“…there’s a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.” ~ Rob Schultheis
The Silent Voice in the Wilderness — It Speaks
Heading Dead Straight into the Storm
The Gift of Growing Up in an Extended Family – Grandparents and Their Wisdom
A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend. ~ Author Unknown
My unusual family living arrangement was my childhood blessing and the foundation of my creative lineage.
As an only child for my first nine years, I was privileged to live with three generations of elders. I benefited deeply from my grandparents in-life lessons and their non-judgmental approach to life…and their enduring love for a grandchild that was always underfoot.
We lived in a large house built in the late 1800s, once a doctor’s home and office, converted into a four apartment building. My family lived in two of the apartments.
Prudie, my great-grandmother, lived in the first floor/half-of-the-second floor apartment with my Grandpa and Grandma. My mother, father and I lived on the other half of the second floor and our bedrooms were carved from what was once a third floor attic. The spaces were all mix and match, double staircases, nooks, closets the size of small bedrooms, few doors, no locks.
I wandered freely from adult to adult, and learned by watching and doing whatever they were doing. My grandmother worked as a seamstress and while she filled client’s orders, she also taught me an endless variety of needlework – sewing, crocheting, embroidery, tatting, knitting, quilting, I’m told I was stitching yarn with a taped end around sewing cards created from cut out cardboard shapes before I was three! (Imagine that scene in this busy world!)
If God had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn’t have given us grandmothers.” ~ Linda Henley
Both grandmothers shared their culinary skills – cooking and baking from scratch, pickling and canning. I don’t remember either grandmother ever using a measuring cup or spoon. A scoop? Yes. Scant? Pinch? Open handful? Half handful? Yes. But never a cup or a teaspoon. It was intuitive cooking, knowing what was needed by the feel, the look, the taste.
My grandfather filled in any open spaces with gardening, woodworking, and general maintenance around the apartments. Plus he was the only one I remember reading to me, his only choice – National Geographic, cover to cover.
It was an endless potpourri of activity. There was no time to even think of being bored.
But the brightest star in the house, in my memory, was my great-grandmother. Prudie’s true gift was that of storyteller and she fervently discussed any subject that came to mind. My mom and grandmother often told me to “go out and play and stop listening to such nonsense,” but Prudie would wave her hand at them in dismissal.
“Pshaw!” she’d mutter, “she’s no baby.” Then she would chortle in glee.
Prudie thought children should learn about “real living.” She talked about life, even when the plot wasn’t a Disney story, and often there was no happily ever after. Especially that. Life was adventure, challenging, but there were both struggles and joy. She knew both, and shared both.
She told me about her first marriage, not one of the “made in heaven” varieties. She saw it early on as a frightening challenge but later on in life she considered it a gift.
When Prudie was only nineteen, she’d married a railroad man. It was 1900. My grandmother was born a year later. When her baby was a week shy of her first birthday, Prudie’s husband packed for a trip, saying he’d be gone a fortnight, and then never returned. Family life wasn’t what he’d envisioned.
So Prudie and baby Lillian temporarily moved in with family while my great-grandmother took a mail order practical nursing course. She memorized a medical text and several practical nursing books. Then she worked as a licensed practical nurse until she married her second husband when my grandmother was in high school.
The medical textbooks she studied from, copyright 1900, lined the shelf of her bedside table, a book shelf I thoroughly explored during my childhood. Prudie let me page through the books whenever I wanted, never censoring the content. We would page through her Human Anatomy book as casually as we paged through my Little Golden books, looking at the pictures. The diagram of the body’s circulatory system in red and blue ink was just as interesting, if not more, as The Little Train that Could.
“A child’s curiosity, that’s a good thing,” she’d say. “Children should be exposed to ideas, even ideas that aren’t common. Why not,” she’d say.
“Life isn’t common.” ~ Prudence Williams
We discussed women’s rights in detail. (“We women are just as smart, just as good as any man; we can do anything with our minds they can. You remember that. Your world will be a mighty fine world, you wait and see.”)
We discussed education. (“You keep to your studies. That’s your ticket to the big world. No one’s ever gone to college in our family, don’t mean you can’t. You’re gonna stretch your wings. You go to college. Learn whatever it is you want to learn.”)
We discussed relationships. (“Don’t ever stay with someone who doesn’t respect you, who doesn’t treat you mighty fine. There’s no shame in divorce if it’s not a good marriage. No shame at all. You don’t marry unless you marry a man who respects you. That’s more precious than a pile of money.”)
