Meet the Grandparents

May I introduce my grandma and grandpa?  My mom's parents.  When you're little you love them just because they are your grandparents.  When you grow up you see them as people.  My grandparents were such NICE people who gave me many good memories.  Too few of Grandma since she died when I was pretty young.  Even so she had a large role in shaping me.

This photograph was taken the year I was born and is how I remember Grandma.  When I look at this picture, I think of church because Grandma and Grandpa are wearing their Sunday best.  They sat together in the same pew every week at church.  Our family was one or two pews behind them usually.  I remember how worn my grandparents' Bible was...

According to Mom, when it came to crafts Grandma was a bit like Will Rogers.  She never met a craft she didn't like.  I remember her being a very INDUSTRIOUS person (although my brain had not met that word back then).  She was always busy with something - the house, the garden, the chickens, cooking, sewing, canning.  I'm sure the list could go on...

I remember eating fresh peas from Grandma's garden, the smell of the root cellar where she kept her canning, drinking well water from a blue speckled ladle (so cold and good!), playing with Grandma's button box when it held HER buttons, seeing stacks of her quilt blocks, making a shadow box together with a picture of a deer and straws, a basket she made of greeting cards crocheted together and HEAPING with family photos, and watching Grandma tat...

To me, Grandma's hands FLEW while she would tat and visit with Mom and as much as I would stare at  them, I could NEVER unravel the mystery of tatting... the lace just seemed to appear from nowhere.  Mom told me that Grandma learned to tat from a woman she worked for when she was young.  Mom had asked Grandma to teach HER to tat, but Grandma couldn't explain how with words... by then it was just something she did without thought.  So Mom said, "Well slow down so I can SEE what you are doing."  But try as she might, Grandma just COULDN'T slow down enough to show Mom without messing herself up!

I WISH I could have learned to tat from Grandma, or at LEAST have the memory of her TRYING to teach me!  Somewhere along the way, Mom gave me a couple of Grandma's shuttles, still wound with thread and a few of her pieces of tatting.  For YEARS I would look at these things and wonder...  It wasn't until the advent of the internet that I was able to find instructions and teach myself the basics of tatting.  It made my mom happy when I learned and she would be happy that I am working to expand my knowledge.  

And tatting makes ME happy because besides being an enjoyable pastime with BEAUTIFUL results when done well, it has provided me with a lasting connection to my grandmother.