She really believed that we all have style and that we needed to find that. She didn’t talk a lot about herself, her legacy or how people will think about her, that wasn’t really her approach....The grandmother was Diana Vreeland.
She would invite me sometimes to have lunch with her. And she’d set up a card table in the middle of the office and the two of us would sit down and have our lunch. She always had a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich and a long shot of scotch and we would always have ice-cream afterwards.
ADDED: What does your idealized grandma wear to work and eat for lunch?
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I like the long shot of scotch part.
I guess bologna hadn't been invented yet.
Scrubs and crocs and hospital cafeteria junk.
She wore a bibbed apron pinned to her dress and we'd have eaten ham sandwiches and homemade chocolate cake. We would have talked about books. I miss her still.
And she wasn't idealized, she was just wonderful.
Interesting mind clutter.
Scotch with a PB&J?
Well, we know what killed her.
A belted print dress. She put on a sunbonnet when she worked outdoors. She had thoroughly cooked food at noon. I can still smell her kitchen.
My description (above) is what my grandkids saw when they joined me for lunch at work.
My own grandmother was always in a cotton apron, dress, crocheted slippers. Long gray braid twisted into a bun every morning, held in place with hairpins and and released from the bun to hang down her the back of her flannel nightgown at bedtime.
She would serve us thick slabs of homemade bread with butter and her own jam, made from rhubarb and Italian plums. Real coffee, mostly milk really.
My maternal grandmother was a dirt farmer who wore work boots, jeans, a denim shirt, triangulate kerchief in her hair and knee pads when she had to do the picking, all her adult life well into her 80s before she died in her early 90s.
All on a family farm near Boston they could have sold and lived comfortably on the proceeds for decades.
God rest her soul.
I hung on Vreeland's every word. She was not a pretty woman, but she had such style!
A belted cotton dress and a great smile. For lunch she usually fixed a mess of pinto beans and cornbread. The week I stayed with Papaw while she was visiting family elsewhere, I started off not knowing how long beans had to be cooked. Papaw never complained, but when Uncle dropped in to check on us, he very gently explained he liked cornbread fixed with a little more of this and beans cooked with that. By the end of the week my cooking was edible.
I spent the first 5 years of my life with the other grandmother and don't have a clue as to what she had for lunch. How odd.
Grandmother, when in the summer house in Tequisquiapan, (which is were we spent most of our time with her during our summer vacation), wore a huipil and long embroidered skirt or house dress. She never worked, unless you want to call raising 9 children work...I would. Lunch would be sauteed chicken livers, or maybe some left over roasted chicken or shirred eggs with a salad and fruit. Lemonade for us kids and wine for the adults.
My idealized grandmother would be one of these ladies!
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Style-Ari-Seth-Cohen/dp/157687592X
Really a cool book.
All of my grandparents had died by the time I was 6 years old and my memories of them are slim. I know my grandmother was tired and unhappy and difficult sometimes.
So...my idealized grandma would wear a print dress and make great biscuits. She'd have fried chicken and fried potatoes for lunch and some greens...maybe fresh sliced tomatoes in the summer. For dessert we'd have coconut cake and sit in the shade and sip tea while she told me stories from her childhood.
Now I want a grandma.
My utterly perfect--both ideal and idealized--grandma consumes a salad with tuna from a can on top, a glass of red wine and a lot of NPR every afternoon.
She usually is dressed a bit sloppily in knit pants and a sweatshirt, but we'll forgive her for that as she's had advanced MS and been without the use of one of her legs for twenty-five years.
EDH, I never met your grandmother, but I'll bet she would have been miserable anywhere but on that farm. No matter how much money she had.
lohwoman said...
A belted print dress. She put on a sunbonnet when she worked outdoors. She had thoroughly cooked food at noon. I can still smell her kitchen.
Yeah. That's my grandmother Alma. She mowed her 3/4 acre yard by hand well into he seventies. She liked raw onion on liverwurst for a sandwich and as far as know never touched liquor.
Now my grandmother Martella. Always dressed well. Enjoyed a Tom Collins with lunch in the summer and bourbon on ice in the winter. She liked to play scrabble using only dirty words.
My maternal grandmother was lived close enough for me to know her (instead of 2000 miles away). She too wore a pretty print cotton dress covered with a pinafore apron. I can't remember anything about our lunches, except for fresh veggies and fruits from her yard if it was summer and canned if it was winter. I do remember where she kept her candy dish, but was always disappointed that her favorite candy was horehound.
Aunt Bee.
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