The Grandma You Get

I never warmed to my grandmother. I wanted to, because grandmas undoubtedly have a special place in our cultural imagination. Sometimes in reality too — I know people who talk about their grandmas with affection and fondly recall warm moments with them; mine, not so much.

I only knew one, my maternal grandmother having died long before I was born. They say it’s hard to miss what you never had, and I suppose in her case they’re right. For me, she lives forever in old photo albums – an elegant young woman, lounging on a chaise in a flowing, white Edwardian gown. 

But my living, breathing grandma (or Gran as we often called them in England), was sadly disappointing. One day, armed with the magic of AI, I decided to get a taste of what I’d been missing. Knowing its ability to scrape the internet and assemble the wisdom (or at least the clichés) of crowds, I asked my friendly chatbot to tell me about its own grandmother. 

Its essay appeared in seconds, prompting humbling comparisons. Its first “memory” was classic:

Whenever I would visit her, she would welcome me with open arms, radiating love and affection. Her hugs were not just physical gestures; they were filled with an unspoken understanding and reassurance that everything would be okay. 

Hmm. I’m not sure my Gran ever embraced me (or anyone else actually), in all the 30-odd years I knew her. Open arms were not her thing – a dry peck on the cheek was about as far as it went. Reassurance? Not exactly. She had apparently abandoned hopes for the future long ago. In response to cheery announcements of weddings or other family highlights, she would dolefully announce her hope to attend, “If I’m spared.” 

My bot moved on to gush about Granny’s “captivating stories”:

She would regale me with tales of her youth, from her childhood escapades to the hardships she endured during significant historical events, each narrative a testament to her resilience, perseverance, and appreciation of heritage. 

Childhood escapades? Hardly. I have trouble visualizing Gran as a child; her dour presence barely changed between 70 and 95. She must have faced hardships, but if she had lessons, she wasn’t about to share them. Life had spared her so far, and that was as good as it got. 

My bot turned next to the perennial grandmother’s skill – “culinary delights” – outdoing itself with heartwarming memories: 

My grandmother’s presence was most powerfully felt through the tantalizing aromas and flavors that emanated from her kitchen. Her recipes were nothing short of culinary masterpieces; every dish carried a piece of her heart, becoming the catalyst for our family’s bond.

Another let-down. To my knowledge, Gran never once cooked for the family, whether a Sunday lunch or a festive celebration. Maybe just as well. My father, her older son, described her as “a plain cook,” who turned out meat and potatoes and rich, brown gravy which, to be fair, was standard stuff in mid-20^th century England. Posted in World War II to India, my father recalled tasting spices as an almost spiritual revelation. 

Just to rub it in, my bot concluded by extolling its mythical grandma’s “reservoir of wisdom.”  

She taught me the importance of honesty, kindness, and compassion. Her unwavering belief in the power of perseverance and the pursuit of one’s dreams continues to guide me as a constant reminder of her unwavering support and encouragement.

What can I say? There’s little to reconcile the gulf between my bot’s heart-warming memories and the distant figure of my youth.

***

Physical distance was never the problem. Growing up in Newcastle, an industrial city in Northeast England, my three siblings and I lived ten minutes from Gran’s home. We could have taken the bus had it ever occurred to her to invite us. Widowed in her 50s, she had welcomed her unmarried niece, twenty years her junior, as housemate and companion. We called her Aunt Dorothy, although her actual relationship with us was a little opaque. Gran called her Doris; they were good friends, but it was clear who ruled the roost.

My father would visit regularly, sipping chicory coffee and telling his mother about her grandchildren’s latest achievements. She listened, and she remembered. Every so often, one or more of us would be taken along, where we would dutifully drink juice, eat biscuits, and play quietly. Sometimes we ventured outside to the little garden, foraging for fallen apples from a twisted, gnarled tree. She and Dorothy would tell us about the doings of our three cousins, children of her younger son. Each set of grandchildren lauded to the other, enjoyed at arm’s length. 

