What I Learned From My Grandmothers! 

Someone recently asked me what I learned from my grandmother. Well, I was fortunate to know all four of my grandparents, and that question took me down memory lane. 

My paternal grandparents lived in a three-room house in the country with no modern facilities. My grandmother still cooked on a wood stove. But that didn’t bother Grandmama, who often sang songs around the house that she wrote herself. 

As a child, I didn’t know she was a brilliant poet and also wrote editorial pieces for the newspaper during World War II, having three sons overseas. I just thought writing poetry was what grandmothers did since she wrote a poem for me when I was in grade school. That poem actually started me on my own writing journey. 

I can’t tell you how many poems I’ve written through the years, but my family says I have Grandmama’s gift. I treasure that, and I still have that handwritten poem she wrote especially for me when I was ten years old. 

My maternal grandmother was an accomplished seamstress and quilter, making quilts for her children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren well into her nineties. 

When I was young, I spent a week with my grandparents every summer. I loved their big yellow house in town with indoor plumbing, something we didn’t have in our little farmhouse. Grandmama would sew aprons and clothes for me, and being a fashionable lady, she often let me peruse her jewelry box and choose the necklace and earbobs she would wear to church. 

When I got married, she made a wedding ring quilt for me with fabric she had used through the years to make those clothes. I treasured that quilt and still cherish it to this day. And like my grandmother, I too became a seamstress and made a quilt for each of my children, using fabric from the clothes I made for them during their growing-up years. 

But the main thing I learned from my grandmothers was “love” and how to “grandparent” in my later years. I’m not sure what my grandchildren will eventually say they learned from me. I just hope they say, “I was loved!”