The Gift of Growing Up in an Extended Family – Grandparents and Their Wisdom

Prudie's Doily

Prudie’s Doily © 2012 Bo Mackison

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.

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Crazy Quilt and Chickens © 2012 Bo Mackison

“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.

Twilight View of North Rim’s Grand Canyon Lodge and Beyond

Sunset at the North Rim ©2014 Bo Mackison

Sunset at the North Rim ©2014 Bo Mackison

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.” ~ Dennis Waitley

Marriage Quartet – on the Occasion of Our 38th Anniversary

38th

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!)

A Walk with Grace – While Struggling with Patience

A Walk around Strickers Pond

A Walk through the Woods © Bo Mackison

I am in wait mode, struggling with patience.

I walk through a wooded area heading towards Strickers Pond,
cross a street, a prairie grass restoration spreads before me,
the glacial pond is just beyond.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Strickers Pond © 2014 Bo Mackison

I imagine walking with Grace around this pond.
I love the sound of that, the double meaning.
For I have an application in for a rescue dog,
a sweet four-year-old labrador/pointer mix.
Her name is Grace.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Prairie Grasses © 2014 Bo Mackison

The process is excruciatingly long, understandable enough,
the rescue group wants to find the perfect home for Grace.
She was rescued from a Missouri shelter on what would have been her last day alive,
and transferred to a foster home in Wisconsin with only hours to spare.
(“She loved the car ride, by the way!)

But she’s been there since November,
and she needs a home of her own and I need a companion.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Stickers Pond and American Lotus © 2104 Bo Mackison

We met, Grace and I, at her foster mom’s place.
Such a sweet girl, and still waiting for a home because, though she is a large breed dog,
she is small for her size, just forty pounds.
I find that a simply perfect quality. I find her quite perfect, too.

The questions in my head start.
Am I good enough? Will she be happy with me?
Will she like the desert as much as I do? Will she love to travel and hike and camp?
Am I good enough?

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Purple Martin Colony © 2014 Bo Mackison

She has the sweetest eyes, her look says I want to please.
Her foster mom gives her glowing reports. She sits and shakes hands, and looks at me.
Bright eyed, tail in perpetual wag.

I struggle with patience — on so many issues —
and I’m impatient with the wait for Grace as the adoption process slugs along.
Application, in and acknowleged. Now the papers are sent to “the board”
the vet is called, three references checked, and last, a home visit.
Another test of patience.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Purple Martin and Colony © 2014 Bo Mackison

I’ve been searching for a companion dog since January,
and now that Grace and I have found each other,
I want her to be in a place she can call her own.
I’m seeking that same place – my place to call home.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

The Resting Place © 2014 Bo Mackison

Settling in is always a struggle after I have been in Arizona.
I know this. I expect it. I plan for it.
And still, I do the transition with many requests for the gift of grace.
For acceptance of what is, acceptance of what isn’t,
and the courage to embrace each day just as it is, just as I am.

Fits and starts, and ups and downs,
this practice of sitting with patience.
Of fitting in, of finding my place again.

I wait, and learn to wait with more ease as I practice.

All shall be well, I whisper. Yes, all shall be well.

An Interlude in Travel; Expounding on Spring in Wisconsin

Silver Drift Ornamental Crabapple

Silver Drift Crabapple © 2013 Bo Mackison

There are bugs, no-see-ums, in Wisconsin.
There are crab apple trees so heavy with white blossoms you know they are really
floral bouquets gently swaying on the earth, in Wisconsin.

There are skies dense with clouds, white, gray, pink, puffy, dense, beribboned, in Wisconsin.
The red maple stands tall, branches widespread, deep in greening leaves, sturdy, in Wisconsin.
There are tiny bugs that buzz about my ears, in Wisconsin.

The rain pounds the earth, sheets of water, and thunder snap crackles,
The rain barrel is overflowing, in Wisconsin.
Gnats swarm in my eyes, follow me in a haze of flight as I dodge and swat, in Wisconsin.

The yard is green, abundantly so, not cultivated,
we chuck the hang tags from the pesticide companies,
greens of clover, purple and white violets, and wildly growing,
rampant spreads of escape-artist mint.
I pick the mint sometimes, the runners squirm loose from the earth with a tug, in Wisconsin.

The paper birch is pregnant with leaves, they drag upon the grassy understory, hide the neighbor’s yard from view, in Wisconsin.
Its bark once pale and baby skin smooth those many years ago
when we dug a hole and set it in the black earth,
the bark’s now rough and deeply textured, full of character like its caretakers, in Wisconsin.

The moss creeps between the flagstone, a tiny community for ants and beetles,
littered with maple spinners and bits of dried purple scent
from the overhanging lilac, in Wisconsin.

Two ashes we planted a quarter century ago began as sticks,
each with a lesser god’s headdress of leaf, and now
they rise taller than our two-story home, in Wisconsin.

The hummingbird feeder has fresh nectar, but the sighting of a hummer
is a rare treat, in Wisconsin.

The perennial garden we planned, painstakingly mapping color and height,
bloom time and sequence, it weathered the harsh winter with fair results, in Wisconsin.
The pink spikes of the coral bells wave two feet above its fluff of purple leaves,
but nothing else is yet in bud. There are spaces now for three or four new sets of plants.
The ornamental grasses and lavender were lost to winter’s brutal cold, in Wisconsin.

I dawdled this year,
unwilling to leave Arizona for the greener spaces, of Wisconsin.

There was work to finish, meetings to attend, and the lure of the desert remained strong.
I watched the saguaros bloom. I lingered.

I wasn’t ready to depart, and then I was.

Fate had other plans. A disabled car 300 miles down the road
and an engine overhaul, delayed parts,
led to weeks of side adventures into red rock wilderness and the Grand Canyon.

When I return to get my car,
I’m told there is another week’s delay, it is the same day Slide Fire begins
scorching beloved Oak Canyon, and a pyrotechnic smoke show hovers over Flagstaff for days.

Fire, twenty miles distant, throws up orange walls of smoke to the south of town,
obliterates the San Francisco Peaks to the north. They stand, shrouded in gray.
And then a black looming cloud, reminiscent of sci-fi saucers, settles on this city of 70,000, and blots out the sun. We breathe through makeshift masks, in Arizona.

The blooms are late-coming this year as was I, to Wisconsin.
Respite from my travel, the lilacs and crab apples, the dogwoods and magnolias in flower.

The sandhill crane, squawking its rattly ka-roo-roo, flies over my home, in Wisconsin.