OH DEAR to me!

Yes, PATERNAL. What an idiot I am this morning.

She saved me. From an early age she would come pick me up every Saturday morning and take me for the weekend. This continued well into my teens. My father hated me and my mother, her daughter, never protected me from him. But my grandmother did. She was widowed at an early age - late 30s probably, as her husband died of a massive heart attack when he was 42 (I never knew him, he died 6 years before I was born). So we were perfect companions.

We would go the movies every weekend - there was a 2nd run house right at the end of her street in St. Clair Shores (East Detroit-ish). I even collected film posters and lobby cards from the owners. She took me to all the R-rated movies when I was like 10 or 11. We saw Streisand's A Star Is Born, Carrie, Animal House, Jaws, you name it, we went. The Shining. She had HBO too in the late '70s, one of the first in the area. OMG. And we always watched Dance Fever on Saturday nights and BJ and The Bear and eat Italian subs. :)

She was a reader - she was always reading and sometimes we would sit together, listen to music and read our books. She never minded when I would sing along to records.

She was a fantastic cook - my Italian grandmother. Made homemade pasta, shells and raviolis by hand. Gnoochis. The rest of my family would come visit her on Sunday night, usually, or just my mother, and we have Sunday dinner at my grandmothers.

One of her best friends was her cousin Ernie - though I don't think we were all really couins. We called him Uncle Ernie and once I was a teenager I realised Uncle Ernie was gay. He was the best - so funny, had so many stories, was always in great shape. He was a WWII veteran. My grandmother always referred to his friend, Joe, and I realised he must've been his partner though I never saw him. I loved Uncle Ernie, he had a big party at his house down the street on Christmas Eve and EVERYBODY was there, it was like a scene out of Goodfellas, it was so Italian. As a kid I remembered we would walk down there in the snow and then we'd play with all these cousins I only saw once a year. I remember on the way home in the car, the DJ would read out "Santa sightings" and map his route throughout the Detroit area. There was probably only two years as a child that I really enjoyed Christmas - the going to the barber shop on Christmas Eve, the early festivities at my grandmother's with gifts and then the big Christmas Eve party. And Christmas songs. For a short time it was magical. My mother was too narcistic and needy to actually enjoy a holiday and my parents fought all day long on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day so those Christmas Eves were magical.

My only regret is that nobody pointed out to me in my early 20s that my grandmother would die - I mean, I knew, but at that age, you're just so into yourself and figuring out what you want to do. I moved away to Chicago and saw less of her; she suffered several strokes and died young in her early 70s, I think. I had left the country so visits were even far less frequent. I remember the last time I saw her, we both knew given her condition it would be the last time and she couldn't even look at me when I left, she couldn't even speak. She was mistreated by her daughter, barely lasted 3 months in a cheap nursing home. I was too self-involved to realise...I don't know, I was absent. My brothers and sisters-in-law were there but...I didn't realise that she wouldn't always be there. I always tell young people all the time - enjoy your grandparents while they're still around. (Y'know, insofar as that's possible.)

Both of my grandmothers were absolutely lovely. Very different but both of them always made me feel special.

She could have been Shirley Booth’s twin sister looks wise. Short stocky Irish woman. She loved watching The Price Is Right and Hee Haw.

In her hallway, she had a phone table (gossip bench) which as a young gayling I thought was the height of chic. She also had a Princess phone by her bed. Our phone hung on the wall.

She was an excellent cook and later, I realized that cooking was like therapy to her. When something was bothering her, she was in the kitchen. At Christmas, she went crazy with baking. I don’t know where she got the energy, but tons of a variety of cookies, fudge and popcorn balls. She made sure that anyone she knew got sweets for Christmas. (Her father ran a candy store so I guess that’s where she got the sweet tooth).

For some reason, she took to the chunky jewelry of the 1960s and 70s. At every occasion, she had some huge necklace and big earrings.

She married my grandfather when she was 15, yet didn’t give birth to my oldest uncle until she was 20. She didn’t learn to drive until she was in her mid 50s.

