Mamie

Pearl was all about appearances, or so she appeared to those who did not know her well.
And most did not know her well. Because that's what she wanted.
But I did.
Pearl Vera Nevius Marshall was my grandmother.
The woman who told me funny stories about a little old lady she called Granny who always wore a hat with a bird on top. And in each story that my grandmother told Granny always had a different bird on her hat.
\ "Oh, Mamie, I would cry, "what kind of bird does Granny have on today. Granny was always up to something sneaky or stupid or both. She was ditsy like Gracie Allen, Granny was nothing like my grandmother, the delight with which she conjured her stories shown in her face, and I suspected that there was a little bit of granny in my very dignified grandmohter, or atleast she liked to fancy that.
Birds were a thing with my grandmother. She and my grandfather had a house on the lake which they called the Bird's Nest. That is because my aunt and uncle lived that for a piece when they were young married.
And there was were several bird figurines about my grandmother's house.
Clippety clop clippety clop. I am a babe in Mamie's arms, and she is making a horse trotting noises as she carried me up the stairs into the 1926 Sears and Roebuck bed in she spent her wedding night. It is my bed now when I visit and before that is was Mama's.

I stay with Pearl and John often. I want to be ethere as often as possible, for their house is my safe place. Their house is a house of soft sounds and predictable events. Breakfast is on time at the table in the kitchen. Same for lunch. I hear the bells ring as my grandfather opens the front door for lunch. They eat like rabbits. hardly much at all. But everything is good at Mamie's house. Lunch is usually cottage cheese with saltines and canned peaches or sometimes tuna salad sandwiches which Pearl cuts in to four triangles. She and my grandfather eat one triangle each. Lunch is small because dessert is big. There is always pie. Warm homemade pie made from berries my grandfather and I pick.

The best is the blackberry pie because blackberries are precious. I know this because on the hottest days in August my grandfather bundles me u in one of his Woolrich plaid wool hunting shirts, and I must itche and sweat in order to brave the stickers of the blackberry bushes.
We always go home with a big pailful and know that dessert tomorrow will feature blackberry pie a la mode.

My grandmother is an immaculate housekeeper. She dresses up every day in a pressed tailored blouse, a straight skirt and earrings. the seams in her stockings always line up as she stands behind the sink in her low heeled leather pumps. My grandmother has more class behind her sink than most will ever achieve in a lifetime.

I love her. I adore her, but I am very careful around her. There are lines you don't cross with her. Words of this sort have never been uttered but a sudden aloofness might overtake her which chills me a bit or long manicured nails may be dug into my forearm when the girlchild me has shown an inkling of crossing one of my grandmother's lines.

People don't yell and cry and call each other names. People don't throw things at one another across the dinner table. A woman does not stand outside in a flinsy nightgown at night while smoking a cigarette in order to get enough of a grip to come inside and tuck her daughters in bed.

My grandmother taught me about words and the music they can make. She taught albeit a bit self-conscioulsly how to do the Charleston, and she shared afternoon teaparties with me during those long summer afternoons as we watched As the World Turns and The Loretta young Show.

She was their with a big dry towel in which she would bundle me as i emerged from the cold water of Crystal Lake.

each week I received a letter addressed just to me written in her beautiful Palmer method longhand.

She made me feel smart and important and proud. She taught me care about myself and to expect good things for myself.

She showed me beauty and elegance as she let me try her gorgeous clothes on and parage about her home.

But after lunch was Pearl's time. She promply went up the stairs to her bedroom where she would liek for one hour in a darkened room for her rest. I was not to come upstairs during this time. I was to be quiet as a mouse while my grandmother had her rest.

She was forty-five years old when I was born. And she was like a mother to me.

but my grandmother grew very very old
her husband was gone
her friends were gone
but she still wanted to go out and buy some shoes
but mainly she stayed alone in her small room
reading and waiting for a visitor
for her son to come to see her and perhaps take her to the
assisted living home where her older sister lived
I guess she had the telephone.
And I went every week when I was in Michigan
and then one day in January of 1997 she called me
and here voice was low
and she barely had a word to say
and then she died a week or so later
and I know she had called to say
goodbye