I didn’t ever really know
Dad’s mother. By the time I was born, we
were living in Utah and we got to Idaho once each year to visit. I only remember Grandma as being a sick lady
that suffered seriously from Parkinson’s Disease. Most often, we saw her when she was in the
hospital. She died when I was ten years
old. From the stories I have heard, she
may have been small, or short in stature but she was very feisty. I think of her when I remember the cliché: “dynamite
comes in small packages.”
Dad told us that Grandma
was a small woman, very short, probably didn’t measure over five feet tall. She would chase her children with a broom because
she could never get close enough to them to really smack them for whatever
crime they might have committed. And,
these boys were very close to juvenile delinquents. Uncle Pat, according to Dad, was once thrown
out of the Catholic School because he kept spitting on the floor.
Grandma could never punish
her sons because they would run away.
But they had to eat. So each
night, when they sat down for dinner, she would smack them in the head. “What was that for?” they would ask.
“I don’t know,” she
said. “But I’m sure you did something to
deserve it.”
Mom also remember
Grandma. When Mom was taking lessons to
become a Catholic, she was preparing to enter a confessional for the first
time. “Don’t worry Janie,” Grandma
said. “Tell the priest whatever you want. The rest is none of his business.”
Grandma was dynamite in a small container!
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