In her house she always had pictures of her children and grandchildren yet none of her and my grandfather. When she died, we found boxes and boxes of pictures of her and my grandfather taken in the 1940s.

Chanel No.5 and cucumber sandwiches.

Tareyton cigarettes Butane lighter Lawrence Welk on TV A drawer full of coloring books and crayons

Reminiscences of Cake Walks in Florida as childhood entertainment.

Waking up to the smell of cigarettes, stovetop percolator coffee (the best), bacon frying. Weird because I loathe the smell of cigarettes now but it smelled better back then. I did hear that it was actual tobacco then and not fillers and additives.

I have no idea how my grandmother kept her townhouse so clean on her own. I never even saw her vacuum, but the place was spotless.

My mom’s a bit of a secret slob. Maybe it’s because my grandmother did everything?

Teaberry gum.

When we were lying down for a nap after lunch and she turned her back to change, maybe out of her housecoat. She wound up facing the mirror and I saw how truly huge her tits were. They hung past her belly and she was not even five feet tall.

Trauma!

Her nervous anxiety

Her CBS soaps

Murder She Wrote / Matlock

The smell of Ben-Gay

Her cooking

Her empanadas, embutido, and chicken relleno

Norma Shearer

Santo Niño

the Yiddish accent

menthol cigarettes

the smell of mothballs

heavy linen drapes with flower designs that looked like something out of the 1930s and probably were

the pretty little race horse statues (Grandma was heavy into betting)

She once killed a cobra with an umbrella. Didn't know a lot of cooking but had a few easy, quick, effective recipes. Very outgoing, sweet, loved gossip.

Couldn’t read or write but could sign name. Not sure if she ever attended school in her country.

Never learned to drive. More likely her husband never allowed her to learn how to drive.

11 children

50 grandchildren

Always broke.

Went back to her home country to live for a while with youngest son but returned to US because of danger.

Had no ambition for herself or her children. Her job was to raise them & get them out of the house by age 17.

Identified wholly by her religion, but rarely went to church.

Her children revered her and I can’t understand why because she never did a damn thing for them. Never encouraged them to try to do something or be something. Never had holiday meals at her house …even when her children lived at home. Didn’t know how to cook a roast because she’d never had one. Her whole identity was religion & poverty.

My paternal grandmother died when I was five. I really only knew my maternal grandmother. She was an absolutely wonderful Italian cook. Around her house she always wore an apron. Heck, when she was at our house or my aunts’ homes she would put one on there was well.

She loved her “stories,” like The Secret Storm and Edge of Night.

Yes, there were always playing cards around; I never saw my grandmother play, but my grandfather certainly did.

So glad that almost no one in my family smoked. I can’t even imagine my grandmother with a cigarette.

I had two grandmas, Grandma Pudding and Grandma Cheesecake. Each had their own specialty and that's how I told them apart

Where was she from R47?

One granny would make bread pudding very often.

Hmmm...

They both cooked and cleaned and took care of kids all day, everyday.

I remember she always smelled of Estée Lauder Youth-Dew dusting powder.

[quote] She once killed a cobra with an umbrella.

You grew up in Uttar Pradesh??

Reeked of vodka. Raged at (an unseen) Norma.

My Milwaukee grandma Helen was born in 1900.

Lukewarm sweet and sour red cabbage salad.

White vinegar sauerkraut hot side dish with brats/sausage.

German potato salad with the bacon grease set aside in a can on the stovetop for morning eggs.

Purchasing a small bw tv so we could watch the moon landing.

Going to the fancy Milwaukee athletic club for dinner and wearing clothes she purchased at a department store.

Showing us her red hair she sheared around 1924.

Watching her use the wringer washer thing in the basement.

Drinking a tiny glass of sherry while sitting in an overstuffed chair.

Showing us grandkids the knife notches on the house alley fence of the house she built in 1933. The notches were from “hobos” who acknowledged she left pots of beef stew.

