“And this is me and my Paw at our home is West Virginia.”
A quaint smile formed on my grandmother’s face as she looked at this black and white photograph. Its edges were worn and the image was a little faded, but the memories that it invoked were obviously quite clear. It was easy to believe that this photograph was seventy-two years old; only thirteen years younger than her. Even so, I could see the happy thirteen-year-old girl in my grandmother’s eyes just as easily as I could make her out in the picture in front of me.
I had just turned 30 before this visit, much older than she was in the picture. But, with the exception of baby or toddler pictures, she will always seem older and wiser to me, even in old photographs.
“My Paw met Devil Anse one time!” she said, referring to the famous “Devil Anse” Hatfield of the Hatfield and McCoy feud. “He (her father who was born in 1865!) was coming out of the outhouse and Devil came out of a field and needed wanted some water.” I can’t remember how old she said that he was.
She talked often of her family in West Virginia. She was the youngest of nineteen children. All shared the same father, with nine belonging to his first wife and the remaining to the second. I’m not sure what happened to the first wife, as my grandmother rarely mentioned her. The second one, her mother, she spoke of often and with fondness. ‘Ole Maw and Paw Queen, as she referred to her parents, were as poor as pennies, but they were fine as silk to her. One year for Christmas my grandmother gave me a family recipe book that she titled, “Jenkins/Queen Book of Family Meals” and on the inside of the cover she wrote, “For Tommy, here are some very nutritious meals!” I always laugh at that inscription because there is not one nutritious recipe in that book; at least not by today’s standards. Everything in it is fried, battered, buttered, and thick! But, when you grow up as poor as she did having a meal at all was considered a goldmine of nutrients.
As poor as they were, they were fortune enough to own a very small piece of land and one horse: a black colt. She loved that horse; this was evident by the fact that he was in practically every picture with her family that was taken in the 1930s.
My grandmother’s photo albums were in chronological order. It was fun to see her grow up through the pages. In the three hours that we looked at the books I had watched my grandmother age eighty-five years.
I had not seen my grandmother for a long time. She looked much older from the last time I was visiting. The lines on her face were deeper. She moved with much more care. She had lost some weight, which she couldn’t afford to lose. These last eight years have been hard on her and seemed to age her more than the previous 25 or so that I knew her. Within those hard years she had lost her husband and her youngest boy, my Uncle Jay, to cancer. Other than the physical changes she still seemed like my grandmother, warmhearted, loving, and kind.
With each turn of the pages in the photo album my grandmother would continue to smile and laugh. Her joviality was contagious. Before I knew it I was laughing and smiling as if I had grown up with her and we were reminiscing on the same memories. I was seeing this woman for the first time as a friend as well as a grandmother. I can remember the first time that I realized that my parents were just regular people like everyone else. There is a bit of magic that dissipates from the air when you realize this and you truly start questioning things that you wouldn’t have before. But, for some reason this hadn’t happened with my grandparents. I had always seen them as my grandparents. Even as the other three had passed on, the magic had stayed. This visit had changed my view. Not in a bad way though. Not in the same quasi life changing way as with my parents. This time I was happier and welcomed this change of view.
Our relationship is different now, even if only in my eyes. I feel like I have found a good friend. If only I had looked closer before, or even just paid a little more attention when I came into my adulthood I could have had a good friend for many years. I felt as if I had lost that chance with my other grandparents. I feel badly about this but I am thankful that my grandmother has been able to stick around long enough for me to come around.
thetomfiles 