Grandparents

Since I was the first granddaughter, I had a special bond to my maternal grandmother, so Grandma Rosie will be first.  I don't know a lot about her past, except her father came to America at a young age from Czechoslovakia.  He was not a Sims but took on that name to avoid being caught for deserting the Prussian army.  So, we do not know how to reach back into the mysterious genealogical matrix for our roots.  All we know is Grampa Sims was a 'boot boy' who fled the army at a very early age to avoid being raped by the officers.  He ended up in Bowling Green?, Ohio, met Grama Maude and did the only thing he knew:  Blow and cut glass.  The family moved to Detroit and lived near downtown around the time Henry Ford made his first assembly line.  Thus, Grampa Sims was commissioned to etch the mirrors for the new Lincoln building.  Word is he also did the artwork on the doors.  He also started a sort of assembly line method of etching glass, although his freestyle etchings were a work of art in themselves.  Mom only has a few of his pieces.  My favorite is a glass with a woodland scene, a deer under a flowering tree next to a pond.


Grama had two younger brothers, Donald and Eldon.  Donald used to sneak out and attend the choir practice at the Episcopal Church downtown closest to the river.  He had the voice of an opera singer, but his papa did not want him doing such an effeminate thing as singing.  Hmmm.  One can see some unresolved issues lingering here.  Grama never spoke well of her mother.  She insisted she was born in a toilet.  I never got the feeling they had a very connected or emotionally healthy relationship.  Grama seemed to be a bit of a whiner, and I was often the one on the listening end of her complaints.  


But she had so much creativity, so much determination, and a wonderful way of hiding her pain as well.  She had back surgery down here in Texas when it was brand new.  I remember when she got home and had many massages on a massage table under a white sheet in the hall off her boudoir. Her bedroom suite had a large bedroom, a bathroom, and a dressing room off the same hall.  The hall was not really like a hall, because it also housed a few dressers, including the highboy Mom eventually inherited.  In her dressing room she had her choice of at least twenty drawers opposite a large walk in closet.  At the end of this dressing room was a vanity where she often could be seen using her curling iron, or as the case may be, trying to use it on me.  I tired of this quickly when she burned my ear the second time.


Grama took up ballroom dancing soon after her back surgery.  Arthur Murray himself danced with her.  She took to this so well, she became active in competitions and won the statewide contest against mostly twenty year olds when she was in her early fifties.  She wore the crinoline slips under flowing Ginger Rogers gowns and professional dance heels covered in sequins and glitter.


All the while Grama kept up her beautiful rose garden and often found me following her as she greeted each one with a morning kiss.  One time Mrs. Brinks asked me if I were to be a gardener like my Grama, and I said, "Oh, no, I am going to be a ballerina," brushing my hair away from my eyes with hands covered in dirt and sweat.  Grama took me with her when she began ice dancing lessons.  I remember pushing a little brown, wooden chair across the ice in my tiny skates as she took her warm-up laps around the rink.  But Grama's roses were her pride and joy, more than her dance awards


Grama also loved to go down to Quarton Lake at midnight and ice dance under a full moon. This is not the only nighttime activity she did with me.  She often took me skinny dipping in the Gulf on our trips down to Naples (before it became the Hollywood of the South.)  I can remember the phospherous gleam of the tiny creatures that glowed in the dark.  I did love the feeling of the water against my skin with no clothes.  It wasn't overly sensuous, but just a free sort of feeling.


Grama and Grampa divorced after thirty five years of marriage.  It was a rocky, scary time for everyone in the family, especially Aunt Kathy and to an extent, Aunt Gretchen.  I was on the receiving end of Grama's frequent expressions of disdain and hatred of men.  She pounded it into me that men were not nice, clean or trustworthy.  She also may have been the catalyst for Mom to have such a hankering for books by Freud or Betty Friedan.


Grama did receive Jesus as her saviour and forgave Grampa before she died.  I know, because I was there when she professed faith and forgave him simultaneously.  I was so happy, I felt like jumping up and dancing, and my heart did just that, if my body didn't.


Grama moved out of the Puritan Road house over to Baldwin Court into a small, modern house with a nice yard for her garden.  She stayed there a few years and found a nice semi-Victorian house on Willets close to town.  This house had a bigger yard and more potential for what turned out being a tour garden.  From this home she also worked for the city of Birmingham growing prize winning roses.  These homes were much smaller as were the pine trees in front.  I will never forget how those big, colored lights looked on the big spruce trees on Puritan Road at Christmas time.  We also seemed to have more musicales, with Kathy playing the harp and Gretchen accompanying our carols on the grand piano in the spacious Puritan Road living room.  Downsizing is always part of the cost of divorce.


No matter what house Grama inhabited, she always loved good music playing on the record player.  She taught me to polka through the halls to Chezh music or Norwegian dances.  I know my love for classical music came first from hearing it at Grama Rosie's.


I had to be careful not to knock any of her beautiful, colored glass off the shelves when dancing through the house.  Grama had a lovely collection, always kept by a window so the sun could shine and disperse its splendid rays through each pretty piece.  Grama felt at home no matter where she was when she had her antique furniture, glass, music and  good soil in which to grow her darling roses.


This was why she failed at living on a thirty five foot motor sailor with her second husband, who changed her name to Vienott.  She did try, and I was brave enough to join them out in Quincy, Massachusetts, for a ten day vacation.  After steering her (Liebchen) through the Cape Cod Canal,  I got sea sick and had to finish the trip at a friend's home near the marina.  This was an experience in and of itself, because these people, the           Fischer's, were Jewish and it was Passover; ah, but that is another story for another time.


Grampa Vienott helped Grama keep her home on Torch Lake.  It was my favorite place in the whole wide world, and it was called, "Trollhaugen."  The lake was always a beautiful tourquoise color, very cold and clear.  The house was an A framed style with a huge kitchen and fireplace which also opened into the living room.  Upstairs included an open loft and what we called the bunk room, because it had 4 bunk beds built into the walls with drawers underneath to house all the grandchildren.  The loft had a double bed and dressers, as well.


One thing I learned from Grama Rosie was the fact that divorce doesn't solve anything.  If one divorces, their problems will only follow them into a second marriage.  Grama and Grampa Vienott also argued and left things hanging, with no real chance at honest emotional connection and caring.  Interestingly enough, both Grama and Grampa Ruhl ended up marrying Easterners, both from Massachusetts.  Neither were happily married the second time around.  I know, because I was a first hand witness to their wretched fighting.  This definitely contributed to the fact that I was married late in life.