Getting upset the Polish Catholics would move into Shorewood/Whitefish. She was a Protestant.

Going to Lake Michigan and her pointing at really old trees along the way saying we were from a meat harvesting/packing and timber family.

Complaining about never learning to drive and having to use taxis to get around Milwaukee.

Complaining about how she had to get on a ladder every fall to put up her storm windows because she didn’t trust foreign workmen.

Relaying the story of how her mother in law (my granny) had to take a weeks-long ship/road trip to Munich University in 1934 to rescue my great auntie from college when Hitler was rising.

Being joyful, frugal, yet incredibly judgmental. She’d be called racist today.

It’s been 36 years since she just died in her sleep at age 85. I miss her so.

Jean Naté and witch hazel.

Her telling me I would never be as good as my cousin.

R56 She had a great ass but couldn't live forever.

I’ve shared already, but I just wanted add she had the most exquisite 1950’s bathroom with pink and green tiles with black accents and pink bathtub, sink and commode and when she would go on vacation she would put all her jewelry (costume) in the hamper with dirty clothes because the robbers would never think to look there.

R53 She lived in Karnataka. My parents left India before I was born, and I've only seen her a couple times, but she's left an impression.

My maternal grandmother had to have her leg amputated when I was four. She injured it playing softball when she was young, and lived with problems for decades before it got too much to bear. Had to learn how to help "grammy" with her false leg. She lived for decades in Chicago and moved back to her hometown (in Iowa) in her sixties, after my grandpa died. She lived in a small one bedroom accessible apartment. I helped her get all her Christmas decorations put up every year. She had a lot of vintage decorations, I ADORED them, and still have some, decades after she passed. I'd also clean for her, I was one of those gay neat-freak kids, so I loved getting out the Old English & making grammy's apartment look lovely. During the summer I was there for days at a time and we'd watch her programs, which was all the CBS soaps. Thr Price is Right in the morning. And of course, watching the Chicago Cubs in the afternoon. She had a nice voice and would sing songs from the 30s & 40s. We'd sing, "You can bring Pearl, she's a darn nice girl, but don't bring Lulu! Lulu gets blue and she goes 'cuckoo!' like the clock up on the shelf!" Then she'd say "Don't sing so loud! Lulu will hear you!" because the lady in the apartment behind hers was named Lulu 🤣

When she answered the phone she'd say, 'Heddo.' She worked for A&S (huge department store in NYC) in their orders department before call centers existed. When elocution was everything and using consonants whilst speaking didn't automatically result in a misdemeanor for committing literal violence. It must have been in the 1950s or maybe earlier.

She alone, in the whole family, corrected our English persistently and outspokenly until we spoke it correctly, in tandem with insisting on politeness, in speech ("Yes, ma'am), and at the table ("Sit up straight!! Stop slouching !!" Don't reach over someone else's plate *ever*!!"). Her efforts are greatly appreciated to this day. Kids need (and deserve) that kind of discipline. The slovenly table-manners of so many younguns today attest to the fact that this kind of teaching has pretty much gone down the drain.

"May I be excused?"

She seemed to know just one word of English: "EAT!" Usually accompanied by poppy seed strudel.

B'nai B'rith

Gambling

Mah Jong

Arrested for running a speakeasy during probation

Her apartment in the Bronx overlooking the river

I have zero warm memories of my paternal grandmother.

She was agoraphobic, and I only saw outside her house twice in my life (once when she visited our house when I was 5 and lived in the same town, and once again at her husbands funeral when I was 12). She did not attend the weddings of any of her four children. Her house had clear plastic over all of the chairs and couched throughout the house, and children were not allowed to make noise indoors. Children also had to stay off the lawn in case we trampled and killed the grass. She wore housedresses and her legs looked like blue cheese. She was into homeopathic medicine and would offer to treat any ailments with her bottles of Humphrey's that she kept in a shoebox in the linen closet.