We discussed beauty and art as she arranged garden flowers in vases or copied drawings from the Garden Extension pamphlets onto the backs of envelopes or brown paper bags, then pinned them on the wood frame of the hallway mirror. We kept warm under quilts that she pieced and sewed by hand and she taught me to crochet doilies by the dozens. (“There isn’t any excuse for a home not to have a bit of finery. It makes a person’s heart glad.”)
We discussed the importance of play and friendships and she allowed me to enter the world of her grown-up playtime, if only to serve the cake and pour the coffee. (“If I didn’t have the ladies over to play Pokeno and brag on my cake once a month, I’d grow up a cranky old woman.”) She said this when she was in her early eighties.
The bond that links your true family is not one (only) of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. ~ Richard Bach
I no longer have any interest in crocheting doilies or piecing quilts by hand, but I do remember these nuggets of wisdom freely dispensed by my great-grandmother. Her words found their way into my diary on many occasions. I was enthralled with her dare and swagger.
I learned to value her opinions on women’s equality, education, relationships, and the arts.
I learned to model her love for head-on living.
I’m grateful that she thought it only natural to feed a child’s insatiable curiosity with knowledge and hands-on experience. What a blessing she gave, what a heritage she left.
Marriage Quartet – on the Occasion of Our 38th Anniversary
MARRIAGE QUARTET
SOMETHING OLD
Look behind the chair – the yellow one.
Or check under the Wall Street Journal on the coffee table,
or look on the ledge above the kitchen sink.
If only you would leave it on your finger,
Twirling and spinning it, tossing it into the air
or worse, clunking it on the floor.
You’d think after 38 years
you wouldn’t fuss with that ring.
I barely notice mine,
but yours is alive, dancing on and off your finger.
SOMETHING NEW
I. First Anniversary
Gino’s deep dish pizzeria, heart of Chicago’s Rush Street.
Double cheese, double sausage, extra sauce. No garlic.
Jukebox sweet sings Seals and Croft’s Summer Breeze
Later, a six-pack of Old Style for you and tequila for me,
Oak Street beach, the surf of Lake Michigan, background music.
“Be careful crossing Lake Shore Drive.”
II. The Fourteenth
Macaroni and cheese from that blue cardboard box
Single carrot sticks, whines of protest, ranch dressing.
Dripping candles, globs of wax on chocolate cupcakes,
burnt and lop-sided, smeared thick with frosting.
Raffi thumping out This Little Light of Mine.
“You kids stop kicking each other this minute and I mean it.”
III. The Thirty-First
White Riesling from organic growers in California
Eight grain bread warm, drizzled with Porcini Olive Oil and Parmesan
Smoked salmon and fresh dill, Asian pears.
George Winston playing Sweet Soul on the keys.
Something new – the house quiet, the children in college and beyond.
“Let’s call it an early evening.”
IV. The Thirty Eighth
Steak and pineapples on the grill.
A twilight walk around Sticker’s Pond, the rain passed through.
You study remodeling plans for your wish list kitchen;
I process photographs from my adventure in Escalante.
If you think after 38 years, we know the secrets of a long, happy marriage,
you’d be both wrong and right.
“Full moon tonight. Wish upon a moon?”
SOMETHING BORROWED
Ma said I was borrowing trouble
when I married poor –
“can’t buy bread with love”
and married young –
“not old enough to keep your nose clean”
when I married the wrong guy –
“what will the neighbors say?”
got married by the wrong preacher –
“what will God in heaven say?”
I went on ahead, paid her no mind, said my “I do’s” proud,
and the money I saved by borrowing trouble
— and not buying it outright –
paid for my dress and the band and his white dancing shoes.
SOMETHING BLUE
Our first Christmas we spent the last money on rent and
kerosene for the space heater, and took the last dollars
from the envelope marked Savings.
Skipped lunch the day before Christmas Eve, and
rode the el into the Loop, squeezed through the Marshall Fields shopping frenzy,
searched, fumbling and fretting,
finally chose a tiny comb in tortoiseshell,
so you might groom your mustache –
a fad that year, mustache combs.
You, the number cruncher,
fashioned a love sonnet in awkward meter,
rolled the cheap typing paper like precious parchment,
and tied it with ribbon from Woolworth’s.
The comb’s now jumbled in your jewelry box
with antique silver cuff-links
and your grandfather’s gold watch fob.
I keep that worn sheet of fresh promise
with birth certificates and old mortgage papers
tied with a faded deep blue ribbon,
now the color of a desert sky.
————-
I wrote this poem quite a few years ago, and updated it for today in honor of our 38th wedding Anniversary – a testament to the strength of commitment and love, in good times and in bad, in flow and in transition. Honoring our anniversary, Sherpa.
Note: Please let it be known that this is memoir poetry, and as such, it is not 100% accurate. (Pretty close though!)





