My Mama

My grandma, Mama, unexpectedly passed away on May 6. I've spent the last week in Mississippi attending her funeral, visiting family, and exploring my dad's hometown. I've returned to Portland a little heart broken.

There are a few things I'd like to remember about that beautiful lady. Mama was born in 1929 as one of 15 children (as you can imagine, the great aunt & uncle and cousin scene is out of control). Her parents were Henry and Addie.

She always said my grandpa, Papa, married her because of her hair (not true, of course), which was quite lovely. She had it "done" once a week and never had to dye it because it stayed blond her whole life. Mama also had remarkable blue eyes, soft & smooth skin, and pretty hands.

She and Papa kept a huge vegetable garden out in the country, and as a little girl I remember going out there with them to check on the harvest and pick what was ripe. We'd go back to the house and sit out on the steps off the kitchen shelling buckets of beans. She'd set a big pot of peanuts to boil for a snack.

For years they had a news paper route and I would beg to go with them on their early morning deliveries during our visits to Brookhaven. Mama was not a morning person, so sometimes I'd tag along to "help" in her place.

Her favorite color was green, and she kept the exterior of her house painted her particular favorite shade of green ever since I can remember. Her big, well-manicured backyard was bordered in the far back by a train track for Amtrak trains bound for New Orleans.

Inside, there was always something delicious simmering on the stove top or baking in the oven. She could cook like nobody's business, and made the best cakes I've ever had. When we'd go for visits, my dad would always pick up pounds and pounds of fresh shrimp in New Orleans and Mama would boil them up for huge family dinners and we would eat and eat and eat.

Mama always had a crystal bowl set out on the coffee table in the living room with chocolate candies, especially around the holidays, and I can remember my brother, cousins, and I would leave little foil wrappers discarded all over her house.

Every horizontal surface was covered with pictures of her family like a visual time line, ranging from when she was a little girl to the arrival of her great grand kids. The walls, too, were literally covered with her "pictures," or framed needle points, which she endlessly worked on. They were her art.

Mama loved sports, especially baseball and football. Papa taught her how to play baseball before they were married, and she's been a fan ever since. She loved the Atlanta Braves but, as I learned at the last Super Bowl, absolutely could not tolerate the New Orleans Saints.

She was a girlie girl, too. She loved, LOVED, to shop, especially with her sisters Rosie & Clara. Mama always wore make-up & perfume, and I think I was probably in middle school when she started sending me her Clinique make-up samples.

She was a talker and a storyteller, and could turn a 10-minute conversation into a 2-hour discussion on any old topic. Also, one always new precisely where they stood with her and exactly what her thoughts were on just about everything.

I will miss our phone conversations, her cooking, the particular smell of her old but well loved house, the flowers in her yard, the new clothes and accessories she would pick out for me, the occasional correspondence I would receive from her in response to one of my letters, and the comforting knowledge that she is just there.

She was an excellent grandma and will be missed.