grandma's house...
Sep. 4th, 2002 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafishDad went and listed my grandmother's house in Whittier with a realtor today. This is wrenching to me; the old house where I spent several weeks of each childhood summer is going to be sold. I wish I could afford it, but it's really too small as it is. Plus summers up there are hot. But what a view. It's partially obscured by taller buildings now, but I remember so many summer evenings looking out over the city lights south to Long Beach and Buena Park. You could see the parachute tower at Knott's if you looked closely; with a pair of biniculars you could pick out various other landmarks. Palos Verdes loomed, sparkling in the evening air, to the southwest. My grandmother had a tiny fenced backyard where she trained dahlias and roses on the fence. She could make almost anything grow. A tree shadowed half of the grass; sometimes we'd lie on our backs looking up at the planes heading for LAX. The planters were lined with odd rocks and abalone shells my father had caught as a young man. There were fruit trees lining the brick parking area in front of the garage, and beside the garage she grew tomatoes every year.
Grandma was a petite but fiesty woman, born before most people had cars, and twice divorced in the forties, long before it was fashionable to do so. She raised two active boys by herself and saw them join the Navy in WWII, waking up and screaming in the middle of the night at the same moment my father's destroyer (affectionately known as a "tin can") was hit by a kamikaze.
I didn't realize when I was a child, but my grandmother composted. To her, it was "feeding the worms." She always kept a little can or plastic bag by the sink for vegetable scraps and after dinner we would take them out to a hole in the ground, dump them in and add a little soil. When I spent part of summer vacations with her, she would collect several battered old straw hats, get the fishing poles out of the garage, pack some sodas and sandwiches in a cooler (with a couple of Ralph's Plain Wrap beers for herself), and we would go back out to the hole by the garage to dig up the fat brown earthworms. We would fetch the leashes for her two or three yappy miniature pinschers (she had a sucession of them and they were always fat as toads) and herd them to brown Impala. We often went to Legg Lake, to sit on the bank and drown the worms. I learned to bait a hook at an early age, and I believe she first taught me to cast. More often we would feed the ducks stale bread, and giggle at the feel of their beaks on our fingers.
The house was built in the '30s, pale green with two narrow gables in the front, perched at the top of flight of concrete stairs that my grandmother was always sure the trick or treaters were going to kill themselves on every Halloween. Another set of steps led down through five foot retaining wall to the street. There was a tiny window in the front door with an iron grate on it which she would open to let a small breeze in. The interior was textured peach-colored plaster, and the walls arched up to the ceiling instead of making a 90-degree angle. Above the kitchen sink was an opening into the next room that had once been a window before she and my grandfather added on a room.
At Christmas she strung lights down the iron railing of the front steps and brought in her potted fir tree (or had my grandfather bring it in). She was the first one I knew to have a tree in a pot. After my grandfather passed away, it was too big to bring in any more. Several years after it was planted in the ground at the side of the front yard, she decided she wasn't going to buy a tree that year. I was visiting and I helped her cut off one of the large lower branches. We mounted it in her christmas tree holder, and it made a unique presentation, as if you had taken a regular tree and pressed it flat. It was big enough for most of her decorations. Later, she gave me most of her ornaments. Most were worn and half broken, but I still treasure a small cobalt blue glass ball you can close your hand around, made of very thick glass with a brass button on the top to hang it. It's very heavy for its size - not like the fragile glass bubbles you buy today. I believe she said it belonged first to her mother or grandmother. When M. saw it, she immediate gauged it with her antiquer's eye, and jokingly offered me 50 cents for it. "I don't think so," I replied calmly as I hung it on my own tree.
The grounds of the house got too steep for her to take care of, as she entered her ninth decade. The neighbors asked her to water some pots on their porch while they were away. She slipped on the steps and broke her wrist and scraped a huge chunk of flesh off her leg. That was the last straw for my parents who had to travel an hour each way several times a week to take care of her affairs. They found a senior apartment in Fountain Valley for her where she could still keep her one remaining dog, and moved her there under duress.
She had a small patio and grew so many plants in pots it was difficult to get to the gates between the residents patios. It was frustrating to her that she got no sun there and the sprinklers turned on every night, making it far too wet for her taste. She still took her dog for walks every day, although roughand bumpy surfaces made it difficult for her to walk. One day the building management said something about needing to get through the gates, and Grandma was out on her patio trying to pull some ivy off the gate she feared was in the way. She slipped and fell, snapping off her femur from her hip joint, and lay there on the damp ground for two hours before an upstairs neighbor heard her calling for help. She spent the next 10 months in a nursing home, bedridden. Family members gathered there for her 100th birthday in April, but she was less and less lucid every time we saw her, though she enjoyed seeing her great-grandsons. I think she was only hanging around to see her first great-grandaughter, who arrived last August. She was always partial to girls, since she had none of her own.
