Family

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GRANDMA AND MEN
March 2010

Grandma told me on my wedding day that I needed to take note of some fundamental facts about men. I held my breath, expecting something embarrassingly personal. Instead, she recited the following, with a twinkle in her eye and a dash of sauciness, her cheeks flushed with the air of some conspiracy:

"All men are babies, grownup and strong, They hate to be scolded when they’ve done wrong. There is never a man so rugged and stout, but some time or other he’ll sulk and pout. I learned all this in a stretch of years, men like kisses and they don’t like tears. They all talk big when away they roam, but they want to be pampered when they’re at home. They want to be flattered. They think their wives -should often speak of their happy lives. But we sow the seeds of a family jar, if ever we tell them what fools they are. So pamper him, flatter him, tell him he’s great, and mother him early and mother him late, coddle his whims and his appetite, and you’ll get along with your man all right.”

I was a young strong-willed woman at the time, and I thought her somewhat old fashioned. My man certainly wasn’t like that and I didn’t think I, myself, could possibly be so patronizing.
Grandma ‘Fairy’ had 5 children of her own. One for each of the first 5 letters of the alphabet: Allan, Betty, Cynthia, Donald, and Effie. She reared them with a rod of giggles and mirth, and her idea of keeping discipline was threatening to sit on whomever she caught, after chasing them around the dining table. She was a big woman, with a big bottom, and a big heart. I loved her to pieces. I gather she lived by these riotous precepts, down to the last ‘tittle.’

The carefully positioned braids wrapped firmly around her crown spoke of Christianity’s call for sobriety; indeed, the man she shared her life with was stern and forbidding, with frowning eyebrows and staunch well formed beliefs. But grandma, oh, dear grandma, how different she was to that. Her merrily jiggling underarm flaps, shaking over some secret humour, and her embroidered handkerchief pressed nervously against a besmirched mouth hinted at emancipation well before it’s time. How she ever managed to be so dis-associated from the dourness, I would love to know, for to me, she was the eternal peter pan, mother earth and Mrs. Santa Claus, all wrapped up in one luscious parcel.

Going to grandma’s house was exciting. There were hordes of cousins, and a big garden full of tall double- dahlias to play ‘hide n seek’ in, complete with a resident garter snake which we tormented until it one day died. Grandma blustered and romped around the festival kitchen, sipping this, and dipping into that, and sweating like a crazed woman in labour. As the house filled up with people and noise, she became more and more animated, and huffed and puffed as she wove her way through the moving mass. There wasn’t a whole lot of room, but grandma’s bosom pushed the walls out and everybody fit.

There was another side to grandma too; the one that saw a nervous breakdown when the kids were in their teens. My own dad doesn’t talk about it much, but I suspect it was kept somewhat hidden from the kids and the neighbours to stop the grinding gossip. I wonder now, as a grown up lady, in my second marriage, whether she might not have even known how to look after her own needs, or to let her man set for a spell while she tended to them. I wonder if her cryptic thoughts about men, given so many years earlier, somehow actually added to her moment of collapse.

They say history repeats itself; perhaps this is so. I often think of how I ‘do’ marriage with my man: it’s good to think. I think I will never forget this lady who modeled the fine art of keeping perspective with humour in the home. I love you, Grandma: your spunkiness continues to inspire me to defy the cheap substitutes for living an integrated life.

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