![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today is my grandmother's birthday. She is 39 with 48 years' experience.
My grandmother is a wife for over 60 years.
She's also been a mother for 56 of those years.
She's a divine cook-- can kill and pluck a chicken, and turn it into the best fried chicken you've ever had. Makes a mean gravy, too, and maybe in 30 years I can match it. Flaky, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits, too. Cans tomatoes and okra and anything else she can grow in her garden.
Devout churchgoer like her more conservative parents (did I mention her first name is a variant on "Temperance"?), but recently switched to the Southern Baptist church near her home because her conservative congregation moved a ways outside of town. She would've joined my parents at Church of Christ, but "likes the pianer playin." (Church of Christ has vocal music only, no instruments.)
She used to be pretty socially conservative, but ever since she started wearing pants in the 60's, she's gotten quite a bit more liberal. Though we still haven't broken it to her that the nice young men across the street are gay. Or maybe she knows and isn't telling (that's pretty common in my family.)
Part of that is that her sense of humor has started to become more blatant-- she's no longer afraid to let loose an ear-twitching burp in a restaurant, or tell jokes that make ME blush-- she even brought a roomful of old women to screeching hysterical giggles at a bridal shower (for their friend who was in her 80's and marrying for the first time to her high school sweetheart).
She grew up a poor cotton farmer's child, and her dad pulled her out of school after third grade (his reasoning: she could read and write, that was more than he could do, and with that, she could pick up any education she needed later) and for what she started with, I think she's done pretty darn well. She's an enthusiastic member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Ladies' Auxiliary, can (and will) argue her point of view with anyone she thinks needs arguin' with.
The country girl still comes out when she's tired-- she'll talk about cleaning the dishes as "warsh and rench" and pretty plants are "fleurs," and a dozen or two other expressions none of which I can repeat here.
She has also decided, this year, that when she is 90, THEN she will be old. She's got a ways to go...
My grandmother is a wife for over 60 years.
She's also been a mother for 56 of those years.
She's a divine cook-- can kill and pluck a chicken, and turn it into the best fried chicken you've ever had. Makes a mean gravy, too, and maybe in 30 years I can match it. Flaky, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits, too. Cans tomatoes and okra and anything else she can grow in her garden.
Devout churchgoer like her more conservative parents (did I mention her first name is a variant on "Temperance"?), but recently switched to the Southern Baptist church near her home because her conservative congregation moved a ways outside of town. She would've joined my parents at Church of Christ, but "likes the pianer playin." (Church of Christ has vocal music only, no instruments.)
She used to be pretty socially conservative, but ever since she started wearing pants in the 60's, she's gotten quite a bit more liberal. Though we still haven't broken it to her that the nice young men across the street are gay. Or maybe she knows and isn't telling (that's pretty common in my family.)
Part of that is that her sense of humor has started to become more blatant-- she's no longer afraid to let loose an ear-twitching burp in a restaurant, or tell jokes that make ME blush-- she even brought a roomful of old women to screeching hysterical giggles at a bridal shower (for their friend who was in her 80's and marrying for the first time to her high school sweetheart).
She grew up a poor cotton farmer's child, and her dad pulled her out of school after third grade (his reasoning: she could read and write, that was more than he could do, and with that, she could pick up any education she needed later) and for what she started with, I think she's done pretty darn well. She's an enthusiastic member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Ladies' Auxiliary, can (and will) argue her point of view with anyone she thinks needs arguin' with.
The country girl still comes out when she's tired-- she'll talk about cleaning the dishes as "warsh and rench" and pretty plants are "fleurs," and a dozen or two other expressions none of which I can repeat here.
She has also decided, this year, that when she is 90, THEN she will be old. She's got a ways to go...