Grandma passed away last October. Now that her house is going, I feel like I'm going to lose a big chunk of my memories of her.
I miss you, Grandma, with your snappy little dogs and argumentative demeanor.
Grandma was a petite but fiesty woman, born before most people had cars, and twice divorced in the forties, long before it was fashionable to do so. She raised two active boys by herself and saw them join the Navy in WWII, waking up and screaming in the middle of the night at the same moment my father's destroyer (affectionately known as a "tin can") was hit by a kamikaze.
I didn't realize when I was a child, but my grandmother composted. To her, it was "feeding the worms." She always kept a little can or plastic bag by the sink for vegetable scraps and after dinner we would take them out to a hole in the ground, dump them in and add a little soil. When I spent part of summer vacations with her, she would collect several battered old straw hats, get the fishing poles out of the garage, pack some sodas and sandwiches in a cooler (with a couple of Ralph's Plain Wrap beers for herself), and we would go back out to the hole by the garage to dig up the fat brown earthworms. We would fetch the leashes for her two or three yappy miniature pinschers (she had a sucession of them and they were always fat as toads) and herd them to brown Impala. We often went to Legg Lake, to sit on the bank and drown the worms. I learned to bait a hook at an early age, and I believe she first taught me to cast. More often we would feed the ducks stale bread, and giggle at the feel of their beaks on our fingers.
The house was built in the '30s, pale green with two narrow gables in the front, perched at the top of flight of concrete stairs that my grandmother was always sure the trick or treaters were going to kill themselves on every Halloween. Another set of steps led down through five foot retaining wall to the street. There was a tiny window in the front door with an iron grate on it which she would open to let a small breeze in. The interior was textured peach-colored plaster, and the walls arched up to the ceiling instead of making a 90-degree angle. Above the kitchen sink was an opening into the next room that had once been a window before she and my grandfather added on a room.
At Christmas she strung lights down the iron railing of the front steps and brought in her potted fir tree (or had my grandfather bring it in). She was the first one I knew to have a tree in a pot. After my grandfather passed away, it was too big to bring in any more. Several years after it was planted in the ground at the side of the front yard, she decided she wasn't going to buy a tree that year. I was visiting and I helped her cut off one of the large lower branches. We mounted it in her christmas tree holder, and it made a unique presentation, as if you had taken a regular tree and pressed it flat. It was big enough for most of her decorations. Later, she gave me most of her ornaments. Most were worn and half broken, but I still treasure a small cobalt blue glass ball you can close your hand around, made of very thick glass with a brass button on the top to hang it. It's very heavy for its size - not like the fragile glass bubbles you buy today. I believe she said it belonged first to her mother or grandmother. When M. saw it, she immediate gauged it with her antiquer's eye, and jokingly offered me 50 cents for it. "I don't think so," I replied calmly as I hung it on my own tree.
The grounds of the house got too steep for her to take care of, as she entered her ninth decade. The neighbors asked her to water some pots on their porch while they were away. She slipped on the steps and broke her wrist and scraped a huge chunk of flesh off her leg. That was the last straw for my parents who had to travel an hour each way several times a week to take care of her affairs. They found a senior apartment in Fountain Valley for her where she could still keep her one remaining dog, and moved her there under duress.
She had a small patio and grew so many plants in pots it was difficult to get to the gates between the residents patios. It was frustrating to her that she got no sun there and the sprinklers turned on every night, making it far too wet for her taste. She still took her dog for walks every day, although roughand bumpy surfaces made it difficult for her to walk. One day the building management said something about needing to get through the gates, and Grandma was out on her patio trying to pull some ivy off the gate she feared was in the way. She slipped and fell, snapping off her femur from her hip joint, and lay there on the damp ground for two hours before an upstairs neighbor heard her calling for help. She spent the next 10 months in a nursing home, bedridden. Family members gathered there for her 100th birthday in April, but she was less and less lucid every time we saw her, though she enjoyed seeing her great-grandsons. I think she was only hanging around to see her first great-grandaughter, who arrived last August. She was always partial to girls, since she had none of her own.
Grandma passed away last October. Now that her house is going, I feel like I'm going to lose a big chunk of my memories of her.
I miss you, Grandma, with your snappy little dogs and argumentative demeanor.
b onna sez - go take pictures!
While it is not the house itself you at least still have the final pics to remember everything by.