Last Saturday, September 09, 2023, would have been my maternal grandmother's 106th birthday. In bearing, "Granny" was not unlike Maggie Smith in her Downton Abbey guise, but somewhat warmer and intentionally funny, nevertheless in that same self-assured way as the Dowager Countess.
"Oh, my dear! She has the soul of a chamber maid!" she once said about a distant family member according to my late mother. Pointed and judgmental? Yes, but it sums up nicely certain aspects of Granny's personality and worldview. I laugh quietly to myself whenever that particular statement crosses my mind. More for the warm memories it conjures than derision.
A mean Scrabble and Gin Rummy player, my grandmother once mentioned to me that, had times been different during her younger years in the 1930 and 40s, she would have liked to become a lexicographer. She loved words, reading, and crossword puzzles, working religiously each week through the Sunday New York Times Magazine crossword and acrosstic puzzles following church -- Episcopal of course -- until completed. A stack of normal dictionaries, specialized crossword dictionaries, and thesauri resided near her place at the kitchen table.
The third daughter of English parents and native of Asheville, North Carolina, Granny always chuckled and said that I got her legs although several people on either side had ski pole legs, so who knows? My sister and I grew up in her house outside of Philadelphia, a restored mid-18th century field stone farmhouse, on 10+ acres of meadows and woods in District Township, Berks Country. Looking back, it was a wonderfully idyllic and comfortable existence.
Style-wise, Granny alternated between black cocktail dresses, mink stoles, and heels for those more elevated occasions in the western end of Allentown, Philadelphia, Manhattan, or London and Land's End or L. L. Bean oxford cloth, khaki, and plaid items in more casual settings. Invariably, that was complemented by plain white tennis shoes for the yard and vegetable garden, on the Chesapeake, or Outer Banks. Bean Boots were typical in the winter, when deep snows were the norm in SE Pennsylvania, and navy or white espadrilles during the summer months for drinks and dinner each evening once activities had concluded for the day.
Granny would have approved of the laid back combination above for changing the windshield/windscreen wiper blades on the trusty Subaru Outback and mowing the lawn.
-- Heinz-Ulrich
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| My maternal grandmother, Vivian Jesse Bennett Roberts Stokes (1917-2007) |
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-- Heinz-Ulrich