I remember one conversation with me when she remarked that my Dad had pretty girlfriends in high school and college and it was a shame he married my mother. She told me that his 'settling' on her explained why I was "so plain and so stupid". She loved Nixon, and sent money to the Republicans and Ernest Angley. She could turn angry, spiteful, and was unpleasant with very little provocation, and difficult to be around. She was eventually diagnosed with paranoia and schizophrenia in her 80s.

She called the police on my dad when he showed up to move her into an assisted living facility, accusing him of trying to kidnap her. She had called the police on visits from other family members before. I did not have a lot of interaction with her as her, and did not see her at all in the last 20 years of her life.

Fortunately my maternal grandmother was wonderful.

My great-grandmother used to make me homemade applesauce and have my grandfather deliver it to our house while it was still warm.

As a young adult when I visited my other grandmother I would sleep much later than her and my grandfather, but when I got up, there would be a bowl of dry Raisin Bran with a spoon sitting on a folded paper towel, and a coffee mug on the table waiting for me. It seems like a small thing, but I could cry thinking about it.

Oh...big boobie granny...gave us boiling hot coffee at the beginning of breakfast. By the time you were through eating, the cheese had melted and the coffee was cooler. Lots of sugar too. We were like 4 or 5 . lol

Tried to look it up, Civil War? Dutch? They still called their dutch granny "Mur" since NY 16 wtf-ever in the early 1900s.

Early 1600s opps

Small chromebooks are not good for my typing.

Her blue dress with white polka dots, or alternatively, her lime-green pantsuit.

Yes, R25... Divinity! Loved it and still make two batches every Christmas: one for me, one to parcel out to my mother, brother and sister in their Christmas packages. I even make labels for the little boxes as though "Grandma's Divinity" was a brand.

When I was very young and would go to her small apartment for a sleep-over, she would let me stay up late to watch Johnny Carson over bowls of bread and milk.

At Grandma's house, everyone got a tablespoon of mineral oil before going to bed "to grease their innards!"

Fresca.

Listening to her stories of growing up in the "wild west" of the 19-teens and 20s.

Telling me she cried when "the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor" because it meant my uncle, then 17, would be going to war.

But most of all, it was her pithy sayings that have stuck with me through the years. There was always one for any occasion, but my favorites are "Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which will get full first" and "The best helping hand is at the end of your own arm", the latter in particular because it was her philosophy of life summed in a dozen words. She was a feminist before the word existed, was the second strongest woman I've ever known, and a force to reckon with. She died 40 years ago, and I still think about her every day.

Lived for her family. Everything else came a distant second.

She spent days before holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas) cooking and baking and getting out the seasonal trays, etc. I loved her super-tart lemon meringue pie, and when I was a teenager, she said, "Enjoy this one, because I'm never going to bake again." And she didn't, letting her grown children do the work.

She thought little of her daughters' husbands (and she was right). She accepted her son's wife because "she makes him happy, and that's what counts."

Adored her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but when my cousin Joe died in a drunk-driving crash, she blamed him the rest of her life -- "if Little Joe hadn't got himself killed."

R68

My Anglo great-grandmother was a novel introduction to her husband's 100% New Netherlands Dutch family in 1900. Three hundred years of inbreeding before that.

Few people know that my grandmother was a famous actress...

This was my paternal grandmother. My maternal grandmother always seemed cold and distant, although everyone else adored her.

Anyway, I remember Gram's beautiful gowns and dresses, as well as her jewelry. She was a concert soloist who also sang with a chorale, and her taste in clothing was exquisite.

She was also a wonderful conversationalist. I got the greatest family gossip from her, no holds barred, no punches pulled.

My mother and Gram didn't really get along all that well. I think that Gram considered Mom a bossy, take-charge upstart. Mom was Gram's Meghan Markle.

She was wonderful with animals, both dogs and cats. She had a little chihuahua named Cindy, who lived to a great old age, but I remember Gram crying on the day Cindy died, and I felt so sorry for her.

I miss that woman so much that it hurts.

