Grandmother's Apron

I had one of the greatest grandmothers of all time.She didn’t pretend to know more than she did, she was a high school drop out…..she didn’t worry if her English wasn’t perfect, she grew up and stayed out in the “sticks”. She did like to get a “perm”, was proud that she still had her own teeth, and worried about losing weight, ‘cause that would make her skin loose. She didn’t worry about dust bunnies under the bed, spiders, or who was President……she knew who was President, it just didn’t worry her. In fact, she didn’t worry too much about anything. I don’t mean that she was slow, or silly, she just had a natural Zen type of personality.I started out calling her mamaw…..but based on a rare vanity driven request, we began calling her Grandmother.I can see her right now, in the kitchen. She wasn’t a cookie baking grandmother…she was a cornbread and peas with some kind of fried meat kind of grandmother. She put the ice cube trays in the closet, keys in the freezer. Everyone watched the oven, ‘cause the bread was going to burn. She wasn’t thrilled when she opened the refridgerator to find that she’d put the furniture polish in there, or when it took 30 minutes to find that her missing purse was sitting in the middle of the driveway, but she would always laugh at herself. She was the one person in all of my life, who I know loved me completely and unconditionally.Grandmother wore a large straw hat to keep the sun off her head and out of her eyes. She wore a red apron, to keep the flour off her house dress. I remember sitting out on the porch, one hot still afternoon, not far from the garden and watching her pick corn for supper…..Eating an apple, I strolled out to chat and perhaps help her pick a few ears…….I stood at the end of the tall rows of corn, and finished my apple, picked up a bucket sitting near for picking purposes and began chatting and picking. As usual, she was a sight in her large hat and red apron….Behind me I heard the snorting of the old whitefaced bull my grandfather had put in the fence near the garden. I was afraid of this monster as he was one of the biggest and most cantankerous in the herd. At the moment though, he munched grass oblivious to me.Grandmother wasn’t afraid of snakes, but she wasn’t stupid either. Today, I heard a whoop come out of her mouth that startled me and sent me scrambling backwards, losing my footing in the process…..she was right on top of me, having stepped on a snake and not seeing exactly what kind it was, she didn’t know if it was poisonous or not. She moved faster than I’d seen her move before. Hat and red apron flapping she dove out of the garden and leaped over me in one bound. All would have been well ……...... but the bull.When Grandmother whooped, he must have looked up to see what the commotion was…but when she dove out of that garden with the flapping red apron, he saw the devil himself coming to butcher him for hamburger….He literally jumped into the air, turned like a ballerina, screamed like a little girl and was gone . Only a dust cloud remained. The fence didn’t faze him, never looking back, he was a speck in the distance.My grandmother? She laughed ‘til tears streamed and I seriously worried for her sanity.


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