I remember Maw

My Dad asked me, a few years ago, to write the eulogy for my grandmother.  He had found one he liked and wanted something similar. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something I felt I could do.  I can’t replicate someone else’s writing, or maybe it is that I can’t replicate that person’s tone when it comes to my grandmother.  I know and remember a very different woman than he remembers, a very different woman than my aunt and my uncle remember.  I know and remember a very different woman than those in my generation remember.  This is the Maw I remember. 

I remember her, always, in conjunction with a pool or a lake or an ocean.  She meant summer, both because I visited her every summer and because she loved heat and sun and a good bikini. She and Paw traveled extensively, his choice the mountains, hers the tropics.

My earliest memory is so vague, but it has something to do with getting lost coming out of the gate of the pool and crying and her finding me.  I’m not sure that she always found me so much as I knew myself most clearly with her.  I remember Guntersville, and my great-grandmother’s passing.  In my memories, my family cleared out my great-grandmother’s house the same day they had a parade down the main street of town.  I remember thrown candy from floats and popsicles.  I think Maw would be delighted that I associate her mother’s passing with a town parade full of joy. 

I remember grocery shopping with her.  I always spent time with her in the summer, and I specifically remember going to a farmer’s market in Guntersville and picking out tomatoes and peaches.  I, to this day, have a love for farmer’s markets and tomatoes and peaches.  We also shopped at regular grocery stores and she would ask me what I wanted for the week.  Every time.  This was a special gift of autonomy that I was not allowed at home.  I chose baloney and Yoplait (yogurt that came Pre-Stirred!) and Mt. Dew. When I said I wanted pimento cheese, she laughed and said we would make it ourselves.  It was my first understanding that food was always made somewhere; that it did not magically appear in little tubs.  It was also my first understanding that food meant something different to different generations.

I remember the time the whole family gathered at the hotel on Lake Guntersville.  I do not remember her specifically other than the ever-present Grand Marshall of us all.  I associate her with being tan and strong and the center of all our orbits. 

She took me to Florida, to the ocean, and began a life-long love affair with sun and sand and waves.  I remember Pina Coladas in the pool – you could swim up to the bar! – and learning that it was ironically very adult-like to order a Virgin drink.

I remember going to Nashville, on a trip to see Paw’s mother in Clarksville, and a street fair.  She kept stopping at all the booths that had any kind of Elvis paraphernalia and I realized she had A CRUSH on Elvis and it was the first time I realized an adult has a past life that included a childhood.  I never saw any Elvis in her home, which taught me there is a difference between kitsch and décor. 

I remember her as having a certain coolness, a vibe, an attitude of assurance of her place in the world.  I knew facts about Maw, that she divorced her first husband young in a climate that did not allow for such things.  I knew she had three young children to take care of as a single mother, in a climate that did not allow for such things.  I somehow knew, at an early age, that this implied she had an inner fortitude and a strength of will and a strong inner knowing that she deserved better than she was being given.  We never spoke of it, but I knew and respected and learned from her history. 

She allowed me fun.  She allowed me a childhood, one in which it was okay to test the boundaries and to live life bigger and fuller than the rules.  She was not shy in correcting me when I had gone too far and, as my dad recently reminded me, one of her favorite phrases was “It’s not my business but. . .”