My Grandma Ray, My Other Mother

I grew up a child of the 1950s, in an era where it was not uncommon to live near your extended family. When I was a small child that was particularly meaningful, as I spent a lot of time with both of my grandmothers. My mother had her hands full with a houseful of small children (four of them under the age of 6 by the time she was 24 years old). That - combined with the fact that she wasn't too terribly thrilled by my unexpected birth - meant I was often sent to one of their houses.

In my memory, that wasn't a bad thing. And as I look back on my life, I consider it a privilege. Being able to be with them on a regular basis contributed much to the woman I became. My childhood memories are filled more with their care for me than of my mother. (And before you say, "Poor child," I don't consider that as a negative. I expect she was trying to cope the best she could with two kids in diapers and two older ones that had a propensity for getting into trouble. Going to either grandma's meant adventure - as well as a little peace and relief from my younger brothers and sisters. For some reason I don't recall they got to do it very much.)

772 Wheelock Parkway as it looks today. Those trees were planted by subsequent owners long after my grandparents died. The siding was white in those days, but about the time I was in high school it was painted the color it is now. Funny how the house to the right is the same color it's always been.

As a baby and a toddler I was sent to my Grandma Dewall's (more about her in this earlier post.) But once I was in grade school, my Grandma Ray became my frequent caretaker. That was particularly true once I started school at Farnsworth Elementary on Arcade Street. She and my grandfather lived just a few blocks way on Wheelock Parkway between Arcade and Walsh, so it was a short walk to their house. I often went there after school and my dad would pick me up on his way home from work. He worked for 3M, as he did for most of his adult life. The new headquarters in Maplewood was being completed, but the office he worked in (Abrasives) was still on Arcade.

My two grandmothers couldn't have been any different. Grandma Dewall was born in Sweden; Grandma Kate was born in the U.S. Grandma Dewall never finished school, coming to this country when she was about 16. Grandma Kate attended teacher's college and for a short while was an English teacher before she married. Grandma Dewall never left the Minnesota after she arrived from Sweden, but Grandma Kate traveled all over the country and the world. English was the only language she knew (she did learn a bit of Spanish once my grandparents bought a retirement home in McAllen, Texas on the border with Mexico).

But in two aspects they were the same: They loved me deeply and unconditionally, and they were eager teachers in the homemaking skills they feared I wasn't getting from my mother, since she was a 'modern' woman. They were both accomplished bakers, and I think a good portion of my childhood was spent being covered in flour in one of their kitchens.

This story is about my Grandma Kate, born Catherine Whannel. (My mother referred to her has Grandma Ray in front of us children; she called her 'Catherine' to her face.) I baked my first cake at the age of 7 in her small, narrow kitchen. It was a yellow cake with chocolate frosting (also made from scratch) for my mother's birthday. She was not impressed, but I was so excited to have made a cake all by myself that I think my excitement made up for the lack of hers.

I think baking my first loaf of bread came shortly after that. Bread baking day was always a treat, because I was given a slice off the end of the loaf right after it came out of the oven. Slathered in butter, it was one of my favorite snacks. I've baked hundreds of loaves of bread over the years, and I always cut off the heel and eat it while it's still warm. And I think of Grandma Kate.

In addition to being great bakers, both women were prone to an aggressive use of black pepper and cinnamon, and each of their spice cabinets consisted of not much more than that, along with salt and vanilla. But they both added plenty of love to whatever they cooked, and putting love into the food you made was something I learned very early on. It was a required ingredient in anything that came out of those kitchens. Neither one of them was very adventurous when it came to food. Mostly it was the standby comfort food - chicken pot pie, meat loaf, pot roast and the ubiquitous Minnesota "hot dish" - some kind of meat, some kind of noodle, and a can of Campbell's cream-of -something soup. But no matter what they served, it always satisfied the taste buds, the stomach, and the heart.

Grandma Kate's china cabinet was well stocked with Indiana Ruby Glass like this. I drank a lot of wine over the years in those glasses.

Grandma Kate also gave me my first taste of wine. I think I was about 12 years old. It was at a family luncheon at her house after the funeral service for my great-grandfather, Thomas Whannel, her dad. Grandma Kate was found of a somewhat sweet white wine called Liebfraumilch, a Rhine wine. I still remember that glass jug with the blue nun on the bottle. In fact, I think it was called Blue Nun. (Liebfraumilch in German means Virgin Mary milk, an interesting choice for a Protestant.)

After all these years I can still remember that table, with its blue and white ('Blue Willow,' I believe it was called) Chinese patterned dishes and the cranberry colored wine and water glasses.

Grandma went around the table pouring wine for the adults, and she set a glass in front of me. My mother about fell off her chair. She went white and grabbed my dad's arm. (She rarely had anything to say at Grandma Kate's house - she left any intervention or disapproval to my dad to handle.)

Side note: My mother and Grandma Kate did not get along well, and I have never found out why. Family rumors are sketchy, and at best I can tell it had something to do with my mother supposedly pressuring my dad to convert to Lutheranism when they got married. His parents were long-time members of the Disciples of Christ church, and even though that was also a Protestant denomination, apparently there were enough differences that to switch was almost heresy. But that's just a guess. I suspect there's a lot more to it, because the animosity seemed more on my mother's side than my grandmother's. Whatever was the cause of the rift, they both took it to their graves.

Dad mumbled something about my being only 12 years old, a little young for a glass of wine. She pointed out that if we lived in Europe that I would have been drinking wine for awhile by now, and it was better for me to learn how to drink wine at home. Kudos to my mother for not having a total meltdown over this; she came from a family of tee-totalers. Even the 'wine' in our Swedish Lutheran church was grape juice until I was a teenager.

But my days with Grandma Kate were filled with much more than cooking and wine. She had a variety of interests - passions, more like it - and she brought me into most of them. She was an avid nature photographer, and I learned to use a camera in grade school. I often went with her when she would do one of her slide show presentations at a nearby church or nursing home or garden club group. She had several of them, all centered on nature, and most of them incorporating a section from the Bible - Psalms in particular. The one that still stands out to me she called, "A Walk in the Woods with God." The slides documented the progression of the seasons in the woods around their cabin in Cotton, Minnesota. Nature photography still appeals to me, though I will never be the camera artist she was. Sometimes I wonder what happened to those stacks of slide carousels she kept in her basement. I expect my uncle Peter took custody of them - he has her gift.

Grandma Kate's influence in my life continued on into adulthood, even after my marriage and the birth of our oldest child. Sadly she died when I was pregnant with our son Andy. Jess was only a year and a half, so none of my kids got to know here. One of the last things she did for me was to knit a blue sweater for my baby whose upcoming birth had just been discovered. She asked me if I were sure it was a boy. I said I was convinced, so we went to buy a soft pastel shade of blue. She told me if it turned out to be a girl I must promise to dress her in the blue sweater anyway. I did, and it wasn't. Andy wore that blue sweater until it was so tight on him he couldn't move his arms anymore. She passed away four months before he was born, and it was difficult for me to admit that would be his only connection to her.

The rest of her story is for another day. Right now I feel the urge to sit down with my knitting needles and a glass of wine. No grandchildren waiting to be born, and there is only pink yarn in my stash, so I think one of my granddaughters is going to get a new sweater.