Grandma Corrie

Grandma Corrie

I never called her that; she was just “Grandma” to me, my mother’s mother. The next generation down called her “Great-Grandma” and loved her dearly just as we of our generation did. But Grandpa Andy, who was living with us, always called her “Corrie” when she came to visit us in Indiana from her home in Dayton, Ohio. Very pleasantly he would ask how she was doing and then retreat to his chair; that was the extent of their interaction.

Really, I don’t know how “Corrie” should be spelled, since I never saw it spelled out. Her name was Cora Belle Oliver Hartman, although I never heard her called Cora Belle, nor did she refer to herself as an Oliver, her maiden family.

What fond memories I have of going to her house on Haynes Street in Dayton to stay for a few days. When my sister Judy and I were very young, we always asked permission to go to the bedroom beyond the attic room beyond Uncle Ira’s room on the second floor of the house. We scurried through Uncle Ira’s room so that we didn’t disturb any of his belongings, and then we scurried through the dark, windowless “attic room” that was just a storage area, and finally we arrived at the front room with a window that faced the street. We could look down at the stoop below us and out beyond the long narrow sidewalk that skirted the bigger house just to the front and side of Grandma’s house. But the room itself held our attention most: a daybed covered in a red and green and yellow flower-patterned chintz, a stack of old magazines (the fun kind like Life and Variety), and pillows to lounge on.

But we would also dream of the supper she would have for us, with a proper dessert like strawberry ice cream—unless it was summer, when the proper dessert changed into ice cream floats, made with Nehi crème soda. Nothing had ever tasted quite so good as those summertime floats. Sometimes, those summer evenings, if he were around, we would see Grandpa Andy, who had a section of the garage to live in, fitted out with a cot, a table, a heater, a light. Judy and I never thought about that being a strange circumstance. I don’t think at the time we recognized Andy and Corrie as husband and wife. They were totally different entities who lived in separate buildings on the same property.

On most visits to Grandma’s house, we were treated to a visit to her neighborhood shops. She would grab her rolling shopping cart that would hold the groceries and whatever treasures we might find, lead us out the back door, which she carefully locked (an oddity for us since our doors never had locks), and down the alley to the cross street. Two blocks on, we arrived at a street seemingly full of interesting shops. One was a shop that just held trinkets of all kinds. If we were lucky, and we usually were, Grandma would buy each of us a treasure. One which I kept till it broke was a black china mother poodle with her four puppies strung on a metal chain behind her. It was my best possession because I had an obsession with poodles at the time and because it had wrapped in it all the memories associated with Grandma and her house.

Do all Grandmas look alike? I’m sure at the time I thought so. Her brown hair was graying, but she kept it perfectly coiffed with waves in the back and a little roll at the nape of her neck. She never had bangs or fuzziness around her face; the hair swept backwards into that classic style, more associated with the 30s than the 50s when I first remember her. She always wore a spot of rouge on her cheeks and a little lip color, making her a glamorous grandma. But her most notable features were the deep dimples that were almost always apparent because she always seemed to be laughing or chuckling about something. And what a chuckle she had; it was pure music, like the tingling of a bell. Even when she was just talking, her voice lilted as if she were a bird about ready to burst into song.

But the best memories of Grandma are the ones where I took for granted her steady presence. When I graduated from college and found a teaching job in Dayton, Ohio, she offered to let me stay with her. No longer on Haynes Street, but a one-bedroom duplex on Old Orchard, Grandma really didn’t have room for me to stay, but she graciously gave her couch in the living room to be my bed. Night after night, the two of us would make up the “bed,” and most mornings she would tell me not to bother with putting away the covers; she would do that. This, of course, was after she had fixed a hearty breakfast for me and sent me off to school with that same lilting voice. Every evening she would fix a “supper” for us. I especially loved her chili and her mac-n-beef casserole. I’d never known anyone else who could cut vegetables in such uniform squares: every onion piece in her chili was exactly the same size as the next one I could find. I still have her original recipes for those two dishes with her handwritten comments. That distinct curly handwriting, so prim and proper, still makes me smile in remembrance of the great lady Grandma was.

I lived with Grandma the whole first year I taught in Dayton, Ohio. She never seemed tired nor grumpy. Surely my staying there was an imposition—she didn’t even have her living room to herself! But as I remember that year, we seemed perfect companions. She made my life so much easier than it otherwise would have been, and I saved money so that I could buy a car and afford an apartment the next year, an apartment just a few blocks away from her duplex. And every night I could recall my day while she remained the perfect listener and supporter.

I’ve thought lately about how fortunate I was to have lived with both my grandparents—Grandpa Andy when I was a teenager and Grandma Corrie when I was a young adult. I only had the two grandparents because my dad’s mother and father had died in the years before I was born. But to be able to live with two grandparents, to see them close-up at all times of the day and night, to see them, not as visitors or those I would visit, but as close family members who accept a person just because she is family—that’s a privilege that not all grandchildren have.

It took a few adult years and conversations with other family members to sort out some of the history that tore my grandparents apart, but, in reality, that hadn’t affected me much, if at all, when I lived with either of them—they were just beloved grandparents.

Ah, but those early—and late—memories of Grandma can never be wiped from my mind—even now I can see that lovely face with the deep dimples and hear that voice that was nothing but pure music and laughter.