My mother’s familiar handwriting is on the back of this photo: “Jeanne & Grandma Rudmann, Christmas 1973.” It’s one of the very few photos of me as a child that show me smiling. I was a very solemn, serious child. But sitting in my grandmother’s lap and feeling her strong arms around me made me smile.
I dreamed last night of my grandma. She has been gone from this earth for 24 years but I still feel her strong arms of love and protection around me.
She had trouble speaking English and peppered her words to me with German phrases from her homeland.
But a hug speaks volumes, don’t you think?
If you are very lucky, there is one person from your childhood who really stands out. I am blessed that there are dozens. I start writing about one, then another one pops into memory. But out of all of them, my grandma is with me daily, in snippets of things remembered.
Her photo is on the bookshelf in my office.
The painting hanging over the fireplace in my family room is of the valley where she was born, and when I look at it very, very carefully, I see a little thatched cottage on a hillside that looks very much like the hills near my new chosen home in Virginia. I imagine it is her childhood home.
When I did my canning this fall, I thought of my grandma. Her basement in Bellerose was always stocked with home-made and canned soup, jelly, tomatoes, peppers, applesauce. Whenever I think of the word courage, I think of my grandma. I imagine the boat she came over from Germany on in 1922, the Princess Irene, with her two sisters and six suitcases and not much else. I imagine her life in the tenements of the Bronx.
She was a smack you on the behind, stop feeling sorry for yourself grandma. A fall necessitated a big kiss, a heavily spiced German oatmeal cookie, and then “get back on your skates” or the German equivalent.
She taught me to love cooking and baking, to love my garden, and to not be afraid of much in this world.
It’s amazing how one brief glimpse of a photo and a dream last night can bring memories of someone back to you so quickly. Merry Christmas, Grandma.
