My Grandmother

(The pic above if of my mom, age 7. I could not find a digital pic of my grandmother.)

The upside to moving to Tennessee was that we would be living with my grandmother, Hazel Hail (Waters). She brought stability and love that more than made up for the loss of our father and the loss of our Georgia life. She had already moved to Maryville a couple of years before; I have fond memories post-divorce but pre-moving to TN of staying with my memaw at her house in Eagleton Village. I remember overhearing mom and memaw talk and plan of moving up here, though at the time I don’t think I really picked up on the significance of what they were talking about.

Mostly what I remember at this time was how fresh and new TN felt! It was so…green and the air was simply better. It is a hard feeling to describe but one that is recognizable if you have ever lived in an urban environment. Over the years we had made many trips to TN, sometimes staying at our cousin Debbie Jefferies or with her mom, my great aunt Mildred and uncle Otis. No matter whom we stayed with, my brother and I found great joy in these lovely mountains. My most vivid memory as a child was waking up at Debbie’s house and seeing the Great Smoky Mountains from her front yard, covered in mist and knowing immediately how they came to be named. Waking up, walking outside, feeling the pleasantly cool dew on my bare feet and taking deep breaths of this sweet, sweet air – those are what I remember as a child visiting East Tennessee. I remember thinking that the greenery was greener in Tennessee; never did you see sickly, skinny pine trees everywhere like you did in Georgia. In Tennessee all of the trees were big, full and mighty. Trees were everywhere. I remember the taste of Mildred’s ham biscuits on a Sunday morning, with our extended family gathered together. My childhood, especially after the divorce, was saved due to having so much family so close. I never have felt as close to my extended family as I felt like when I was a child. These days we all are so far apart, not by distance, but separated by the demands of life.

I can see my memaw at the stove, and I remember smelling bacon frying, and an almost musky scent of gravy cooking. My memaw made the best gravy I have ever had, even up to the present time. She was well known for it and she always put it in this ceramic bowl with a light blue banner design around the top edge of the bowl. The shade of blue on that bowl was almost the exact shade of her eyes, though her eyes, like her name, tended to be more hazel in color. Memaw, like my mother and later like myself, did not like it when anyone else was in the kitchen with her when she cooked. How funny I am the same exact way! She must have felt then like I feel now – get out of my way! Memaw would only let us into the kitchen once she was finished cooking and nothing felt so much like love as when we saw that table full of food that she prepared for us.

Memaw would let us into the kitchen sometimes, to help, depending on the nature of what was being made. I remember her showing me how to break green beans. I don’t think it is an activity people really do much anymore. Breaking the beans meant literally snapping the green beans in a certain way that caused you to pull the thin strong-like edge of the bean off. This allowed the beans to be ready for cooking. If you didn’t break the beans first then they would be tough and stringy. Or instead of green beans, she would have me turning apples. Sometimes memaw would dry apples so that she could make fried apple pies. These were always a treat and it was always with anticipation that I would turn those apples. We would lay out the apples on a sheet which was on a table set outside. My job was to turn the apples every so often and to keep bugs away. She would set me up at a table on the porch just outside of the kitchen and I would sit out there breaking beans or waiting to turn the apples and talking to my memaw.
We had some of our best conversations then. I was a teenager at this point, and had the typical teenage angst. I was also having such a difficult time assimilating with the locals at school and she talked me through many a tragedy. She never judged me or talked down to me; she talked to me like an equal, and gave it to me straight. She earned my trust; I always felt better after talking to her. In retrospect I wonder if Dr. Phil must have met my memaw at some point in the past because his advice is so similar to hers.

My memaw and I had so much on common. Both of us liked to stay up late. I remember sitting up with her after everyone else had already gone to bed. She would be watching TV and I would be in the rocking chair listening to my headphones. Sometimes I would get too into my music and either hum along, or God forbid, sing along. When I did this Memaw would always swat me with her book to get my attention and tell me I was going to wake the dead. We would also have our nightly bowl of cereal, a late-night snack habit that I carried for many, many years (until recently). It was during this time too that I began to sleepwalk and sleepeat. Because memaw stayed up so late, she was always the one to witness my late-night wanderings. She said I would have entire conversations and eat snacks and I would not have the slightest memory of any of it. I still occasionally sleep eat, or at least that is what I blame it on when I eat the last of something in the middle of the night!

I also remember watching Guiding Light with her in the summers, following along with the fictional lives of Reva and Josh. No matter where I was at or what I was doing those summers, I always made it back home to watch Guiding Light with my memaw. In winter on snow days where we didn’t have school, Guiding Light was a special treat, like seeing long lost friends. It saddened me to see them go off the air recently. It felt like the end of my childhood seeing them go off the air, a part of my childhood that I would never get back.

Memaw also came up with some of the funniest sayings that you ever heard. For example, if anyone took too long in the bathroom you could count on memaw yelling up the stairs “Did you shit out a tiger and have to fight it off?” Or sometimes she would come up with something that didn’t make sense but was funny nonetheless. One time she was sassing back to my stepdad, they were fussing back and forth like they used to do. Out of nowhere she says in this stern voice “Well, your butt’s a bun too!” Even she laughed at what she had said because it made absolutely no sense. My mom and I still say that to each other when we are ragging on each other.

My memaw sacrificed so much for all of us. While I was in high school she was in and out of the hospital a lot. I don’t think the seriousness of her health, let alone her mortality, ever hit me back then, because up until her terminal cancer diagnosis, all of her health issues had been explainable and treatable and temporary. It wasn’t until later, after the cancer diagnosis, that I was able to look back and realize how much of herself she gave up in order to keep our family going. It wasn’t until later that I looked back and realized how much pain she must have been in and yet she didn’t say anything to us, because our happiness was so much more important to her.

I didn’t know at the time that her cancer had probably already begun, though I do remember thinking she was not in the best of health. One time I remember her taking me to Kroger for a job interview. I had my license but I had not yet learned to drive my stick-shift Toyota Celica that I had recently bought. So I was stuck; I had an interview I couldn’t get to for a job I needed in order to afford gas and insurance for my car. My grandmother, who was not in the greatest health at this time, got dressed and took me to the interview and I got the job. I don’t know why, but I have a distinct impression of thinking then that she didn’t feel good, but the specifics of why I felt that was escapes me. She must have started showing signs of pain from the cancer, unbeknownst to us.