We would watch game shows and the Golden Girls. She always had on Perry Mason at lunchtime, Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy during dinner. She would ask for my help with the TV Guide crossword puzzle every week. We played Yahtzee, dominoes, king's corner. When my grandparents were still on the farm, she would put bread bags over my shoes to keep the mud or snow off. We would always go to her neighbor's ceramics studio and she would let me pick something to paint. After they moved to the city she loved to go to garage sales and the horse races. She was more of a mother to me than my mother was.

Smelled of White Shoulders, her favorite perfume.

Wore beautiful real silk nightgowns, usually in a peach color.

Was a fantastic cook--made delicious fried chicken with tons of salt, and chocolate-chip cookies which tasted incredibly good because she made them with real lard instead of shortening.

Everything she owned was elegant and nice.

Kool cigarettes. Burnt toast (incinerated - that’s how she liked it. April Violets perfume.

She was a "Christian Dior Scientist," to quote Robin Williams. Many of our presents were wrapped in Christian Dior boxes. She was an actual Christian Scientist as well, and the only time one of her children saw a dr. was when my uncle got shot in the leg by a bb gun. My grandfather was the one who insisted he be taken to a hospital. Grandad was a narcissistic mess, but he did right that day.

I do have many fond memories of her. She was very proper, as one would expect, and never cursed. Her choice word for consternation was 'mercy,' and she said it a lot.

She lived in a tiny house in Texarkana that we visited regularly, mostly for the holidays. I loved it. She had a real sweet tooth and the house was full of candy dishes, all full to the brim. I would sneak a few pieces from each one, careful not to take so many that it would be noticed (mom was strict about candy). There was always a cake or three, just baked, on hand. We never went hungry there.

Her neighbors were all a 1000 years old, and she would have me take plates of food to them. They in turn would tell me stories about the olden days.

It's funny, my parents wasted no time, understandably, in getting the hell out of Arkansas, but to me, as a child, it was like a fascinating foreign country, and I loved it when we went, despite the long drive (I grew up in Texas). But everything seems wondrous as a kid. Sometimes I can still tap into that mental state, but not for long.

My maternal grandmother was really the only member of our extended family that I was able to have a relationship with growing up. When she died, I found all of my letters to her, and I was comforted and relieved to see that I had in fact told her how much she meant to me in one of these letters. She was very reserved, and it's not the kind of thing we would have had a conversation about, but I was able to at least thank her in writing.

OP again.

I’m loving hearing about all of your grandmothers. Even with all the things she went through in her life, my grandmother was always upbeat and sunny.

As I said, her husband had a terrible gambling problem. My dad never talked about him. One time when I was visiting my grandmother, I asked about my grandfather. I was pretty young, but she was honest with me and told about how he had gambled away almost everything and how my dad (the oldest) joined the Navy and sent money back home that she hid from her husband. My dad died two years ago, and we never talked about any of that.

My grandmother did not have a lot of material wealth, but she was a lady of the time when women were ladies regardless of socioeconomic status. I never once heard her curse. She instilled impeccable manners in us, which she considered to be indispensable. She wanted us to be upwardly mobile and stressed that if we had the foundation of manners we would never be embarrassed in a formal social setting that might otherwise be out of our norm.

She had her hair washed and set every Thursday, with her manicure done while she sat under the dryer. She had a fantastic green thumb and watered her plants every night before going to bed. She slept on a silk pillow case to keep her hairdo perfect.

My paternal grandmother was nice, silent and serious. She would come every summer from her hometown and spend 2 months with us. One evening my parents went out and left her with my 9-year-old sister and my 12-year-old self. We were watching TV when she suddenly looked around and asked where is X (male name). I asked who was X. She said “He was supposed to come now and I saw him walking by over there but he didn’t pay attention to me” I looked at my sister and we felt something was wrong. Few minutes later she started to talk incoherently non-stop. My sister and I got scared and left the living room. We stayed in the bedroom and went out every now and then to check on her and found she was still talking. We wondered if she “became crazy”. My parents came back and it turned out she had a brain stroke. My father loved her a lot and was very sad for her. She lived 2 more years with no properly functioning brain.

