Yesterday morning, I was filled with nostalgia as I sat in my living room sipping coffee in the teal leather chair that once belonged to my grandmother. Maybe it’s because Saturday would have been my grandmother’s 114th birthday and today is Mother’s Day. Maybe it’s because, even after all these years I still miss her, as well as my mom (who shared the same birthday).
Known as Leland to the rest of the world, Mymommie was a vibrant, life-embracing woman who planted seeds of joy and a love of storytelling in my heart from the time I was in preschool right up until she passed away when I was 34 and she was 93.
Pictured below is a snapshot taken on a visit during her later years. In this picture she’s still her vibrant self, but in the memory I am about to share, she was just a shadow of herself – so old, easily flustered, fragile. Nonetheless, little flickers of the independent, warm, bubbly Mymommie remained.
It was spring and Mymommie couldn’t wait to show me the letter she’d gotten from Girlie, a long-time childhood friend. Sitting in her cozy apartment, perhaps in this very same leather teal chair, she read me the letter in which Girlie waxed euphoric over all the wonderful grandchildren she had and on and on. Included was a small snapshot of Girlie with her children and grandchildren. She sat small in the middle with hair short and curled the way old ladies do sometimes, smiling proudly at the camera.
After reading the letter, Mymommie reminisced with me about all the wonderful times she and Girlie had as girls and what a looker Girlie was. She didn’t say so outright, but I sensed, actually, that my grandmother might have been just a little teensy bit jealous of her old friend because I know from little things she said over the years, that she never felt that she was beautiful — though to me and everyone who knew her she was positively effervescent!
To prove my point, here are three snapshots of her over the years, first her engagement photo taken for a Knoxville paper, second with friends at a Montreal pub, and finally with her exercise class sometime in the early sixties. All these were before I knew her, but don’t you agree … effervescent?
But now back to the memory and the little photo of Girlie that my grandmother was holding. As we sat there together, she started scrutinizing it, looking for what? I wasn’t sure at first.
Then giggling, she exclaimed, “Laura, darling, I do believe Girlie has false teeth!” Giving me broad tooth-baring smile, she further declared, “Girlie may have been the belle of Knoxville, but look who’s still got the teeth!”
She touched her teeth proudly. “These are all real. No cup by the bedside for me. Now, what do you think of your old grandmother?” Then we laughed and laughed.
What did I think? That’s easy. I thought she was wonderful, a little vain perhaps, but still witty as ever, with that delightful sense of humor which over the years sustained us all and reminds me to this day that laughter is more important than beauty, that it brightens any day, and that whatever one’s age—young, old, or somewhere in between—it has the power to connect us in shared moments of love, nostalgia and silliness.
Will you find some time to laugh and reminisce today? Happy Mother’s Day!
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Laura Sassi Tales 