Ode to Grandma
I have few regrets but my biggest one is not having my mom meet Tin. She would have been utterly wrapped around his little finger in a heartbeat. I hear her voice telling him – my choochey baby – that is what she would call him. So having Tatjana’s mother come to visit from Zagreb took on paramount importance because she is his only grandmother living. It was interesting to watch her fall in love with him. Slower than I think my mother would have but full force when it happened.
I think back to my grandmothers with lots of love – well mostly love. I’ll never forget my paternal grandmother who told me on the day of my first wedding when I walked out in my dress: “Eres gorda!” – you are fat. Great – I weight about 130 lbs on my 5’8″ frame. Imagine what she would say now that has inched up 20 lbs. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t a very loving relationship but I do remember my father catering to her like she was the Queen of Sheba.
My maternal grandmother though was like Helen of Troy for me. She was the stoic grandmother who lived in nature and was non nonsense but loving in a way that has no equal. A grandmother’s love is like warm bread pudding – deliciously sweet and comforting. Mama always had delicious food on her stove, an unparalleled green thumb, and mostly a sweet smile. I slept with my Mama in her big feather bed in the house that my great grandfather built – I can still remember the smell of the sheets and the wood in the house. Mama bathed me in a tub in the kitchen before they had indoor plumbing. She made the best biscuits bar none (cathead biscuits as my uncle calls them) and field peas, and chicken and dumplings, and every dessert imaginable and she had a big freezer with shaved ice where we scooped and scooped and ate our own version of snowballs.
Grandmothers are possibly the best things about family life for children.
This Wednesday, Tatjana’s mother heads back to Croatia while Tin, although he is supposedly not going to remember any of these younger years as he ages, will definitely always have a placeholder in his heart for Tete, his grandmother. As testing as it has been to have had another person in our lives 24/7 for three months straight, in the end it was worth it.