Grandmothers, pt 2

Now it's time for me to introduce my dad's mom. That would be Mamaw Bowles, for you keeping score at home.

Mamaw Bowles was more formally known as Nellie Kate Kimberlin Bowles, although there was nothing formal about her. She was from the country, Bland County, in Virginia, where she met and married my grandfather, Eugene Bowles. He worked the farm of Woodrow Bird, a Bland Countian who became a state senator. That's where my dad and his sister, Nadine (Jacob's mom) spent their childhoods. After a few migrations here and there, they ended up in the town of Narrows, VA. Papaw Bowles died there in 1971. Mamaw, Nadine, and Jacob lived together after that till Nadine's death, in 1979. Then Mamaw, who was fiercely independent and wouldn't give up housekeeping, lived by herself.

Mamaw loved horses. In fact, when she was young, she delivered the mail up and down Rt 61 in Tazewell County on a horse. She loved watching the Kentucky Derby, though she always said it looked "so cruel to them horses, to make them run like that." Every year when we were kids there was a big festival and part of it was something called the Mollie Tynes Ride. This was a group of people in Civil War-era dress riding their horses on a 25 or so mile trail, commemorating the Civil War ride of Mollie. Mamaw Bowles loved the Mollie Tynes Ride, and wanted to be at some point on the trail to see the people go by on their horses in their gear. I wonder if it reminded her of her long rides delivering mail.

When we were little, my sister and I, we spent almost our entire summers at Mamaw & Papaw's house. Jacob lived with them, so it was the three of us, and we were inseparable, riding bikes, going swimming at The Boom (their town park, where you swam in the creek), and spending days and days on their huge porch playing with our little plastic animals. (that's another story altogether) Mamaw would keep us in Kool-aid and tuna salad sandwiches. She made her tuna salad different from my mom - she used mustard instead of mayonnaise. She also made the best home fries in the entire universe - OK, Mr M, yours come close - and she loved fixing us saltfish (which I guess you all know as salt cod), the saltiest thing known to man. Even after soaking it overnight, it would still be so salty we'd sit around the breakfast table eating it with red faces. I don't know how our heads kept from exploding.

Another memory I have from those days is helping Mamaw Bowles wash clothes. This was a blast for us kids, because she had a wringer washing machine. We'd stand over the pot, watching the clothes agitate, then got ready for the fun part - feeding the clothes through the wringer. We'd start feeding in items, and Mamaw would start yelling. "Oh, Lord have mercy, watch your hands, they're gonna get caught in the wringer!" It was a nervous breakdown with every load. And we'd laugh and laugh. And then carry the clothes around the kitchen newly-wrung, which meant they were stiff and hard as a piece of wood, and outside to the line, where we'd unfold them and form them over the clothesline.

Mamaw was a quilter, and made beautiful piece-quilts. She made many, but she made one special for each of her three granddaughters. We got to go through her massive boxes of material scraps, and pick out all our favorites. No matter what the colors and patterns. And she took them all and used them to make our quilt. Mine looks like it's been through a war, but I still have it tucked away at Mom & Dad's. She assembled the pieces by hand, and did the backing and the edges and all on a trundle sewing machine. We loved to play with that too, but she feared for our hands more on that than she even did the wringer washing machine.

Interesting Mamaw Bowles trivia. She loved to move. My dad laughs that when he was a kid, he never knew when he came home from school if his family was still going to be there, or if they'd moved while he was in class. I can't tell you about his childhood, but in mine.... Let's see, that I can remember, Mamaw lived in 11 different houses in Narrows. And believe me, folks, it's not that big of a town.

As Mamaw got older, she lost her sight - most of it, anyway. It was attributed to cataracts, but I know in my heart at least part of it had to be the then-undiagnosed macular degeneration. She still wanted to keep a place of her own, which became quite a worry to us. Especially because of her long-standing cooking philosophy of, "if it takes 15 mintues on low heat, it'll be done in 5 on high heat." She was a bit impatient, my Mamaw. (My dad has the exact same cooking philosophy, oddly enough.) Luckily, we found a great place for her (a final move). It was a small apartment, attached to a large house, with a very nice couple living in the house who kept an eye on her.

