When Grandma came

A couple times a year, Mom’s mother would come to live with us. Her husband had passed and, having been sharecroppers, Grandma had no home. Solution: live a while with each of her eight living children. Mom had seven children, so Grandma was right at home with us. Sorry for Grandma that she had no home, but happy for me that she did not. I adored Molly Meadows Clark.

Her arrival itself was exciting. She traveled light — one suitcase with clothes — but she had a huge “satchel” that looked like a bag a doctor would have carried. In it she kept all of her medicines. The only one I remember by name was strychnine. I guess it was common back then. It is used in rat poison today, but I believe Grandma used it as a stimulant “to get my heart going.” Her satchel had a strong medicine smell that I’ll always recognize. Nowadays, my medicine cabinet is beginning to smell much like her medicine bag.

She looked like Mary Poppins — long black dress and lace-up, heeled black shoes. And she was not seen outside the house without her bonnet, except on Sunday when she wore her hat.

She told me that her family, the Philpots, owned much of the land in France where Paris exists now. Well, she said the land was worthless then, or as my Daddy would say, “good for nothing except holding the world together.” She added that it would be nice to own a couple of those acres now.

Barbara Ratliff, Oxford, Wake Electric