Ancestor Traits

It’s happening. I never thought it would, but it is. The older I get, the more I’m turning into the generations of my family that went before me. I think this is further proof in support of the genetic quality of “nature v. nurture.”

In some cases, things have skipped a generation. I note that I’m becoming my grandmother more and more.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

She embodies many admirable qualities which I sometimes don’t allow to shine in myself. She is unfailingly polite and nice, even to people she doesn’t care for. That group of people is few and far between, at least as well as anyone can tell because she seldom says an ill word about anyone.

In years past, I thought children rushed to her because of her personality; I now suspect it’s also now in part because physically she and the children are the same size. She’s lost about 4 inches of her claimed height of 4’11 and stands a mere 4’7. On a good day, she totters at 88 pounds. She is a tiny bird of a person, but with a spirit and personality that is much larger than her physical presence.

Until age and infirmity took it from her, Grandma was always the gardener. On the farm where she lived for almost 50 years, and where I remember spending substantial amounts of time growing up there were things green and growing everywhere. She saw the beauty in the symmetrical rows of corn and potatoes, in the bushy heads of cabbage, the yellow of a squash blossom, and the enormous leaves of the okra plants and pumpkin vines. She marked the milestones of the seasonal lives of these plants by bringing in evidence of the garden’s progress and bounty into the house to show my grandfather, who was a paraplegic from early in their marriage and for the last 45 years or so of his life.

Her soil-based prowess wasn’t limited solely to those things that could be harvested and put in jars of home canned goods in the cellar, either. Nearer the house, she struggled to make rose bushes bloom, shade trees thrive and flowers appear on the landscape. The harsh environment of western Oklahoma, very near the geographic center of the 1930’s Dust Bowl, didn’t afford a great deal of encouragement considering that water was a precious commodity to be used sparingly just to keep things alive, much less to encourage them to thrive.

A lawn was not even a consideration and the Bermuda grass that managed to stake out a hold was mowed as required, but was allowed to blend with the clover, chickweed, sandburs and other things that seemed to invade. Every summer evening, though, when the sun finally stopped baking the earth for the day, this tiny wisp of a woman dragged several hundred feet of garden hose from plant to plant, daily visits to friends who, like her human friends that were aging, depended on her for companionship as well as sustenance from the realities of climate.

I’m like her in that I got her gardening gene, although not especially of the vegetable variety. Instead, I see in myself her desire to work in the yard, to always add more, to move an ill placed shrub, or to change the landscape to achieve a particular goal. A small Japanese Maple, rescued from a construction site several years ago, moved four different times in our yard before finally finding the perfect place to call home.

Whenever walking through the yard or garden, Grandma’s hands are seldom idle. Should someone drop by to visit and find her working out of doors, they will soon find that work doesn’t cease just because they’ve graced her with their presence. It’s far more likely that they’ll find themselves picking tomatoes or harvesting zucchini while they chat, and then a large paper grocery sack of produce will go home with them.

I love sharing the starts and blooms from our yard with those who stop by to admire, sometimes random strangers who simply want to know where to purchase something they see growing at our house.

Sharing is another aspect of her life that I find I want to do, sometimes to the chagrin of the recipients of my bounty. The old joke about “how many zucchini do we have to take to get tomatoes” works on other things as well. I’ve been known to thin my iris plants and take off on a Saturday morning, driving through the countryside looking for other people who have iris of a color that I’d like to introduce to my yard. You just pull into the driveway, introduce yourself and offer to trade. I’ve yet to be turned down, and frequently have offers of others or different plants that I couldn’t see from the road.

That inability to stop moving, to be unable to sit and enjoy the yard and the beauty of the plants and the birds, is another gift (or curse) from her. I may sit in the shade to rest for a bit, but I soon look out and see a branch on a rosebush that needs trimming or where the cheet grass has invaded the flowerbeds. It won’t take a minute to pull those out, so my brain says, although in reality I find that it’s often hours later, my back is stiff from bending over for so long and I’m being directed to come back inside and engage with others, the day having slipped away amidst the greenery.

These qualities are ones that I get from my grandmother – or at least, I hope that I get them. I’m different, of course, in that I’m more prone to pull out a sharp retort than to ignore the slight. I frequently avoid people that I simply don’t like and at times have the W.C. Fields attitude toward children (“Go away, kid, you bother me”). Perhaps, however, that is the nature of time and evolution; we gather and embody those traits that are embedded in our DNA and allow them to mutate slightly.

Today is her birthday. It’s the first in 86 years that she’s not been around to celebrate, as her journey on this world ended last January. It was time for her to move on, as everyone – including she – recognized. Her mind had begun to shrink in on itself just as her body had been doing, so that the only acknowledgment that those who loved her were coming to say their last goodbyes a smile, and later just a blink, as she prepared to leave the prairie plain she’d lived on for so long and rejoin those who went before.

It is a testimony to how much she was loved that her family (most of her friends having already passed beyond) wanted to see her, “. . . just one more time,” before she left this life. She knew, though, and gradually responded less and less, as her hugs held on for just the right amount of time in both greeting and departure, easing the transition for those who remained behind. Her love and concern for others continued to her last moments on earth.

The world will have less beauty because of her departure. I’m thankful that I got to say my goodbye while she was still responding and have no regrets about not returning to Oklahoma for those last few days in the nursing home. Just before we parted for the last time, she left her dementia for a few minutes to say goodbye to me. Her eyes were the sparkling blue that I remembered from childhood, sharp and clear and unclouded by confusion.

Although it’s been almost a year, I still miss her. I hope that what was good in her will show as being good in me. So I plant the green things. And pull the weeds. And share the bounty with others.

And I wish her a Happy Birthday today.