Then one of my favorite things became taking Mamaw out for bill-paying day (Neither of my grandmothers ever drove, btw). On the day she got her Social Security check (this was a woman who made do with $386 a month), I'd slip out of work a half-day, drive to Narrows, take Mamaw around to pay her bills (she never had a banking account and didn't believe in sending bills off - if she couldn't pay cash in person, she didn't want it), and then take her to the grocery store. We always went to the same small local grocery. I'd get a buggy, put Mamaw at the wheel, and we'd take off. She would pick up every item on every aisle, and give it the once over. "What is this?" "It's laundry detergent, Mamaw." "How much is it?" "$3.49." "Okay." and she'd put it back and we'd move along. And she did this with everything. "What is this?" "Diapers, Mamaw. You need some diapers?" And she'd laugh, "Well, no, I don't rightly think so. How much are they?" "I don't know, let's see. $15." "$15!" and she'd put them back down.

Mamaw Bowles lived to see Taytie enter the world. For about his first six months of existence, she couldn't look at him without crying. Every single time she saw him, she said the same thing: "Oh, you sweet and precious thing, I've never seen such a sweet and precious thing." It became a joke between my sister I - we called Taytie "Sweet & Precious Thing." And he loved her. He called her Meemaw. (It's a source of both great sadness and fantasy for me that Mamaw Grasso didn't live to meet Taytie. I can only imagine - he of the puppy dog eyes, and her, with her kind soul, a total pushover - how she would have been wrapped around his little finger!)

Mamaw Bowles had a stroke. She was in a coma in the hospital for three weeks. Then they said she had to go into a "facility." Where she lay until she died, several months later. She never came out of the coma. By the way, people in comas can lay there with their eyes open. This is a very disconcerting thing.

My sister and I went out and bought nice hats for Mamaw's funeral. Neither of us are hat wearers, but Mamaw Bowles loved to go to church in a nice hat. So we each bought one in memory of her. Mine was black with a wide brim and black ribbon. Taytie was 2, and rather than keep him away from everything, he was included. He was quiet and well-behaved through it all. Then after the burial, we climbed back into Dad's car to go home. In the backseat were me, my sister, and her husband, and he was holding Taytie. As the car started inching along the dirt road that led out of the cemetery, Taytie popped up and scrambled to look out the back window. And he started to yell, "I can't see Meemaw! I can't see Meemaw!" And all our hearts were breaking. When we got back home, he climbed up on my dad's lap and started telling him fairy tales. He was animated, and waving his hands around, and cracking us all up. It was the best medicine any of us could have had, especially my dad.

There were only two things of Mamaw Bowles' that I wanted. One was a wooden crucifix I'd given her, that I'd bought for her in England and she kept by her bed (and I now keep by mine). The other was a picture she had of my dad. He was, say, 18 in the photo? Anyway, it was a "posed," studio picture, made in the 40s, when color pictures didn't look like photos, but actually more like paintings. Mamaw always had it displayed in a double frame beside the same type picture of his sister Nadine. Dad looks like a total matinee idol in this picture, and I've loved it since I was a kid. When Mom and Dad were asking us about things we'd like of hers, that's all I said, "The Movie Picture of Dad (that's what I called it)." The cross was an afterthought. (I should try to scan that pic, see if it works.)

Inerited from Mamaw Bowles? Stubbornness and impatience. I've got it to spare, and so did she. I used to think of those as bad traits, and the older I get I'm not so sure. I kind of like them. Well, except that the impatience gets me into trouble because I don't give myself enough time to get the hang of something, then I get all frustrated and teary. I also think I got a lot of my accent from Mamaw. In fact, sometimes when I'm not watching myself and get even countrier than I normally am, I can hear her voice coming right out of me. It makes my friends cackle. I'll catch myself saying something like "beeus-cut," and they'll say, "Good Lord! Mamaw Bowles!" And that makes me laugh.