“Before she was Dr. Susan Boyd she was a little girl with a grandmother named Lorraine. This is a story for parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, for anyone who wonders if children are seeing what’s before their eyes…”
Her grandmother had a hard life.
“She ate the burnt toast.” Susan Webb Boyd, on her grandma…
“In the 70’s coffee prices went way up. She reused coffee grounds. I caught her one time, making coffee, she made me a regular cup, and then I watched her flavor hot water with a little coffee, for her share. Her name was Lorraine. She’s where I got my middle name.”
Uncle P, “That’s an old fashioned name.”
Susan, “Not a name to flaunt at recess in the 60’s and 70’s.”
_ _ _ _ _
“Her sister, Vivian, married well. She could afford nice department store clothes. She’d pass these along to my grandmother. They weren’t her size but my grandmother wore them to church. She stuffed toilet paper in her shoes so they’d fit.
“I remember watching her grocery shop. She’d hold two heads of lettuce up, see which was heavier, trying to pick the one with a few more leaves.
“She had stories about the war. Everybody had Victory Gardens. They’d eat onion sandwiches.
“She could stretch a meatloaf to feed a multitude. When disposable Handy Wipes came out, she could make one last for years.”
_ _ _ _ _
“When McDonald’s came she’d eat the burger but save the fries for a treat, later in the week.
“Overhearing conversation about my grandmother was the first time I heard the phrase, ‘Fixed income.’
“She was always reading her Bible. She had Guideposts all around. And Billy Graham pamphlets. She had so much faith…and I wondered why I didn’t. It took some time for me to see, that like everything else she had, it wasn’t free and she worked hard to get it.
“She had thirteen grandkids. For Christmas we each got a book from her. We’d open one gift on Christmas Eve, and it was always hers. Little House on the Prairie. Caddie Woodlawn. Wind In The Willows. That would keep us quiet until Christmas morning.
“For birthdays she sent us all $2 checks. That’s what she could afford. And it was more than we needed…
”My youngest sister, she never cashed Grandma’s last check. It’s a family treasure.”
_ _ _ _ _
“She was the only one of my grandparents to go past high school. She went for nursing. An associate’s degree. And yet she never learned to drive. She left nursing to be a mother. Her husband…had a…modest income… She took her boards again when she was in her sixties and went back to work.
”I didn’t know what nurses did. I knew she wore a white uniform and took care of people and I thought that was a wonderful thing.
“At first I wanted to be a nurse. Like her. And then around the sixth grade my friend and I were walking and talking and we just decided that we wanted to be doctors.”
“Let me take a guess on who took you serious…”
“Grandma. From first mention.”
_ _ _ _ _
“I was in college. My spending money was from waiting tables, baby sitting. I ate in the cafeteria and shopped at Goodwill.
“And in the mail came a card from my Grandma.”
There’s a pause here, as befitting the moment.
“In that card was a check for $20.” Susan’s head dips, then her eyes turn up and away, and she says, “What a sacrifice that must have been for her…
“You started this off by stating that my grandmother had a hard life. I really don’t think she saw her life as hard. She never complained. She was never angry at her circumstances. One of the reasons she stands out in my childhood was that she lived with dignity and character. Making do and doing without never made her less.”
_ _ _ _ _
“After she died I had to leave at four in the morning for a med school interview, pitch dark out, just me and the highway, and I was wishing Grandma was there, to know where I was going, and right about then…a shooting star went right across the sky…
“I still have her stethoscope. And her name. She gave more than she realized.”
_ _ _ _ _
This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtimes Stories is brought to by Eighty-one, which hopes that this reminds you in this gift giving season that Little sometimes equals More…and that who you are is more important than what you have.
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