my grandmother Grammie

My Grammie was a special woman of courage and conviction. Born the 6th of 7 children, she was the only girlchild of Dwight and Isabel Claflin Rich of Lyme, NH. I can only imagine what it meant to be the only girl in a family with 6 older males and one younger.

As I child, I loved to be in her kitchen on Fridays - she baked 4-6 pies and fried doughnuts. She used to let me take the left over doughnuts holes and dip them in powdered sugar. She also let me make piecrust cookies of the leftover crust. Oh, the aromas in that kitchen. When the men came in for lunch, there were pies and doughnuts cooling on racks about the kitchen.

She loved her plants and garden. She had geraniums and ferns growing in knee-high rectangular planters in her sunporch and I used to help water them. I loved following her around the gardens and seeing the pansies, johnny jump ups, phlox, etc. To this day, I can see a plant and from some hidden and nearly forgotten part of my mind its name floats into consciousness. The garden was cool even in the damp heat of the day. Her beloved plants were varied and colorful and though I don't recall her working on them much, she visited them when she could and just loved them.

She was often very sick when I was young. She had both breasts removed 5-6 years apart for cancer. Those were the days of radical mastectomies. Some few years later, she developed rheumatoid arthritis, and she always battled with lymphedema in her legs - her ankles were always swollen. She never complained of them, though. In later life, her hands became quite disfigured from the RA. I know they caused her pain. Her severe asthma often had her sitting up through the night in her rocker. She seldom complained.

I sang at her memorial service when she died at 93 (or was it 92? I must find out from the genealogical things my dad saved). I sang a song she used to sing to soothe me - Hushabye Time.
"It's hushabye time at the edge of the woods,
A cricket has told me so.
Grandfather Robin is calling goodnight,
And surely he ought to know.

"Little Tom Chipmunk won't come in at once,
A very annoying trait.
His mother has chattered and called three times
'Come home, it is getting late.'

"The youngest deer has gone down for a drink.
All children need one, it seems,
Just when they ought to be closing their eyes
And waiting for happy dreams.

"A blanket of mist creeps softly about.
The fireflies gleam and glow.
Oh, it's hushabye time at the edge of the wood
A cricket has told me so."

She didn't have a beautiful voice. But the timbre was warm and her love shone through, and I cherish the memories of sitting in her lap or next to her on the couch while she sang it.

I am so grateful to have had her stabilizing presence in my life. I was something of a drama queen (perhaps with reason, too) and she usually could keep me afloat above the high drama of my life. Perhaps she is the reason that the concept of trying to keep positive energy flowing was able to take root in me. She cultivated my emotional soil to receive it!

I have more thoughts about my Grammie, but I will post them later.