To Grandmother's house
Cheryl Unruh
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
“You’ll need another quilt,” Grandma said, pulling one from the dresser.
Wind rattled the north window as Grandma smoothed her handmade quilt over the bed. “That should keep you girls warm.” Except for shivering, my cousins, Mary and Brenda, and I were unable to move with five, now six, quilts crushing us. Because the sheets were ice cold, it would be awhile before our bodies would feel snug in the bed.
I don’t remember ever seeing my breath there, but the second floor of Grandma’s farmhouse went unheated.
That memory of a wintertime visit to Grandma’s returned the other day as I watched the neighbor girls climb into their grandmother’s car.
The girls next door are 11 and 8 and I’ll bet that when they are in their 40s, they will be having flashbacks to the times they spent with their grandmother. They’re building memories that will cheer them in the years to come.
At least that’s how time spent with Grandma Unruh has worked out for me.
As youngsters in the late ‘60s, my cousins and brother and I often stayed overnight with Grandma on her farm.
When the sun came up on those winter mornings, I’d lie awake, unwilling to leave the warm bed, knowing the air on the other side of those quilts was still quite cold.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Grandma had a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes waiting for us on the red-and-white gingham tablecloth.
Meanwhile, she rolled out dough on the countertop. There would be cherry pie for lunch. And sometimes Grandma made deep fried doughnuts sprinkled with granulated sugar.
“You kids talked until one in the morning,” Grandma would laugh. “I came up after you fell asleep and put another quilt on the bed.” After breakfast, we tagged along with Grandma to the chicken house to collect eggs.
“Reach under the hen,” Grandma said. “She won’t hurt you.”
The chicken’s beak looked threatening, but standing on tip-toes, I reached between the feathers and the straw and gathered the warm eggs. Grandma held the bottom ends of her apron making a cloth basket, and I carefully put the eggs in there.
At mid-morning, through wind and snow, my brother and cousins and I walked down the quarter-mile driveway to the mailbox. There was usually something to carry back to the house — a Grit newspaper or a letter.
Grandma let us run all over the farm, unsupervised. We played in the hayloft, jumping down onto the bales of hay that Uncle Laramie had stacked so neatly. The barn smelled of cattle and dirt and grease. At bath time, Grandma carried pans of steaming water from the kitchen stove to mix in with the cold from the faucet. (She didn’t use her hot water heater; the easy way was never her way.)
Grandma’s farmhouse is gone now. The two-story home was torn down and its wood used to construct a house in Pawnee Rock.
A neighbor bought the land and grazes cattle there. Herefords wander on the ground where we once built snowmen. These cattle tromp over the garden area behind the wash house, where every summer Grandma nurtured tomatoes, green beans and potatoes.
I can still picture the old German woman in the garden, her face shaded by a cloth bonnet, a hoe rising and falling.
Since I have a treasure trove of memories, I’m happy to see that the girls next door enjoy spending time with their grandmother.
Yes, every winter, I recall those nights burrowed under the covers at Grandma’s house. We could always count on her to weigh us down with another quilt, because that’s what grandmothers do.
F “Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
F Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.