A Special Person in my Life

 

A Special Person in My Life                                                                                

My Grandma Livingston was the most important person in my life as a child. Grandma and Granddad lived about an hour away from where I grew up; she wasn’t close by like you guys are to me. When I was very young we usually visited them at least once a month for a family dinner or picnic. When visiting Grandma Livingston I remember a feeling of warmth and love that seemed to ooze out of her and her home. I was always happy to go there and use to try to memorize the way to go so I could always find my way to her house.

She lived in a small village named Castle Creek and her house was on one of the side streets after you crossed the creek. Her house had a front and back porch but I remember spending much more time on the back porch. Out back there was a small 2 story barn and a chicken coop. Some people in the village still didn’t have inside plumbing when I was a child.  We were always told we shouldn’t play in the creek downstream from her house because people emptied their “slop jars” into the creek.

            For every school vacation, and during the summer, Uncle Mike and I would each have turns staying at their house for a few days and sometimes for a week at a time. I loved those visits because I felt like I could relax, be a child that was protected and loved, not worrying or feeling the tension that was in my own house sometimes.

            I remember the special smells from her house. She had a combination wood burning and gas kitchen stove so there was often the lingering smell of wood smoke mixed with bacon frying and fresh orange juice that she squeezed herself. She would put the orange rinds on the back of the stove to dry out so the whole kitchen had a wonderful citrus smell.

 

She often made us pancakes that she would shape into animals. I remember that she made a pancake once that looked just like a rooster. Usually they were simple shapes like rabbits or mice.

            The cellar of her house always intrigued me and scared me a bit too.  It was small but had a place where coal use to be stored, by the time I was there they didn’t heat with coal. It also had a lot of shelves for her canning, her gardening tools and a tool bench for Granddad. One shelf held an old section of post office boxes and that was where I played mail man.

 There was an old chalk board at the bottom of the stairs that we would play school with, the students sat on the steps and depending how smart you were depended on where you could sit.  The cellar would flood sometimes when the creek got too high. There was a cistern in the dirt floor that would get opened to let the water back out. I only remember that happening a few of times.

            A small creek ran right beside her house and there was cement wall at the edge of her yard that kept the creek, usually, from over flowing into the yard. We would sit on the top of cement wall to eat our snacks and sometimes our lunch. It was also a great place to sit when it was hot out because it was shaded by a large tree.

            Her yard was edged all around with beautiful flower gardens and she spent a lot of her time in her gardens.  She had the most amazing flowers, some of my favorites were Irises, phlox, and lilies, but she could grow anything. As an adult I tried transplanting some of her flowers into my gardens and some that I have now are originally from her.

            She was a seamstress and took in sewing from people who lived near her. She could sew a dress or outfit without a pattern. She even made wedding dresses and bridesmaid gowns for many people, including for Great Grandma Joyce.

 I don’t remember ever seeing her in a store bought outfit herself until I was much older; she wore simple house dresses she had made. I do remember the first pairs of pants she made for herself and she was very shy about wearing them in public since she had always worn dresses.

 Her sewing machine was a trestle type that you had to run by pumping your feet, not electric. She would let us use it to make simple things like pillow cases and napkins. Much later she got an electric machine but she still preferred to use her trestle one.

            She also babysat other children and at times I had to share her with these kids. I have to admit I was very jealous of them and at times not the nicest play mate. One girl, Vanessa, I remember the best.  She was a couple years younger than I was. We would play horse and rider and I always made her be the horse, one time putting a jump rope into her mouth as a bit and  bridle and making her run. I got in to trouble for that. I also once locked her in the chicken coop but I think I let her out before I was caught doing that.

            There was an old barn in the back yard where Granddad kept his car and tools. He didn’t like children playing in the barn, he was always afraid of someone getting hurt plus he didn’t like his tools being played with. But sometimes I would go into the barn anyway. It has an upstairs that was full of old furniture and that I thought were treasures from the past.

            Most of my time with grandma was spent playing outside and walks with her along the creek. When I had to be inside I would draw, color or play with paper dolls that we cut out of magazines and pasted onto cardboard.

 Every weekday we would walk to get her mail from the post office down the street. When I was very young there also was a country store between her house and the post office that we would stop in on our way home. In the back of the store an older woman lived there who we would often visit.  She raised canaries that would sing beautifully. Grandma had a canary that she had gotten from this woman. The woman would let her birds out of their cages so you had to be careful opening the door so none escaped.

            If I was there for a longer visit we would do a trip into Binghamton on the Greyhound bus that picked us up in front of the store. Grandma never drove after it became law that you needed a license. She told me that she use to drive as a young woman before a driver’s license was needed. Also Granddad had very strict opinions about what a woman should or shouldn’t do and he didn’t want her to drive.

            The trip into Binghamton was always a special time. We would shop at Woolworths, eat lunch out, and by mid afternoon walk over to the factory where Granddad worked to get a ride home with him.

 Granddad worked in box factory that made cardboard boxes for a variety of products. I remember Spaulding donuts that where popular then and he told me he had helped to design and make the box. He would take a box apart and showed how it had been made. He was what was called die cutter.

