Grandma was my first and best babysitter. Her hugs and smiles as warm, sweet, and abundant as her cookies and pies. Her basement was a magic playground, a house, a pirate ship, a dark cave filled with mysterious artifacts, clues about the lives and interests of previous adventurers. The huge spruce tree in her backyard was a forest fortress carpeted with ash from an ancient explosion.
Grandma taught me essential life skills, like how to play cribbage, poker, blackjack, and Chutes and Ladders. How to cook scrambled eggs in the microwave (with salt and mustard, pause once to stir).
She tried to teach me even more “You kids really should learn to yodel.”
My parents didn’t dare to keep a candy jar, but Grandma did! And not only a candy jar, but a snickerdoodle jar, even a jar of homemade peanut brittle. Whenever I really wanted something for Christmas, I could count on Grandma to provide it, alongside piles of socks, ceramics and strange nic-nacs.
Her words of encouragement came in the form of references to pop culture from decades before I was born “Smile Luigi, you’re on candid camera!”
When we moved to another city, and when I went off to college and beyond, she kept in touch by faithfully sending silly greeting cards any time she could find an excuse. I could count on hearing from her every birthday, Easter, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day.
Grandma’s speech was sprinkled with old German phrases, with the songs and nursery rhymes of her childhood.
Hiccup, and she’d say “You’ve got the Schluckauf!”
When grandma started forgetting and becoming confused, she even had a German phrase for that, “So geht's, wenn man alt wird.” -- That’s the way it goes when you get old.
I remember visits to Grandma in the nursing home. She told jokes and laughed. Dementia took her memory, made her feel lost and scared. But her sense of humor and her love for her family were stronger than her disease. That’s what I remember about grandma.
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