Gran and Dorothy rarely came to our house, but alternated Christmas dinner with each son’s family, a biennial “treat” that tended to have a dampening effect on family excitement. 

“Dad’s gone to get Gran; remember to speak up and show them your presents nicely.” 

The ladies would arrive, tiny but resplendent in their hats, fur coats and horrifying fox stoles – the entire creature, complete with feet, tail and head. This macabre garment would be draped around the neck, its head and feet hanging from each shoulder. Transfixed, I would seek out the stoles once deposited in another room, stroking their soft fur and gazing at their beady eyes. Fur coats were bad enough, but these pathetic corpses …  

“Why would they want to wear dead animals around their necks?”

My mother would never say anything impolite about her mother-in-law, who she always addressed as Mrs. B…. “I can’t say I would like it, but each to their own.” 

***

I recall a brief interlude that raised my hopes for something different. I believe the occasion was the imminent birth of my youngest brother, nine years my junior. My sister and brother were installed for a few days with the next-door neighbors, where they had friends; I was to stay with Gran and Dorothy. 

Initially I was aghast; my mother assured me it would be fun. 

“You’ll have them all to yourself!”

“Exactly.”

The idea briefly became thrilling, as I realized I would sleep at their house. Upstairs – a place we never went except for a hurried dash past the grandfather clock and up the dark stairs to the bathroom, and only in dire necessity. 

Indeed, it was a novel experience. During our usual visits, we were restricted to two rooms – the “sitting room,” with pristine chairs and sofa, an electric fire, and not a speck of dust in sight – or the dining room, where tea would be served by Dorothy, hurrying in with trays from who knows where. Now I got to experience the only other downstairs space – the “breakfast room” and its adjoining, tiny kitchen. We ate our meals around the small table, warmed by a cozy, coal-burning stove and Dorothy’s bright smile. It was a tantalizing glimpse of an alternative possibility. 

Sleeping upstairs was not quite the thrill I had hoped. The landing was dark, and the room stirred with sounds and shadows. Terrified to move, I was relieved when morning came and I heard Dorothy bustling about downstairs. 

Even though I had no real reason to expect it, I had wondered if we might do some “grandmotherly” things. Maybe she would read to me? Maybe we could draw pictures together, or go to the park? I did get to cuddle up on the sofa with a book – and Aunt Dorothy. She took me to the park, and shopping in town. She even agreed we could sit upstairs on the double-decker bus, where the “rough” people sat. Gran stayed at home.

The solo visit was never repeated, much to my guilty relief. 

***

When Gran died at age ninety-eight, I had left England and moved to the U.S. Aside from Christmas cards, I had not communicated with her, and I didn’t return for the funeral. Although it made little sense, I couldn’t help resenting that she, who always feared the worst, had been “spared” for so long, while my vibrant, life-affirming mother had died without warning at sixty.  

I never gave much thought to the life my grandmother must have lived, or what shaped her into the person who left me with such underwhelming memories. But today, as I mourn friends, family, and acquaintances with increasing regularity, I am growing to appreciate the achievement of being spared. And I finally had the curiosity to piece together the narrative of her life, aided by genealogy sites and a few family stories. Swathes of that life remain impenetrable, but a blurry outline swims into view, pointing the way to a possible new understanding.

***

I learn that Elizabeth enters the world in 1886, eighth child of a forty-year-old mother, born six years after her last sibling.  Her parents had married in haste at ages nineteen and twenty-one, producing a daughter shortly after. Children had followed at regular intervals, two boys dying in infancy. By the time Elizabeth is eight, her mother is dead, followed the next year by her father.

And then things go dark. One brother dies at twenty-three; her last surviving brother appears on the 1911 census as a “hawker,” or peddler. In 1916 she marries my grandfather at the advanced age of twenty-nine. 

