My Grandmother

A Mother

She was a mother of two. The mother of my father and his sister. She was a dab hand on the Lowrey Electric organ. She loved to cut a rug and sing out loud. She could peel an apple with a paring knife and keep the skin intact for one long coil. She wore a wig to cover her thin hair. One for the day and one for night.

A Grandmother

My grandmother became a significant presence in my life when I was 5 years old following the sudden death of my mother. My sister , who was two years old, and I went to live with “Ma” while our father went away to grieve alone.

A Daughter

At the time, my grandmother was caring for her own mother, Gaye, my great grandmother, and she was probably ill-prepared for our arrival. Two small girls and her grieving son arrived on her doorstep with baggage of the physical and emotional kind.

A Divorcee

She was divorced and remarried at a time when being divorced was looked down upon. She wore pants when all other grandmothers were wearing skirts and dresses. She was frugal and modest, I don’t think I ever knew her to purchase herself something new.

A Believer

My grandmother was a born-again Christian. In 1959 the Reverend Billy Graham left his home in North Carolina and began 6 a month crusade throughout Australia. Margey attended one of his gospel preaching meetings in Launceston, Tasmania and became at one with the Lord. She attended the church at the end of her road every Sunday where we were dressed in our Sunday best and taken along equipped with a colouring book and a stack of pencils. Pencils that we would inevitably drop onto the wooden floor at the most inoportune moment accompanied by loud “shushing“ and a stern look from Ma. Even though I am not religious in any way I can still recite the “Lord’s Prayer” and sing “The Lord is My Shepherd“ word for word.

A Carer

My grandmother‘s mother, Gaye was elderly and suffering from the beginnings of Alzheimers or dementia. Marg had her hands full enough without us under her feet. She was cooking and cleaning and caring for her mother as well as dealing with two year old tantrums and the behaviour of a disturbed five year old. 

I have one really vivid memory of Ma chasing me through the house with a bucket of water as she tried to wash my hair. Me screaming like a banshee before her and her shouting “the police will hear you!” A knock came on the door almost immediately the words left her lips and without skipping a beat she said “That’s them now!” Of course it wasn’t but my heart almost left my chest.

A Beauty

Margey was quite a “looker” in her younger years and even in her 50s could be described as a handsome woman. I’m not sure how old she was when she first started wearing wigs but she had a thing about her “real hair” and did not like to go out in public as she felt naked sans wig. She had an evening wig as well and I was never quite sure if she actually wore that one to bed or not.

A Contradiction

She could be a bit “fire and brimstone”, my grandmother. She ruled by the wooden spoon which only needed to be rattled in the top drawer when we were misbehaving. I always suspected that the wooden spoon was just a front because she always prefaced every scolding with “I don’t like to growl at you…” She also had a wicked sense of humour, one that was almost at odds with her religious beliefs and her era.

A Comfort

She would spend an entire day sewing us cloth dolls and their accessories, cutting up old fur coats and stoles for their hair. She cut out paper dolls with their paper clothing and we would set them up as families. We cooked with her and helped her clean the house. She fed us milk arrowroot biscuits with slabs of butter and homemade ice-cream from carnation milk. Foods that I think of as “comfort foods” even now.

A Wordsmith

When I think of my grandmother I always hear her laughter and her sense of the absurd, particularly when she was communicating with my Dad. She loved word play and puns, limericks and cryptic crosswords. An absolute gun at quiz and game shows. She would shout out the answers at the TV screen as questions were fired at the contestants.

She also loved a bit of trash TV. “Days of Our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless” was regular viewing in her house. School holidays meant we could catch up with the never changing lives of the characters. We were always dead quiet while Ma’s shows were on.

A Spendthrift

She would take us to the supermarket in her brown Volkswagen Beetle. If butter or milk were on special and there were restrictions on how many items one could buy we would be prepped like we were going on a covert military operation. We would enter the supermarket one at a time and approach the fridge section, pick up our two packets of butter and then approach seperate checkouts, the correct money tucked into a handkerchief and tied at the corner. One of us would always inadvertently shout out “Ma!” And give up the jig. 

A Musician

Margey’s pride and joy was her electric Lowrey organ that took pride of place in her living room. It was one with all the bells and whistles. The funky beats, the samba and the cha cha. We were allowed to play it using the glow keys that highlighted the notes. Ma would sit at that organ and she would come to life. Singing at the top of her beautiful voice and pumping those foot pedals.

A Health Nut

While Ma was a true believer in Jesus as the son of God she had a firmer belief in vitamins. She had a plethora of tablets that she would chew or swallow on a daily basis. When we lived with her it was vitamin C in the morning and multi-vitamins at lunch, iron at dinner and a spoonful of malt extract or cod liver oil to make us grow.

A Queen of the Axiom

She used sayings that I still find myself repeating today “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”, “If there’s enough blue sky to make a pair of sailors trousers it’s going to be a fine day”, “if you keep pulling that face, the wind might change and you will look like that forever!”, “once a thief always a thief” The last one caused me great consternation because she said it to me once after I had misappropriated her transistor radio and hidden it under my bed. I have been on the look out for thief-like behaviour in myself ever since!

An Inspiration

I have reached the age that she was when I went to live with her as a motherless child and I have recently become a grandmother myself. It feels right to be passing on the baton and honouring her memory. I only mourned the loss of my own mother when I had my children so in keeping with this passage of time it is only right that I now acknowledge the part my grandmother played in my upbringing and celebrate her. I draw comparisons and realise that had she had the choices and the freedom that I have had growing up as a woman she may have soared to greater heights.

Not that she didn’t soar in her own world or in her own mind. But she didn’t travel widely and her world was quite narrow. She was cocooned by her church and somewhat protected. Maybe they were the only choices she saw herself having. Even though the 60s and the 70s was a time of great activism for women , my grandmother was still firmly of the belief that the man was the head of the family.

I loved my grandmother and it was very difficult to see her deteriorate in her late 70s from dementia. She became almost childlike and even though I didn’t spend a lot of time with her during this time I like to think that she achieved that freedom to soar, that she found a place where she could be comfortable without a wig, a place where she could sing like an angel.

Vale Margey House