Boosie

             

Somewhere, one of my sisters has a brown-shaded picture of my grandmother when she was 13.  This picture is different, but reminded of that picture and how beautiful my grandmother was.  No wonder my grandfather fell head over heals in love with her.   She was not a truly affectionate woman, but loved us all very much.  She had red hair, cut fairly short by the time she enters my first memory.  When we would go to visit as kids, my grandmother - we called her Boosie - would sit at the piano and play music while my best friend Becky and I marched around the living room with maracas in our hands.  It was pure joy.

The home they had was a beautiful colonial with a huge front porch, columns and a veranda across the full front upstairs. The grounds were beautiful.  They lived there from around 1925 until I was about 12 years old.  My mom and her sister grew up there.  Everything was grand.  A grand piano in the living room did not diminish its size.  The dining room was incredible.  There was a basement full of wonders for a young girl to explore.  A wooden swing on ropes hung from an enormous tree in the back yard.  I loved it.

My favorite time was to spend the night with Boosie and Dearie. I would sleep in the great big (to me) double bed that was my mother's as she grew up.  My grandfather always tucked me in and gave me a sweet kiss good night.  In the middle of the night, he would come get me up to go to the bathroom.  Mostly, I noticed the small black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor.  The seat was always chillingly cold. I lay in bed listening to the ticking of the grandmother clock hung on the wall in the stairwell.  It was comforting for me.  One day I'd like to have one just like it.  It was the only thing in the house called grandmother.

 She never wanted to be called grandma or grandmother.  A solution came when a neighbor child could not say her name - Ruth or Ruthie - and said Boosie instead.  It stuck.  Since my grandparents always called each other dearie, my grandfather became Dearie.

My grandmother was a proud woman.  She had been the daughter of the mayor of her hometown.  Her mother died when she was young so as she reached her teens, she became the hostess at political functions for her father.  It must have been a very grown-up thing to do.  She always insisted that we speak proper English, correcting us as we spoke.  She insisted that education was the only way.  Many years later, when I was about 21, she found out that I was a smoker.  I remember to this day what she said:  "Oh Penny!  You smoke?  I had so hoped one of you girls would be nice."  I felt shamed to the core. 

This woman was an amazing influence in my life.  As she got older and sicker and the money ran out, she had to go into a nursing home.  She never lost her dignity.  She hated the nursing home, but insisted on being clean, her room neat and having proper nightwear in case she had a visitor.  Her death broke my mother's heart.

As I search the Internet for my family's history, I remember her with a soft warm feeling in my heart.  Along with my mother, my grandparents helped to bring Christ into my life.

Blessings to you all this Sunday,