Grandma Harriet

It's been a tough summer for our respective grandmas. My great-grandmother (Dylan's great-great-grandmother) died late Friday evening. She was 102 years old. Grandma Harriet was such a larger-than-life presence in my childhood that I could start an entire blog with all of my memories of her. Unfortunately, Dylan never got to meet her because as she was technically physically still here while he was alive, she hasn't been herself for quite a few years due to Alzheimer's.

She most certainly was the "boss" of the family and you didn't tangle with her. She was such a strong, sassy lady that when I was little I called my great-grandfather (a gentle soul with a twinkle in his eye who really could pull candy out of my ear!) "Grandpa Harriet." He didn't have his own name. He was Harriet's sidekick. When I was little, I'd spend hours in her sewing room just watching her at work. She always wanted to teach me, and I should have let her. She'd tell me stories of crossing the plains in a covered wagon when her family went West to search for gold (they didn't find any). They returned to southeastern Ohio and she later moved to Dayton. When I was little she took me to "the country," down near where I'd eventually go to college and we stayed in Uncle Warrior's house on the farm. We milked cows, churned butter and played with one of those victrola phonographs. I had a cousin my age down there and she and her family lived in a (very modern) log cabin. It was a wild experience for a suburban kid.

We always did Christmas Eve at her house and she had an enormous white Christmas tree. We'd get new pajamas and a new robe (made by her), which we wore every Christmas morning. Grandparents are so important, and I've been lucky to have several of my grandmas well into adulthood. Though Grandma Harriet has been "gone" for some time, now she really has gone away and I miss her greatly. She is so tied to my childhood that I can't think of the first 18 years of my life without thinking of her.