            Grandma’s personality was always warm and cuddly, she gave the best hugs. I don’t remember her ever getting mad at us but I do remember her being made at Granddad a few times. She would dig up dandelion greens from the lawn to cook for his supper. Once time as I was helping her with this she was muttering something about granddad that he should dig up his own greens. I think she might have left some dirt on that batch before they were cooked. I even enjoyed the greens with butter and vinegar. In the summer time all the vegetables came from her garden and she canned all the extras.

She was kind to many in her small town. She was even friendly with people that others didn’t want to have anything to do with. Further up the creek from her house was an old man who lived in what I looked like a shack. There was an old saw mill next to his shack and the creek.  She would make johnny cake, corn bread, for him and we would walk up and deliver it to him.

 I don’t remember ever going in the shack, it was a little scary to look at and the old man was scary looking too. Granddad didn’t like her having anything to do with this man but that didn’t stop grandma, maybe she hid the trips from Granddad.

There also a family who had many children that lived up past the store on a dirt road. I remember the children would be dressed in what looked like rags and without appropriate clothing. One day one of the boys about my age was walking past the house wearing what looked like a pair of girls ruffled shorts and nothing else. I commented on his appearance but grandma said he probably got up last and that was the only thing left to wear, “at least he had pants on”.

This was the same boy who once stole paper money Grandma had sitting on a self near her front  door to pay the paper boy with. She knew it was him but felt he probably needed the money more so didn’t make a big deal out of it.

            Grandma was really a shy and quiet woman. I think most people in her town knew her but she tended to visit the people who didn’t have as many visitors. She also was very intelligent. I know she graduated from high school and had gone on to a business school for secretarial work.

She loved to write letters and I wish I had saved more that she wrote to me while I was in college. She would type the letter but then add writing that she wove around the edges of the typing, making the letter almost like a puzzle to read.

            She grew up on a farm in Owego and besides being a farmer her father also was a post master and served on the school board. Her mother raised 4 children plus did a lot of the farm work. I remember visiting the farm once as a child when her oldest brother Merle still lived there. He had a cow that had lost her tail but he had somehow fixed a fly swatter on the end of the stump so she could still swish fly off.

            Grandma also had great loss in her life. She lost her older sister to a horse riding accident when Grandma Joyce was about 10 years old. Grandma’s nick name for her sister was Biggie and Grandma’s nick name was Henny Penny.  She and her sister were very close.

When I started being interested in horses and riding, especially when I got my own horse, my mother warned me not to tell Grandma because it would upset her. I think I kept the secrete for awhile but then did share it and I don’t remember that Grandma ever seemed that upset, she loved all animals, even horses.  She didn’t hold it against the horse that her sister was killed.

            After her sister’s death she helped to raise her niece Joan who was 1 year older than Grandma Joyce. Joan’s father Edgar worked for the railroad so was out of town for periods of time. I’m not sure when but eventually Edgar and Joan moved to Maryland so Grandma didn’t see them as often but I do know they came back to New York to visit frequently.

 Uncle Edgar was often at Grandma’s for Christmas and visited at least once during each summer. What I remember best about him was he could fall asleep instantly sitting upright in a chair and we weren’t suppose to bother him, but then he would awaken without seeming to even realize he had been asleep.

For many years Joan would come to visit Grandma twice a year and they always went to the cemeteries to visit the graves of their relatives.

            Grandma also lost her daughter Helen May, my mother’s older sister. I believe Helen May was about 18 when she died but had been sick for 2-3 years previous. Grandma would travel with her to see specialists in Buffalo and leave Joyce with Granddad or his mother.

 I don’t think Grandma Joyce ever got over the feeling of being abandoned and not having as much attention from her own mother as she felt she needed. Granddad could be very hard on Joyce and she told about helping him to remodel the house while Grandma and Helen May were gone. He made her stand on a ladder holding up sheet rock till her arms felt like they would fall off. Grandma Joyce was about 16 when her sister died at home.

            The room that was Helen May’s Grandma left mainly as it was when she was alive. She did allow people to stay there when they visited but the dresser and closet still had Helen May’s clothing and school awards in it. Helen May, from what I could tell from the awards, was an excellent student and excelled in music. She was allowed to graduate with her high school class even though she hadn’t been able to attend school very often because of her illness.

            To me Grandma hadn’t changed due to her daughter’s death but to Granddad and my mother I’m sure they felt the change in her. There use to be an upright piano at Grandma’s and I never heard her play but was told she could play but never would again after Helen May died. At some point in my childhood the piano disappeared from the house.

 Helen May was never spoken of and I don’t remember when I first realized that she had existed at all. Maybe after I snooped in her old bedroom. As Grandma got older, and we talked about harder subjects, she would talk about Helen May to me and often cry when talking of her.

  When I was a child every time I visited we would walk to the cemetery that was up the road from Grandmas to put flowers on Helen May’s grave. When I was very young I didn’t realize whose grave it was but later, probably after I could read, I figured it out. We also would take enough flowers to put some on other graves, mainly children who had died young.

I have so many memories of Grandma Livingston and I wanted you to feel like you knew her too since she was so important to me. My hope for being a grandmother to you three is to be at least half the grandmother she was to me.  Sometimes when you three are driving me crazzzy I think to myself what would Grandma do and then we can hug it out.

written 1/11/18