Memories of my Grandmother Luretta Hart Powers Hutchinson come to me more often as I myself put on the mantle of grandmotherhood. I remember my three-year-old self, walking the potato field with her, buck naked except for one grape leaf, talking and watching her skill at the task. I still remember her telling me to dig carefully so that I would not crush the potato. And I remember the magic of the moment when that beautiful, golden globe emerged from the soft earth.
I remember driving with her in her big old (always old) car down the long lane to get the mail. And I remember her calmness as one wheel skidded off the edge of the bridge we had to cross. Grandma was a terrible driver, but that didn’t stop her. Looking back she never seemed upset when something unexpected occurred. Acceptance. My grandparents lived in several houses during my childhood. Grandpa was always trying something to make a living: the coal mines, farming, a gas station, a repair shop. Nothing ever seemed to work for him. I remember one house they lived in with a wild and beautiful woods close at hand. Just the place for nine-year-old to go adventuring with her old yellow dog named Mike.
In her big old kitchen I can see Grandma patiently cleaning the chickens she had recently killed. She could wring a chicken’s neck lickety-split. If there was a crowd for dinner she could wring two at once. I remember the smell of singed pin feathers, hard to associate with the delicious meal that was sure to follow.
I remember, too, playing with my mother’s youngest brother, Clarence E., affectionately known as Shorty while the aroma of Grandma’s cooking made us drool He would talk me into sneaking into the kitchen and stealing a piece of chicken, thinking that Grandma would never suspect me, but knowing if he got near, Grandma would shoo him out. I always did as he wanted and was ignobly captured. She grabbed me from behind, chicken leg and all, laughing and warning me to keep my little fingers out of things. Warm chicken, warm kitchen, warm memories.
It took a lot to shock my grandma. It took a lot to get her angry. In fact, I saw her sad, happy, thoughtful and even in pain, but I never saw her angry. I can remember her sense of humor and her warmth, but never her anger. One Christmas Santa brought me a Betsy Wetsy doll, and when I diapered it, I was shocked at the "pumpkin pie" spot in the diaper. Yes, Grandma Hutchy had put it there, and I’m glad she had such a big laugh at my expense.
And the warmth: I remember coming in from a cold ride from the city and asking her to "fry me some milk” That was my term for her delicious gravy mixed with the hot homemade bread that seemed always to be popping from her oven. The oven was an old wood stove, always warm and always ready to produce her wonderful meals.
There was no coldness in Grandma’s kitchen. In her later years she lived in Somerville, Indiana, a very small town that time had passed once the coal mines played out. The town consisted of one small grocery, a bar and two churches. But rent was cheap, and Grandpa thought he could make a living doing repairs in the rundown shed attached to the old house they rented.
The floors, covered in linoleum, had been laid down many, many years previous. An old Victorian oak desk occupied one corner, and a stove stood in the center of the room. A Mission style couch and rocker were the only other pieces of furniture. Drab. Sad. But I remember the warmth. Grandma would sit at the desk on Saturday night, doing her Sunday School lesson, a kerosene lamp shining down on her gray head. When she finished, Grandpa would do his lessons. My Great-Grandma Hart would be rocking silently and safely in the corner. Sometimes Grandma would retire to the front bedroom to do some sewing. She mended for people and sewed her own clothes. She accepted her life without complaint and from this poverty radiated a great deal of the warmth I felt as a child.
Poor, she may have been, but Grandma’s kitchen was the richest in town. Neighboring friends would come in to chat, and Grandma always made them feel welcome. Her ear was the psychiatrist’s ear of that small town, and her greatest gift was the ability to listen.
I remember her deathbed. Acceptance. Peace and pain, fighting the cancer that took her life, that she might have survived had she taken care of it early. But true to her spirit, she put it off, saying, “I was worried about how Dad could get along without me.”
Mother cried and railed at the poverty in which my grandmother had lived, but Grandma lives in my heart and soul as though she had been as rich as the Queen of Sheba.
So what was her journey about? “... To accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God." I hope that she has passed a bit of her heroic wisdom on to me:
