My Grandmothers Hands

What is the one thing you remember the most about your grandmother(s)? I remember my great grandmother, or granny as we called her, had the longest hair I had eve seen. She kept it braided and twisted up atop her head. Now my granny was already in her 70's when I was a child, she lived to the age of 104. I never knew just how long her hair was until one day I went out to her place on J-Hill Road with my Aunt and Uncle and it was her wash day. Granny did not take down and wash her hair daily. I really don't know how often she did but this particular day she was sitting in a chair in front of a mirror and brushing her hair out. Hers was a silvery gray and ever so long. I was amazed at how well her thin, wrinkled fingers worked through the tangles and how rapidly she was able to braid it. Two braids with a part down the middle. Then she took one braid at a time and pinned it up back and forth across the top of her head covering the part. This particular day I got to hand her the pins as she pinned her hair up. I was ever so enamored with her beautiful locks. Granny was a quilter so often times she had callouses from sticking herself with the needle. I don;t even think I noticed them this day. Granny Chloe was my mother's paternal grandmother.

I also remember my grandma May's hands. She was a working woman and yet never worked outside the home, at least not that I know of. Grandma with grandpa's help kept a garden every year and she took in ironing to help with the household budget. I used to think she had ugly hands for a woman, rough and calloused from all the cooking, baking, ironing, cleaning, digging and weeding she did. She cared for us grandkids any time she was needed. She would bake us cookies and prepare lemonade's. She would do her best to get us to help in her garden without eating up all the produce. She grew such wonderful strawberries. My favorite was helping her to dig up the potatoes from grandpa's potato bed. I thought It was just like digging for treasure. When I think about it now I realize grandma had the most beautiful hands around. They were good and strong, yet soft and gentle when they needed to be.

My paternal grandmother was a cook and rummager. She held fabulous rummage sales almost weekly during the summer months on her big front lawn. Many times she would set out big tables of food for friends and family that stopped by to sit awhile and eat before or after browsing her rummage sale. Grandma would buy up items at other yard sales or dig for usable cast offs at the local junk yard and wash, clean, mend and fix them as needed. Her grandchildren played a great part in these rummage/yard sales. We were to carry, and sometimes drag, the boxes out to the yard for grandma to set up the sales. We all, my cousins and I, got nickels or dimes to take to the local corner mom and pop store to buy candy and soda. Back then a nickel or dime bought a lot and we were proud to pick out what we wanted and pay for it with our very own money. Grandma was forever burning herself on moving heaving pots from the stove. The cleaning supplies she would use to get the rust off items or to shine up certain things were so very harsh, we were told never to touch these things, and we didn't. But this was her thing, what she loved to do. I think she may have been the original re-cycler. And if you really were in need of an item she had the price tag meant nothing, often she would give it away if she knew you really needed it.

Oh how I miss these women, my grandmothers and their comforting hands.

My Grandmothers Hands

Those hands were often rough and calloused
From digging in her garden.
Those hands were working hands.
They kneaded dough to make us bread,
And snapped many bushels of beans.
Those hands would swat us when we needed,
And serve up candies from her apron when we were good.
Those hands taught us how to fold ours,
In prayer,
And turned the pages of the big hymnal.
Those hands cared for babies,
Hers and others.
They cooked and cleaned and washed daily.
Those hands never ceased to work,
To care for her family.
Those were my grandmothers hands.