The women in my life started with my mom. I guess that’s true for most, but I know not all. If we’ve known our mothers we’re very lucky.
Many of my mother’s lessons were unintentional. For example, she taught me dancing was fun. I could see how much she enjoyed it when she danced with her sister, Ruth. They danced wonderfully together. The faster the better. My dad danced too, but I don’t recall him dancing fast. He was more of a “hold em close” kinda guy.
When she was cooking, we three kids could help if we liked. She showed me how to measure and mix, dice and chop, and the difference between stirring and whisking. Whisking makes egg whites fluffy. That’s a lesson everyone should learn.
She let me cook with the aid of her Betty Crocker Cook Book. I excelled at making meatballs. One Sunday, when I was about twelve, as I was making meatballs and spaghetti for our family, my Aunt Bern and her crew arrived. We had more burger, so I made more meatballs. While making the second batch, Aunt Gert and the twins showed, so I made even more. We had a meal for about a dozen.
The spaghetti sauce called for stewed tomatoes. Mom knew I didn’t like their texture (kinda reminded me of boogers), so she told me I could run them through our food mill. The hand crank contraption turned the tomatoes into a puree. I could eat them that way. The big takeaway was “there’s always room for more at our kitchen table”.
My Grandma Tebo moved in with us after Grandpa Tebo died. I was eight. The three kids shared the upstairs while Mom and Dad and Grandma had the two bedrooms on the main level. She wore “house dresses” and aprons. She had two pairs of shoes. Both were black leather high tops with a dozen eyelets on either side. The only difference between the two pair was their age. She helped my mom around the house with the cooking and sewing. She darned my dad’s white work socks by slipping a shot glass in the sock to provide a backing for her needle-work. She created beautiful quilts of her own design. Every stitch was done by hand. More than one had a back made from flour sacks. The fronts were created from colorful leftover pieces of cloth or repurposed dresses. The corner of each piece was hand tied.
Grandma did a lot of cooking. She made everything from scratch. If you gave her a “box mix” she probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. Baking was her specialty. She did it all…cakes, pies, coffee cake, cookies, bread, noodles for her chicken soup, and the best cinnamon rolls on earth. She used our Formica topped kitchen table to roll everything out. She flowered the table top so nothing would stick and let the flour fly.
She let my sister, Sharron, and me help. When Jackie got older she pitched in too, but the beginning was mostly Sharron and me. Grandma would give us our own dough to work with. We filled our miniature pies with jelly she and my mom made. The raspberries and grapes came from our backyard, and dad brought the strawberries home from Eastern Market. We sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on our cookies, and decorated whatever we wanted with raisins and red cinnamon candies. While I knew I could never hope to achieve her level of success, I enjoyed the opportunity to bake my own creations.
Grandma Barner died when I was eleven. She was my “rich” grandma. She was always “dressed up”. She wore nylons, earrings, and heals. She had a mink stole, and the minks still had their eyes. I was fascinated by the fact that she polished her nails. They were bright red like most of her lipsticks. She and Grandma Tebo were both born in 1899, but by the time I got to know them, they were two different women living two different life styles.
Grandma Barner was an artist. Her first creations were paint by number oil paintings she purchased from the local art store. When I took an interest in her handiwork, she bought me my own set. While she went on to paint beautiful pieces of china, I was one and done with my paint by number kit. Ruth and I, and Elizabeth and Sutton, have a couple of her oil paintings hanging in our homes.
During her “china years”, she produced dozens of beautiful hand painted plates, cups and saucers. gravy boats with ladles, and fancy china clocks. As I got older I realized how talented she was. Luckily, I have several pieces to pass on to David, Elizabeth and Michael.
She crocheted doilies and sewed elaborate embroidered works. When I took an interest in her embroidery, she found white muslin fabric, cut it into pieces the size of dish cloths, and then drew pictures of animals and flowers on the cloth. She locked her drawings in embroidery hoops, let me choose the color thread I wished to work with, and turned me loose. I only sewed for one afternoon, but I’ve used what I learned that day ever since.
Grandma raised violets and guppies on her back sun room. She had several aquariums and dozens of pots with delicate purple flowers. Through her lessons I learned fish had babies, and you must move them to tanks away from their parents because the adults will eat their young. She grew new plants in small glasses of water. Once the roots developed, she planted the newbies in pots, and repeated the process over and over. She taught me, if you care for things, they will thrive.
TBC