On the other hand maternal grandmother was awful. Selfish and discriminating between her children. None of us loved her.

Norwegian accent

Krumkake

I only knew my dad's mother. My mother's mother was dead. I was born late in my parents' lives.

She lived in a gloomy walk-up apartment in a rapidly declining neighborhood. Her kids (there were six) could have moved her to a safer neighborhood, I never understood why they didn't. There was a fiction that she lived on her social security, but an uncle of mine subsidized her---I'm sure she knew but they had to have this ridiculous fiction, nonetheless, which was common in that family. She stayed there until she was 90 and had a fall where she broke her arm. Then she stayed with my aunts on a somewhat rotating basis. A terrible cook--her food was old fashioned and inedible. My dad knew it and we'd go to McDonald's on the way home. We would buy her small single serving sized canned foods for Christmas. Otherwise, her routine was to go to a little grocery store a few hundred feet from her building.

She seemed hard of hearing but as she once slyly told me, she could hear just fine. She knew all the family gossip---was disappointed with her daughters--one mean but generous, another married to a bum, and the third a great beauty who spent all her money on dresses while poor mouthing. She liked my mother despite being a bigot and my mother being an Irish Catholic. One of my aunts wouldn't let her read the obits which, of course was her only way of keeping up with old friends and acquaintances. She became too frail to live with my aunts and all the kids were heartbroken when she had to go into a nursing home.

She was born in a poor village in rural England, Somerset near Bath. Almost everyone in her class emigrated. She never lost her colloquialisms and her accent even though she came over as a teenager. Her mother committed suicide and she found her mother's body. The family story was that the mother died of a "a broken heart" or some other nonsense. Her stepmother was awful but she had a longstanding correspondence with her stepsister. Devoted to the queen--her family in England were Tories--very common there although I sometimes wondered if they were sucking up to my wealthy relatives who sent them money.

Her loveemaking

Ivory Soap

Her saying, “gooooood night!” as an exclamation

Reader’s Digests

Her wig.

She’d say “oh Jeezum” instead of taking the Lord’s name.

She was diabetic and had these sugar free lollipops that were like hard candy but they were chocolate flavor, which was hard to reconcile.

They’d bring back macadamia nuts from their vacations in Hawaii. Macadamia nuts were more expensive than gold (!) so we were allowed to eat just one.

She bought AquaFresh striped toothpaste when it first came out and we were bowled over by the extravagance because our mother bought the boring and bland Shaklee stuff from a friend of hers.

My grandmother had an entire family with some other man before she took up with my grandfather and had an entire family with HIM. Apparently this really fucked up her original kids (which I understand, completely). As an adult now, I have to wonder what it must have been like, for a woman born in 1915. Maybe she didn’t have many choices. What if the first husband was an abuser and she just wanted to get away? I wish I could ask her. According to my mother, she was a bad person. I was 13 when she died and wasn’t sad about it because she had clear favorites among her many grandchildren and we weren’t.

Cigarettes, romance novels, the wheel, Shasta coke. I miss her.

Eve/Doral cigarettes Hair washed and set every Friday Cussed but never said the F* BOMB LOTS OF GIFTS ON CHRISTMAS EVE NIGHT. I miss her , my first partner and 2 dogs. End of story

Calling me fat, Murder shows, true crime books, Judy Garland, showtunes, cigarettes, and scorn.

That's funny, r89, that's also the name of my one-man show!

Lawrence Welk.

Mine wouldn't swear, instead, when she got angry, she'd spell out S.H.I.T. She always bought name brand snacks: cookies, chips, crackers, ice cream; my mother was on a budget and we got store brand crap.

Some of these are becoming haiku memorials.

Lawrence Welk, "Crazy Guggenheim" on the Jackie Gleason Show, and Mario Lanza records (although he was long dead).

