A Brief History of My History.

I’m one year younger right now than my maternal grandmother was when I was born, in 1960. She was the youngest of my grandparents, and she was also the last to die, at age 90 in 2002. She was born in 1912, the same year the Titanic sank. My paternal grandmother died in 1990, also at the age of ninety. She was sixty when I was born, and in 1900, the year she was born, heavier than air flight hadn’t been invented yet. She was one of the few people I ever talked to who remembered the first airplane she had ever seen. She was one of the last people to live with parents who had never owned a car, nor had ever flown.

 My paternal grandfather died long before I was born, when my father was just a child. My maternal grandfather died when I was ten years old, in 1970. I don’t remember much about him. He was one of the first people to die of smoking related disease back when the tobacco companies were still successfully arguing that there was no link between smoking and emphysema and cancer. He died slowly, and my grandmother was forced to turn their bedroom into a hospital room. Mostly, I remember the tubes oxygen tanks, and him coughing.

 My earliest memory of one of my grandparents would have to be of my paternal grandmother walking with me when I was three or four. I am told that I couldn’t possibly have the memories that I remember but they are there nevertheless. It is possible that they don’t exist, I will admit that, because I also have the memory of seeing a unicorn. I know now that unicorns are mythical creatures but the mind of a child of two or three doesn’t see the world as an adult does. A child that young doesn’t have the past references for identification that adults do and whatever I saw, my mind leapt into action to describe it as the creature I had seen in books.

Books were something we always had a lot of. We had hundreds of books, including a set of encyclopedias that, in my mind, were magical. It seemed almost subversive that the information they contained might be given away for free. I remember the photograph of a Hippopotamus that showed the animal standing not in water, but a field of tall dry grass. The sky in the photograph was darkly overcast. To this day, more than four decades past when I saw that first picture, whenever I see tall dry grass, or an overcast sky, I think of the hippopotamus.

My birthtown of Cuthbert Georgia which is in Randolph County, was, and still is, a very small town. I distinctly remember the statue in the town square. I had not been to Cuthbert for decades but in 1996 I went there as part of a survey team. The statue was still there, and it was still as I remembered it, even though I hadn’t seen it since 1964. It was an odd feeling to drive through a town that held my most ancient memories.

I remember my grandmother walking with my older sister and I down the same road the statue stands. She held both our hands while we walked to keep us from darting out into the road; I remember that she feared that. She would buy a single small coke (that was six ounces I believe) and when we got home, she would split it between the two of us. Later that year my little sister was born, and I remember very little of that other than a stranger stayed with us that night. The earliest memory of my maternal grandmother was that of her in the farmhouse where her and my grandfather lived. The house had a very distinct and sharp odor to it that I always liked. To a child my size the farm held giant cows, giant machinery, and a barn so big it looked as if Noah’s Ark might fit inside. My maternal grandmother was always more religious than the rest of the family, likely because her father was a preacher.

For a short time in my life I did have one great grandmother on my mother’s side of the family. I remember her mostly as a confused and elderly woman who had serious problems getting around and terrible problems remember those people around her. She never could seem to fit me into the reality in which she dwelled, and for reasons that escaped me, seemed preoccupied with what time of day it might be. It bothers me that I do not remember what year she died or how old she was.

 My paternal grandmother stopped driving when she was in her fifties. Partly because she was too broke to own a car and partly because she never felt comfortable driving. My maternal grandmother lost her vision when she was in her seventies and my mother took her car keys away from her. My paternal grandmother remained mobile until then end, but my maternal grandmother became less and less agile as time went on. She spent her last years feebly trying to get around, and usually failing. Both my grandmothers experienced a loss of lucidity towards the ends of their lives, more so my maternal grandmother.

A few years before she died she and I carried on an hour long conversation where she thought I was someone named Fred, who had a farm, and three daughters. We talked as neighbors would talk; about the weather, and about farm things. At one point she leaned towards me, and asked in a low voice, “How did that problem work itself out, Fred?” It was the question of a concerned neighbor, asking about some dark event, or happening, and she would not ever have asked openly about it, whatever it was. I reassured her that all was well, that everything had been taken care of, and that seemed to ease her mind in no small way. I wonder how old she was in the time frame she had reverted to, and how close I am now to that age. At the end of the conversation her world disappeared, and the future burst into her mind like a frightening flash of light. “Now, “ she said to me, leaning on my arm and trembling “ who are you again?”

Take Care,

Mike