Grandma Lois
My Grandma Lois taught me how to sew. I spent a significant portion of my summers each year at her house doing my 4-H sewing projects, and those are some of my favorite memories of her. When I was working on something difficult and got frustrated, she would always tell me, "Try not to get discouraged." She never got upset at me when I made mistakes. She always stayed calm. One time when I was using a serger to sew a skirt, I caught a piece of the skirt under the blade and it cut the middle of the fabric. I was pretty upset that I had ruined the skirt, but she calmly assessed the damage and helped me come up with a way to salvage it. Another time, I tried winding a new bobbin by myself, but I forgot to wind the thread around the knob at the other side of the sewing machine. Without the tension the thread got wound around the bobbin in a nasty tangled mess. I thought she would be so mad because I had let it wind up for quite a while before realizing what I had done, but she just said, "It's okay, thread is cheap," and then showed me how to do it the right way. I don't think I've ever seen her get angry. She is a very patient person.
My grandma has always loved to be a mentor. She led a 4-H club for many, many years, and as part of that she was able to get to know many girls and encourage them to become more than they thought they could be. She still stays in contact with many of the girls who were in her club and she loves it when she finds out about their achievements. I've mentioned this before on my blog, but she stuck by me during some of the hardest years of my life and made it clear that she would not let me fail.
I always thought that Grandma was a very classy and well-bred person. She has always faithfully and lovingly tended to her garden. I think at one point someone said she had 100 rose bushes in Kimberly. You can tell if she's visiting because she wears this lovely perfume that smells like flowers and doesn't make you feel like you're suffocating if you get a whiff of it.
I enjoyed spending the night at Grandma's house in Kimberly. She had the best bathtub ever. It was huge and square, and when you were done taking a bath the towels were right there in the cupboard and they were nice and big and soft. The bathroom mirror was also fun because it had three sections with hinges and if you pulled the side sections to just the right spot then you could see the mirror reflect itself forever. There was a pole in the basement living room that we climbed a lot. Outside there was a well house that we would play on for hours, and there was a really awesome bush that had a little alcove in it that was great for imaginative play. I remember spending a lot of time mixing witches' brews and pretend soups in a plastic Halloween pumpkin there.
Here is some of the best advice I have received from Grandma (this was after Kevin cut Heidi's hair): "May I offer some unasked for advice? It has been my experience that it is not possible to reason with children before they reach the age of accountability. It is better to just keep the scissors or other offending objects out of reach. For the most part children want to please their parents, so when they do something wrong it is not their objective to make the parent unhappy. They are just curious and don't think about the consequences of their actions . . . I had learned that anger is never productive and focusing on making things better was helpful. Derald and I learned to just laugh about a spilled glass of milk and clean up the mess. Getting angry just makes it worse. Please all of you enjoy and treasure the time you have with your little ones."
Grammy Jenna
I think my siblings and I are the only grandchildren who call her Grammy. She heard about another grandmother whose grandchildren called her Grammy and decided that she wanted to be Grammy Jenna. For a few years she volunteered at the elementary school and the kids there called her Grammy Jenna too.
Grammy loved her family. I vividly remember a time when we went to visit her and we found her talking on the phone, obviously very upset. When she hung up the phone she burst into tears and said, "Oh, Gaylene, it's Rex. It's his heart." (Rex is my Aunt Colleen's husband, so my mom's brother-in-law.) I was startled to see by the look on her face how dearly she loved him. My mom said that when Uncle Ricky was killed in a motorcycle accident she packed up her bags and drove to Utah in the middle of the night to be with Aunt Marsha. I remember she loved hugging and snuggling my younger siblings, and she would sneak them tastes of ice cream even when they were just a few months old.
I can still remember Grammy's laugh. It was so joyful and genuine. We used to love to tickle her toes to get her to laugh.
Instead of saying, "Excuse me," if she wanted to get past you, Grammy would say, "Toot, toot!" She also would say, "It's time to put on your shoes and stockings." When we got to her house she would smile and exclaim, "Well who are you?"
Grammy worked hard her entire life. She went to school to become a nurse so they could make ends meet, and she worked nights a lot of the time.
We always loved sleepovers at Grammy's house, and we would fight over who got to sleep in her bed with her. I remember watching movies and getting pizza and lemonade from Maxie's Pizza.
We always watched General Conference at Grammy's house on Sundays, and we would have a nice dinner in between the sessions. I know there was always green bean casserole, and for dessert we would eat razzleberry pie.
Once when I was little, Grammy was babysitting Melissa and me while my parents were somewhere. She had some plaster of paris and she wanted to put our handprints and the date in it and give them to my parents. I was not going to put my hand in that nasty white stuff, and she had to chase me pretty hard before she eventually managed to catch me and get my handprint.
Grammy was very talented with crocheting. She crocheted the amazing dress that my sisters and I were blessed in as babies, and Heidi and Ann Marie were blessed in the dress too.
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