She was born and raised in Minnesota at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. One day she rode her father's horse to deliver a message to her father who was helping out a neighbor in his fields. As luck would have it the horse was spooked by a snake, and young Ruth was bucked off the horse, hit her head on a rock, and knocked unconscious. Because she wasn't expected out in the fields, nobody looked for her until the horse returned to the barn riderless. She had laid unconscious for hours, and by the time they found her, was nearly comatose. Ruth recovered from her head injury to a point, but thereafter she was plagued by grand mal seizures--epilepsy. In those days epilepsy still had connotations of madness and possession, and her illness was swept under the carpet. "Poor Ruth isn't feeling well today," actually meant that she was laying insensible in bed with her tongue half bitten through. Eventually she was sent to a doctor, and took strong doses of drugs which helped with the seizures but had unfortunate side-effects.
In addition to the epilepsy, Ruth had symptoms of what is now known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Then one merely whispered, "Ruth is a little peculiar."
What amazes me is that even with these afflictions, Grandma managed to complete schooling and enter a chef's school where she was one of the few women in the nation to train as a pastry chef. Her OCD gave her cleanliness issues and by the time she was a newlywed she began rituals which worsened over the years.
Coming from a Scandanavian background, Ruth grew up drinking strong coffee. We've often wondered if her addiction to caffeine worsened her troubles, for she drank at least a full pot of coffee every day of her adult life. My mother and her three sisters still love their coffee, though in moderation, and all four of them are excellent bakers and cooks thanks to Grandma Ruth.
The tyranny of her mental ailments might have ruled her actions, but it never dimmed her determination or her creativity. She was an accomplished poet, and much of her work is rife with insight and sensitivity that is quite moving. She was a wonderful story-teller and had a great sense of humor. When I left South Jersey to spend a few months with my grandparents when I was twenty-three, nearly a decade since our last visit to Auburn, California, I soon grew to love and admire my singular grandparents. Grandpa had been a contortionist in vaudeville in his youth, then a journeyman carpenter and prospector. In lean times he worked as a cowboy and was long and lean, with bowed legs. His patience with my grandmother was simply amazing--a testimony to the power of love.
Grandma's "peculiarities" had gotten much worse by the time I arrived on the scene. My three aunts--my mom's younger sisters--each took me aside and indoctrinated me in how to live with Grandma. I knew to never put my purse on any furniture ("...because women put their purses in the street, where men spit!"), and to not wash the dishes, because Ruth would grumble and spend half the night re-washing them with water boiled on the stove and copious amounts of cleanser and bleach.
But they neglected to tell me one tiny thing.
I must preface this tale with the declaration that I tell it because it is so very funny, and that now that Grandma has passed over, and shed her physical and mental infirmities, she would probably laugh right along with us. While I have many positive memories of her kindnesses, her understanding, her frank sharing of her long and splendid life, this figures as one of the elements that defined her and if anything endears her to us even more.
You see, I woke up one morning to the smell of Grandpa's coffee. Grandma had spent the night in a cleaning ritual, taking everything out of the kitchen shelves, washing them with bleach, and putting everything back in the freshly bleached shelves. She usually slept until noon, though Grandpa always checked on her, every couple of hours, to make sure she hadn't had a seizure.
Grandpa was down in his workshop. I could smell the tang of his hand-rolled cigarettes that Grandma wouldn't allow in the house. A soft-boiled egg and toast sounded like just the thing to go with Grandpa "cowboy coffee," brewed by throwing grounds into a speckled agateware coffee pot and letting it boil until it frothed out of the spout. The family joked that you could leave a spoon in a fresh cup of his killer java and watch it slowly melt and sink, but with a lot of milk it wasn't half bad--at least when freshly brewed.
So, I took out a saucepan, filled it halfway with water, added an egg, and set it on the stove. Just as it started to boil, Grandma Ruth stomped into the kitchen, shrieked, tossed the pot and its contents into the sink and began to scour everything with Comet cleanser. She threw my poor egg into the trashcan with such force that it practically bounced out.
"Grandma, what's wrong?" I asked, stunned.
"You don't boil an egg in these pots," she said sternly. "My pots are for cooking good, wholesome, clean food!"
I think I managed to say "But, but..." and watched in fascination as she pulled a rusty coffee can out from under the sink, filled it with water, took a fresh egg out of the fridge and set it to boil.
"Now, THAT'S the way to boil an egg," she said with a grim smile of satisfaction.
"But, Grandma, why?" I dared to ask.
She looked at me as if this was proof positive that my mother had totally blown her job as my parent. "Don't you know?" she asked in amazement. "Don't you KNOW?"
"No, Grandma, I really don't."
"Just think where that egg has BEEN!"
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Comments: 13
STEPHEN: Thanks. Glad you liked it.
HEATHER: Thank you for writing that excellent piece about your Grandma Ruth. It sparked all these memories!
KATHLEEN: Thank you. She was a live wire, my Grandma.
DIANA: She really was a sweetheart, and drove us all to distraction, but we adored her!
CATHERINE: You betcha! I can just hear her!
CARL: Oops...sorry about that, Chief!
SUSAN: LOL!!!!!!! Hahahaha! Slutty chickens! Ack!!! [still giggling]