Grandma Barb pt 2
My grandmother Barb was such an incredible person that only one blog post could not encapsulate all that was my mother’s mother. I have so many memories of her throughout my entire life. I remember when I was very little, going to visit her in Marshalltown, and we’d play games such as “What’s in Your Bag, Grandma?” A tote bag my Grandmother had was the likes of Mary Poppins carpet bag, holding a myriad of treasures inside, with the likes of paper dolls and beautiful stationary to name a few. I also remember her giving me a change jar that looked like a giant Tootsie Roll, and some mornings I’d get the paper off the porch for her, and she’d put a quarter in the change Tootsie Roll for me.
When my mother moved Grandma Barb to the same town as us when I was about 12 or 13, our relationship bloomed like a purple tinted rose. Instead of games and quarters, it was conversations and movie watching at her kitchen table. As I had gotten older I realized that this woman housed a collection of stories that would rival the likes of Chaucer, and I wanted to know all of them. She would tell me stories of her childhood on the farm and the games of imagination she would make up. She would tell me of her and her grandmother and their amazing trip to California. And as my love of theatre grew, she would tell me stories of when she played the principal in her community’s production of Grease. And when she wasn’t telling me her own stories, she would show me the old movies she loved to watch in her time. We would turn on Turner Classic Movies and find wonderful works like “Cover Girl”, “My Fair Lady”, and “Road to Morocco”. We would cheer and jeer at the TV screen, and sing and dance in our chairs. When I was a kid, that was often something I did alone. But when she moved to the same town as us I had someone by my side to do that with. Now I find myself alone again in front of that big screen light, but I still feel her with me.
Once, we watched The Notebook together. Earlier in the movie, when Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams’ characters are falling in love, they dance in the street while Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” plays. When we watched that scene together, she told me how big that song was back during WWII time, and she sang along with it. The voice was broken and a bit hoarse but beautiful all the same. If I get really quiet, I can still hear her sing along; the sound sounds far away and fuzzy like an old record, but I still hear it.
On November 2nd of this year, ten years to the day Grandma got her wings, Mom and I were together at a craft fair as Purple Butterfly the business we named in honor of her. It was an incredibly special moment to share with my Mom and we hope in this business and in all our stories, we continue to honor her.
Deb, Barbara, and Mary circa 2012/2013