Where is Elizabeth’s youth? Dorothy lived to be 103, and in her later years, she began cautiously to add touches of color to the faded outlines. It seemed Gran trusted her with tales we were never told. Elizabeth’s father, beginning as a bricklayer in the 1880s, goes on to become a builder, subjecting his family to a dizzying boom and bust lifestyle. He builds houses, rents them, then drinks away the proceeds. His family loses their home and moves on. On his death, he bequeaths his current home and what little he owns to his oldest daughter, twenty-nine-year-old Mary Ann, known as Molly. 

Twenty years older than Elizabeth, Molly is a dressmaker, whose sisters join her in fulfilling orders for wealthy clients. By then, it seems Molly had shares in several small properties, from which the sisters receive some rent. As siblings marry, Elizabeth and Molly are eventually alone, more mother and daughter than sisters. 

Does she have friends or suitors? Does she travel? How long does she court my grandfather? What was the occasion for a formal studio portrait when she was twenty-five, solemn even then in her best coat, hat, and fur muff?  I will never know. 

But marry she does, two years into World War I, and the next year, she gives birth to a daughter, named Mary Ann after her sister. Another formal portrait shows the couple, my grandfather in Army fatigues, the baby on her lap. No smiles.  

Her husband, an infantryman, survives both the Battle of the Somme and the Spanish flu epidemic, but comes home permanently damaged, his lungs corroded from mustard gas. In 1918, with the end of the war in sight, baby Mary Ann dies from meningitis.

My father, born a year after his sister’s death, followed four years later by his brother, once told me wryly: 

“My mother never really got over it; she mourned her whole life, much to our detriment I might add. She was obviously a much better child than we’d ever be …”

Nevertheless, his mother is determined that the boys will “make something of themselves,” requiring a move from their declining area to a better neighborhood, while pursuing scholarships that will propel her sons into the professional class. Her husband, remembered by my father as a remote parent plagued by health issues, rises from clerk to builder, before losing his business and the remaining rental homes in the Depression.”It is unclear how the family keeps going, but Elizabeth’s determined quest for respectability is surely the driver.  

My grandfather lives just long enough to see his older son graduate as a medical doctor – the first in his family to go to university, funded by a scholarship for children of World War I veterans. I imagine it a bittersweet moment; the scholarship requires five years’ military service upon graduation, and the country is again at war. 

In 1942, with one son on a troop ship to Asia, and the other in the Navy, Elizabeth is alone. Her husband and beloved daughter are dead, along with all but one of her seven siblings. The future must seem an unpromising prospect. But she lives on for another four decades, recreating with her niece the enduring relationship she had with Molly – and had perhaps imagined with her lost daughter.   

***

Elizabeth was never the grandmother I wanted, nor was she close to the mythical figure of my chatbot and popular culture. But as I age, assimilating the buffeting life brings, I begin to appreciate the sadness that shaped her. I may not have learned much from the dour woman I knew, but another, real woman emerges dimly from the shadows – the daughter, sister, wife and mother who lost so much but endured. Of all the trite sentiments enshrined by my bot, one rings true, if only in hindsight: “the power of perseverance.” 

Toward the end of her life, Dorothy talked about her aunt’s pride in her sons and grandchildren.

“She knew what all of you were doing, and it made her happy, you know. People just didn’t say those things then — out loud.”

I sometimes wish I could have told her that I understand better now. Perhaps I could even have shared the embrace we never experienced. But then again, it would only have made her uncomfortable, and that would never do. 

###

Elizabeth Bird, a retired anthropology professor, has published seven books (most recently “Surviving Biafra: A Nigerwife’s Story,”) and now writes creative non-fiction. Her work appears in Under the Sun (winner, Readers’ Choice Award 2022), Tangled Locks, Biostories, Streetlight, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Ariel’s Dream, Mutha Magazine, 7Elements Review, Heimat Review, and elsewhere. Her essay, “Interlude: 1941” was named a Notable in Best American Essays 2023. Her website is: www.lizbirdwrites.com.