Nonna made taralles, pizzelles, biscotti and the best "grandma pizza".

She didn't speak English so I was her translator, in stores, on the phone, etc. I also translated General Hospital for her, she loved John Beradino. I still watch GH, very nostalgic for me.

She had a perfectly nice kitchen but preferred to use her other kitchen in the basement.

When Jackie Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis she called her a "puttana".

Grandma refused to call my sister by her name, Tracy, instead calling her "Stacy" and for a while we thought that she was just old and forgetful until one day she let it slip that she hated the name Tracy ("it's a man's name!") so she'd been doing it to be an asshole all along.

Ain't family great?

I forget how old DLers are until I read threads like this.

Fascinating as always, a look into how people lived 60 or 70 years ago.

R95: my father once casually referred to Mrs. Onassis as "the most expensive whore on earth." It was an extremely uncharacteristic remark for him to make.

My grandmother had 13 grandkids. In terms of age, I was fourth from last. However, my grandmother was very kind and gave me my late grandfather’s yellow and rose gold 14k gold watch chain. The story that goes with it is very sweet. He saved his money to buy my grandmother an engagement ring, and bought the watch chain at that same time (1913). He didn’t have money for a pocket watch — but when their pictures were taken you would never know that. Very clever man.

There were two uncles and several cousins who should have gotten the watch chain before me. But I think my grandmother knew which of her grandkids would appreciate it the most and actually use it (which I do).

Her unmarried younger brother, my great uncle, had in all likelihood been gay though obviously deeply closeted. I think that she also recognized that in me as well. He died in his forties or fifties a few months before I was born.

R89 your grandmother was an original Datalounger.

[quote] Arrested for running a speakeasy during probation

Grammy was on probation?!

[quote] She seemed hard of hearing but as she once slyly told me, she could hear just fine.

I think I would’ve liked her.

My Grammy taught me to tie my shoelaces when I was five. Funny thing is I thought at the time "this is a moment to remember."

R193 Was this playing in the background?

That interesting old bottle holding Pine-Sol in her bathroom...which was one of those heavy old glass versions that had the raised "bubbles" all over the surface (?)...

R105 Those bubbles basically act as prunts that go back to Medieval glassmaking before forks when hands were always greasy and needed traction to hold on to them. Soapy hands needed those too so the bottle wouldn’t slip out of your hand. Some old soda bottles had them as well, most noticeably Tab.

It was Tab or Patio Cola for grandma to keep her slim figure in the ‘60s!

Was Pine-Sol originally used as a post-coital douche, or was that only Lysol?

Fantastic jewels. Great work ethic and very stable personality and lifestyle. Embraced the importance of long baking and roasting, while also maintaining a pantry filled with a great assortment of food that could be turned into a meal or desert in a pinch.

We called my dad's mother Nana and she was a character, although exactly like many of her generation.

She came from an impoverished Scottish family of twelve children, the youngest four of whom were dropped off at an orphanage for what I understand to be lack of food security in their home. She went to work after the third grade in a brickyard, because as she told us "If you didn't work, you didn't eat".

She came to America and worked as a domestic, then later as a cleaning lady and then a rocket engine assembler at GE- which she apparently excelled at. She was a very clever non-reader, who looked at the newspaper every day. I suspect she just looked at the photographs, and could suss out the captions well enough to understand. She voted the straight Democratic ticket in every election, loved the Celtics, playing the daily number (the illegal one, of course) and enjoyed a highball or two- no ice, just a bit of tap water, which she called "sink water".

She frequently called into a popular late night radio show to chat with the host and give her opinions on events of the day! She was called "The Little Scottish Lady" by the host who delighted in having her on. She was off her rocker of course. My parents would get me out of bed if she was on the radio, it was hilarious.

She would always slip me cash when I visited her. It would be a bunch of ones and fives all crumpled up. As she sneaked the bills into my hand she'd always say, "for beer and cigarettes"! I was and am the luckiest person on earth, of course.