Every winter, when our local family tends to hibernate like black bears; we emerge from spring shaking loose the sleep and extra pounds and wonder where the time went. To combat that boring patch of time we call January and February, we decided to gather and call it “I Remember Grandma and Grandpa Night”

Now, to be honest, this was something that my sister Audrey and my Aunt Ursie (I know, don’t you love the names in my family?) and I would gather on an obscure evening (hot, cold or in between) and wear something of Grandma’s, drink instant iced tea from these ridiculous aluminum bar glasses she had, eat braunschweiger on rye or pumpernickel (liver sausage to you lay people) and pop in “The Sound of Music.” Or if we were lucky, scan the odd channels on cable for an old (really old) episode of “‘The Lawrence Welk Show.” I can still hear Grandma ‘sigh’ as that blond god (Bobby? or Tommy?) would appear each week and smile, complete with dimples and twinkle, for the camera and begin to warble. Grandma would say in her still heavy German accent, “Och, vhat a bee-u-tee-full voice he hast.”

Right, Grandma! We got our number even back then. My aunts would twitter (the old term, not the new) behind their hands; while my dad and uncles would shift uncomfortably in their seats at the bar my Grandpa built in the basement. My Grandpa was usually obvious to her sighs (like most husbands, I think) and continued to serve shots of Courvoisier from its glorious and infamous canon. He was simply content to have his family around him every Sunday. He also sang every song during Lawrence Welk – much to Grandma’s dismay. In truth, they both had beautiful voices and sang in the church choirs, or should have.

Both Grandparents had quite a story to tell and we were fortunate enough to get that story on audio tape (all credit to Uncle Jack and Aunt Rose) fleeing Germany and leaving their families behind. While Grandpa’s family always saw life with laughter and took time to enjoy life, Grandma’s father was a taskmaster being a principal in a school. He made his children rise while it was still dark and light fires in the classrooms, and then clean is what she described as constantly. Because if they weren’t studying; they were cleaning or doing work of some kind. There was no leisure time, no hiking, no laughter.

Something happened when Grandpa retired – semi-retired – because he died at work in the middle of a busy day. Just as he’d like to go, I’d like to think. No long lingering illness for him. Hale and hearty George, with a smile on his face.

Upon retirement Grandpa pursued his new found passion for fishing which I suspect my Uncle Larry ignited within him. Grandma must have decided she would join him, for soon she cast off her awkward loafers and donned the classic white Keds. She kept her round lilac sunglasses from the sixties however.

Now, as my siblings and cousins read this, they are probably snickering or howling with laughter right now. Because my grandmother made her own clothes – house dresses, in reality – the same pattern – but in a variety of the cheapest, ugliest material the sixties, seventies and eighties could produce. If it had an off shade of orange or puce, Grandma was all over that fabric. If the purple looked more like rancid raspberries than loving violets, she carried that bolt of fabric to the cutting counter, adding up her savings in her head before you could move the wheel in your shopping cart to the next aisle.

So switching to the white Keds was a safe fashion choice, no doubt.

She went through more metamorphosis as time went on. She ate French fries – proclaiming them “absolute heaven!” She was a marvel.

As she aged and she needed a companion, we hired a stream of Polish caretakers. I’m not sure how well that was working, but the stories only improved Grandma’s street cred.

Grandma’s Polish was non-existent and Julia’s (the first caretaker) English was just a bit better than that. When the washing machine suddenly stopped working, Julia came upstairs from the basement babbling in Polish about it, my Grandmother took that to mean there was a man in the basement. Instead of calling the police right then and there, she waited an hour for the neighbor’s daughter to stop by her mother’s and call out to her announcing to the whole neighborhood there was a man in the basement. Betty, the neighbor’s daughter, showing extreme intelligence, said, “Get the hell out of there!” The police were called (not sure who called – that part of the story is unclear) and when the policeman arrived, Julia must have followed him downstairs, babbled to him in Polish about the washing machine. He most likely did his best nodding, most concerned look at this point; probably pushed a button and the washing machine sparked to life.

No man was ever found in the basement.

Another Polish woman made pierogies and my Grandma invited my sister Audrey over for lunch. Audrey thought they tasted a little funny, but ate them anyway. She asked Julia #2 what she used to cook the pieogies with, Julia #2, whose English was better, pulled out a bottle from the pantry, clearly labeled, Mineral Oil.

Which reminds me of when and why we decided she was in need of help around the house.

When I was seven or eight months pregnant with my son, I came over to have lunch with Grandma. She asked me to go downstairs into another pantry and bring up a can of fruit cocktail (oh yum! Can you hear the sarcasm?). Well, providence shined down upon me that day because when I got to the pantry, half a dozen cans were bulging. Bulging. Now, in my lifetime, being raised in a house of seven kids, never did we ever have a can bulging. Even now, as an empty nester, have I had a can that bulged in my pantry. I knew then we needed to address her medicine cabinets. God only knew what lay hidden there.

How this bottle of mineral oil was hiding in the kitchen pantry will forever remain a mystery.

There are more Grandma stories, but I will tell them to you tomorrow….