Grandma passed away 20 years ago today. I don’t have many memories of her specifically, but I remember playing at her house with my cousins when I was a kid. This is a little vignette I wrote back in college about her.
My mom’s mom got married during the war. My cousin Anna told me this one day as we were driving to the mall. She got married, and it wasn’t to Grandpa.
My mom didn’t even know this little family secret. She asked me about it about two months after Anna and I had talked. She was surprised I already knew because she had just found out. She asked just how much I knew, and that was about it — she got married during the war, divorced after the war. Then she met and married Grandpa.
That was all my mom knew too. In fact, that seemed to be all anyone knows. No one even knows the guy’s name!
I think it’s terribly romantic. Since I don’t know enough of the facts, I feel at liberty to create some of my own. I imagine that it was a wonderful romance, the type where you meet at the dance hall and fall desperately in love. Then his regiment is called, and he’s got to go. You find a Parson; spend a few hours in the park whispering your last good byes. And then at the train station, the the steam from the heavy gears warming to take him away, you stand at the platform, handkerchief in hand, heart crying, watching until the train is out of site, and then turn to go home — alone. I choose to leave out the fact that something must have gone wrong, and that’s why they got divorced. Instead I imagine the telegram every war bride dreads, sealing their love on the platform of the train station.
It probably wasn’t like that at all. But no one knows, and probably no one ever will.
My mom’s mom died when I was 9. I don’t remember her much except that she used to always buy the grandkids Jell Gelatin Pops and drink Tab and sit in her orange and lime floral rocking chair and watch Bob Ross paint.
My grandpa remarried just two months after her death to widow in his ward. Of course that caused a rift and some resentment in the family. She got the brunt of it. She became the focus of all that was wrong. Her name is Darlene. I really like her. I call her Grandma.
My mom’s dad was a mechanic. He owned a gas station across the street from Sugar House Park in Salt Lake. My aunt Lori worked there as an accountant. She always had a jar full of candy, and her office was upstairs, away from the smell of Lysol and grease.
When I turned 16 my grandpa gave me a pair of his cover-alls. Across the bib, on a white tag, is written “Big Mac.” They’re Big Mac’s. A bit of a disappointment to a 16-year-old, who may have been looking for something more along the lines of Old Navy or Gap. But now I think they’re the greatest. I wear them to work every day. I work at the mechanical shop at BYU. I love that job. Just me and a bunch of old guys playing with big machines. It makes me feel tough. It makes me feel like a girl.
“The Station” as it was called in my family,
was across the street from Sugar House Park.