Remembering Grandma West: Sibling Assignment #22

InlandEmpireGirl and Silver Valley Girl and I wrote remembrances of our paternal grandmother (here, here, and here) and now we are writing about our maternal grandmother, Grandma West. Silver Valley Girl's remembrance is here, and InlandEmpireGirl's is here.

Grandma West died in 1990, four years shy of her 100th birthday. Our family came home from the dedication of Silver Valley Girl's first daughter, Princess, on Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend and received the news. I had a sort of mystical experience during the dedication service. I started to hear the song, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and especially the words "comin' for to carry me home". It made me think I had had some other wordly connection with my grandmother's death, as if the song was singing her home and I listened to it being sung.

Grandma West and I had a mutual birthday. That was a coincidence, of course, but it meant that if our family was in Orofino over Christmas, we celebrated our birthday's together. The most memorable of these birthdays was when she turned 80 and I turned 21 and Grandma's family held a nice party for her that was partly mine, too. It made turning 21 seem not insignificant, but a very early part of my life.

It's unusual how these connections existed between me and Grandma West only because she was the grandmother I spent the least amount of time with, primarily because Grandma lived in Spokane and, being closer, she visited us more often and we her.

When we visited Grandma West every summer in August, we had a lot to look forward to: raspberries over cold cereal with half and half; Grandma had a shower and we only had a bathtub and it was especially fun to shower after an afternoon swimming and playing in the sand at Beaver Dam, a swimming hole on the North Fork of the Clearwater River, now hundreds of feet under water, behind the Dworshak Dam; Grandma lived in a neighborhood with several kids our age and we had plenty of fun playing hide and seek, Monolopoly, and going swimming; and Grandma's house smelled good -- I don't know exactly what she kept in her bathroom or in the bedrooms that was so nice smelling, but I often wish I could go back to her house and smell it again.

My mother moved to Kellogg when she got married, but Grandma's other two children lived in Orofino, as did two of her grandchildren. Grandma West's house was where my aunt and uncle and cousins often came to see us. My favorite part of staying at Grandma's was when Bob and Lila and Mom and John and Lura, in differing combinations, would sit around and tell stories about "the old days" living in the country, across the Clearwater River from Peck.

They'd laugh about things that happened. They'd try to get all the stories straight. My favorite story is a little vague to me, but it something to do with a bull snake swallowing an egg and getting stuck in a knot hole. Now I might have that all wrong, but it's what's stuck with me.

I didn't know the work "matronly" back then, but looking back, I now think of Grandma West striking an unassuming, but matronly pose as she sat in her chair and listened to her children and grandchildren tell stories.

She spoke, too, but was not in any dominating. She enjoyed listening and I always liked it when a story made her laugh. I have this memory of her saying something like, "Well, yes, I guess you're right" and laughing at something Bob or Mom recalled that was funny. I would sit on the piano bench in front of the piano and I'd always want one of those moments to come when Grandma laughed. I suppose it's because she was not demonstrative. Her demeanor was quiet, dignified, and proud.

She had a lot to be proud of. Her husband deserted her. She was left to raise three children on her own. She moved to Orofino into a modest and handsome home and worked hard at the Helgeston Hotel and raised a beautiful garden and kept a very tidy and well-kept lawn.

I don't know the details of how she came to Orofino from the country. I don't know how she found and purchased her house. What I do know is how its orderliness reflected upon her strength, a quietly determined strength, that was with her until she died.

I've written about my mother's determination (here). I think it came from my Grandma West, from the Walker side of my mother's family tree. Could I be more grateful for the dignity and strength of my Grandma West whose character still lives in my mother, and, I hope, to some degree in my sisters and me.