Author's note: I was going to write about something else for this month but then I found these old pictures of Thanksgiving 1989 and just couldn't resist, it being Thanksgiving time. And since we were at my Grandma Syme's house, it has evolved to be about memories of her.
My Grandma Syme lived in Moroni which took 3 hours to get to when we lived in Logan and 1 hour to get to when we moved to Mapleton in 1991. From Logan we would drive to Springville and stay with my Grandma Baadsgaard for a bit then move onto Moroni for awhile longer. Although they were both kind grandmas, the experiences were very different. At my Grandma Baadsgaard's (mom's mom) the house was usually full of cousins from out of state plus cousins that lived nearby. It was a madhouse. At Grandma Syme's, we were the only kids. My uncle John lived in Moroni too but his 4 boys, my cousins, were all older than Matt so we didn't have anyone to play with. I remember being sad leaving the boisterous cousin party at Grandma B's but now I look back at the times my siblings and I spent at my Grandma Syme's as pretty awesome. We had no one to play with but each other. My older siblings had no choice but to stay with the family.
Grandma had a record player and a large collection of records. We liked changing the records more than we liked listening to them.
I have no idea who's baby this is. Probably a second cousin. This couch and the mega long brown vinyl couch across the room had hide-a-beds and that's where we slept. Well, I usually lost out and slept on cushions on the floor.
My sisters and a cousin maybe?
80's perms! I never had a perm.
This is my aunt Arlene. She's a great cook. Moroni is famous for their amazing funeral food (if you have a chance to go to a funeral in Moroni, take it!). She says it's because they have so many of them, they get lots of practice.
We played so many games there. Husker Du, Cooties, Go Fish. If you didn't say "Thank you" you had to give your pair back to who gave you the card. Grandma's rule. If we got bored of being inside, we ran across the street to the elementary school and played on the playground.
Seriously, who is this baby??
I know that's a cousin but I don't know which one, my uncle John, my grandma, dad, and brother Matt
Check out the console TV. I never knew how to work it.
This is my grandma and her sister outside her house. (We tried to climb those trellis things all the time.) She lived in Moroni all her life.
This is her 80th birthday party, 1988. If she were alive today, she'd be 112 years old.
We had another party for her at her 85th and maybe even her 90th. I wonder if she liked that.
These were always held at the senior center in Moroni and we invited lots of people I didn't know but seemed to know me.
She always set a nice table for Sunday dinner when we were there. Bowls of crackers and olives no matter what we were having. At Grandma Baadsgaard's I was relegated to the kid table or front porch to eat but at Grandma Syme's, since there were so few of us, I got a seat at the big table.
Memorial Day also meant Moroni. Bardella lived 16 years after my grandpa died, most of those alone.
Here we are waiting for Matt to leave or come home from his mission. I don't remember.
This is my dad as a teenager. I need to ask him if she always had white hair.
My grandparents, my dad and his sister Ilona.
This may be the ONLY picture of my grandma with a big smile. It's certainly the only one I've ever seen. I didn't recognize her at first.
Not until I saw this picture did I put it together. She must have liked my cousin Scott the best. JK
Wait, another smile! Maybe Matt's also her favorite.
This is Thomas' baby blessing in 1987 at our house in Logan. She would come to our house for Christmas a lot too. We showed her the movie Toy Story because we thought she'd be impressed with computer animation. I don't think she was.
I think of her all the time when I make a quilt. She nearly always had a quilt set up in the living room. She was a master piece-quilt maker and hand-quilter. I wonder what she'd think of these long-arm quilting machines now days. She made quilts and gave them away. All of us grandkids have one (mine is lost--I'll cry if I think about it too much). She also painted ceramics and landscapes (such as that painting behind her). I'm not as talented as her but I do feel connected to her whenever I do something creative.
She was so quiet. She couldn't hear very well, even with the use of hearing aids. Did that add to her quietness? As a child I was nervous to talk to her only because it was hard for me to speak loudly enough for her to hear me clearly and I was self-conscious about that. As I got older I got more confident but I hope she didn't think I was scared of her or didn't like her.
The last year or so of her life she pretty much lost her memory. I was 16. She came to stay with us for a few days. We would open albums for her to look at old pictures. She recognized my mom's sisters from photos 30 years ago but not me or anyone younger. I remember talking with her while she sat in a chair in the living room. She held my hand and patted it with the other. I could tell she had no idea who I was but wanted me to stay near her so we sat silently like that for a while. It was soon after she was moved to a nursing home and she died not too long after that. I didn't cry when she died or at her funeral. Sometimes I feel guilty about that. I lost her so gradually that by the time she died I felt like she was gone long before.
She was born in 1908 and lived 91 years. Can you imagine the things she saw in her lifetime? Introduction of indoor plumbing, electricity, automobiles, air travel, telephones, television, computers, vaccines, modern medicine. And the history! Rise and fall of the Nazis, cold war, civil rights movement, all the wars, all the things. I wish I could ask her about what she thought about it all.
But mostly I wish I asked her about how she and my grandpa met. Did she always want to be a homemaker or did she ever aspire to go to college or become a teacher or something? What did she know of her grandparents or her great-grandparents that crossed the plains? What was my dad like as a boy? Did a lot of things annoy her? A lot of things annoy me and I wonder if I get that from her. She always had cookies on the top of her refrigerator. I know I'll get that from her when I'm old.
