She was only 41 when I came along. Young for a grandma. Freshly divorced, abandoning her Globe Arizona roots for Phoenix. Living the life of a single woman on the prowl. She drove a Camaro. She managed a Goodyear Tire store in a time when men managed most things. She could change a tire, she could also drive a giant pickup truck and carried a gun. She bowled, she swore. She hated having her picture taken. She wasn’t overly feminine. I was always a little surprised to see her in a dress. I have patchy memories tinged in the slightly yellow 80s era Kodak color of Dwight, her boyfriend. He had a giant german shepherd named Renfro. I was a tagalong, she the reluctant babysitter who sometimes left me with the dog (the dog really loved me) so she and Dwight could be alone.
My mom once told me my grandmother said frequently “if the pill had been around sooner, I’d have never had kids.” My mom’s childhood: loving father cold, distant, and by today’s standards, downright abusive mother. My grandmother was critical, exacting and resented motherhood. The conventions of 60s housewife didn’t sit well with her either. She liked her independence.
When my parents got jobs in Phoenix and made the daily commute, she was in charge of school drop off and pickup. She had a way of caring for us where she simultaneously enjoyed our company but was annoyed by it. We walked on eggshells because she was a spanker. I was fascinated by her. I was jealous of sharing her with my brothers. I could see, even at the youngest ages, that this woman was different from my other grandmothers — all the “bake you cookies”, “delighted to see you” types of grandmothers. I never questioned if they loved me and that’s why I was drawn to her- her love had to be earned.
Sometimes she’d tell me all about how I shouldn’t rely on a man, or show me how to change a tire, how to fry tortillas but to never wash the cast iron skillet. She taught me card games and cribbage. She had another boyfriend-the town ladies’ man, Harvey. He looked and sounded like Sam Elliot. I’d tag along on Tuesday nights when they’d go dancing at the Elks Club, no one caring about the small child ducking under table cloths and clomping on the stage.
I’d feel confused but privileged when she’d tell me about her marriage to my grandpa. Reminiscing was out of character and I’d perk up at this little peek into a softer woman, then she’d put the walls back up. Tell me for instance she was coming up on her wedding anniversary, but I wouldn’t find any photos because she’d burned them in the fireplace.
I wouldn’t know what to say really but would listen quietly and let her tell me. Sensing even then that she needed someone to talk to, even if that someone was her young granddaughter. All that independence seemed lonely. We’d be quiet for a bit, country radio keeping us company. I’d sing along. She’d tell me to put my fingers in my ears so I could hear myself sing- “you’re off key and sound like a wailing cat.”
My grandmother purchased her company when I was in first grade -a craft supply store with an established silk wedding flowers business. I spent every day after school there among the craft and art supplies. On weekends my mom would help in the store and teach T-shirt painting classes. My grandma taught me how to paint, how to bead, how to create dream catchers. More grandmotherly — but with a little less patience and a lecture on using too many supplies — she could be selling them to paying customers.
When Walmart took away most of the main street business in Globe, she trimmed back on the art and craft supplies and turned her shop into an antique store. She kept only the beads and leather selling them to the tribe from the reservation. Later she would try her hand selling Mary Kay, health supplements, Amway — None of these efforts ever made a lot of money. I watched this struggle. My mom would roll her eyes at each of these ventures, but I know now it all stemmed from that need to be alone. To be in charge of her own life and destiny.
She had more boyfriends. It led to two more husbands. Husband number two was so opposite personality wise, their engagement confused all her children and friends. I liked Ed. He too seemed confused-marrying this hot tempered woman. The wedding was western themed, at the Elks of course. We as the wedding party, wore matching square dance style dresses in varying shades of pastel. The men wore bolo ties and boots. My brothers in tiny miniature western wear. My mom and aunt made cardboard cutout backdrops painted to look like an old west town. We all had to learn a line dance for the reception. The centerpieces were wooden coyotes howling at the moon painted by friends and family at the craft store. The marriage didn’t last.
It was clear she didn’t really like being married, but she liked men and liked being loved. I loved her deeply with a confusing knowledge that I was somehow being disloyal to my own mother. This cold and distant woman had softened a bit with age, but it was hard to love her knowing my own mother had a miserable childhood. It was hard to love my mom too. I just wanted one of them to love me.
The only time I saw my grandma cry was after we visited my great-grandmother Louise, her mother in a nursing home. She was visiting often, trying to be a dutiful daughter but my great-grandmother was adrift in a sea of dementia and Alzheimer’s. “Alma?” she asked. “No mom, it’s Carolyn” said with a sigh, a sad, defeated sigh. Alma was the eldest. Alma was loved. My grandma was “late in life” and was a burden.
The entire visit was brief. I didn’t like seeing my great-grandmother dying in a bed, and I hated seeing my grandma sad. “Why are you crying?” She snapped. I did my best to blubber an explanation, but I was a sensitive kid. I cried a lot. “Well you shouldn’t cry over her. She was nice to you and nice to your mother, but she wasn’t nice to me.” She was crying now too. Not sobbing like I was, but I felt chastised and pulled myself together. We picked up bean burros and watched line dancing on CMT. We stayed up late and played canasta. It was summer vacation, she’d quit sending me to bed at a particular time. She let me read the Harlequin Romance novels in the closet. She gave me independence.
When I was 16 she had a stroke. After the hospital my mom and aunt discussed shifts caring for her at home, neither excited about the task. They hired a nurse (daughter to husband number 3) and sent me to spend my summer in Globe, so she’d have someone familiar as she convalesced. She was only home a few days before she told me she had a craving for burros and wanted to drive into town. I knew she couldn’t drive, wasn’t entirely sure burros were on the approved diet from the hospital, and even though I was terrified and didn’t have my license, I drove her giant pickup truck down the hill toward town, riding the brake the entire time while she laughed at how scared I was.
By the time I made her a great-grandma, she’d already started to show signs of the same dementia. She was young to be slipping away. Only in her early 70s. I took my three-year-old daughter and baby son to the “memory center,” a remodeled home which once housed a huge Mormon family and their brood, now home to a bevy of seniors in varying states of decline. It was summer, and my daughter slipped off her tiny flip flops and kept herself entertained with her dolls. My grandma started at her bare feet for the longest time before she said “I really like her moccasins.” “Mom, she’s barefoot!” my mother exclaimed with a little laugh and eye roll. “Hmm,” my grandma just shrugged. “Thought she was wearing those beaded moccasins I bought from the Indians.” I winced a bit at the non-pc-language, and wondered who she thought my daughter was, what decade it was.
I always felt sad after these visits and cried a little that day. My mom looked over, “Why are you crying?” she asked. “It’s hard for me to see her that way.” I replied. “Me too, and think about how much harder it is when you don’t particular like the person very much.” I felt bad for my mother. So much unresolved hurt. Generations of it bottled up and passed on to each new daughter like a torch.
I carried mine for both of them. I took my hurt and put it aside to honor theirs. I did my best with my own daughter, gentler parenting, support over criticism, letting her come into her own without too many of my hopes and wounds getting in the way. She was seven in 2013, when my grandma passed away. No memories of her great-grandmother, but already buoyed by the love of her “bake you cookies” type grandma. Sometimes I convinced myself there was some kind of spell cast on mothers and daughters, that I was going to mess her up no matter what, that she would be better off if I left her in my mom’s care as much as possible. Maybe that’s what my mom thought too.
Read the published piece and more of my essays here
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