The following is a narrative authored by my sister Diane entitled "Memories of my Grandmother Neva Phillips Finch and Grandfather Frances T. Finch
Grandma was a tall woman who had a round, protuberant stomach, and flat chest, dentures and glasses. She loved to cook and I used to spend hours sitting next to her on a special stool, watching her deftly cut up apples when she was baking apple pie.
She was known far and wide for her amazing relishes. She used to send me down to the cellar to pick out a few jars of summer produce she had put up the previous season. Beautifully colored contents in jars--rows and rows of them. But her real love was gardening. I learned many flowers and their names from the time I spent with her--petunias, different varieties of roses, morning glories and marigolds, among others.
She cherished the kitschy stuff she and Grandpa picked up from their travels on vacations to Florida, dust catchers on display, encrusted with little tiny shells and sparkles and the word "Florida" inscribed in curly script. Their bedroom was all hers--purple and fluffy, with a fluffy rug on the floor and matching everything. It smelled like perfume and I used to sneak in there and inhale whenever possible.
On the back porch was a wooden swing suspended from the underside of the ceiling. I spent a lot of time there reading and swinging. Sleeping arrangements for our family were all upstairs in one room, hung with filmy white curtains at the windows that flapped gently in the breeze. Hard to sleep on such a lumpy mattress next to my sister.
I remember waking up to the sound of many roosters crowing from various neighbors, when it was still dark outside. Wishing I could shut them up and sleep. The drone of distant planes.
I remember some amazing meals, with the table groaning even with a leaf or two added, especially those Sunday dinners. I ate until I felt slightly sick. Grandma believed in big breakfasts with lots of protein. I used to watch her and Grandpa use tiny saccharine pills from a tiny bottle to sweeten their coffee.
Grandma's laugh was unlike any I have ever heard, a dry rusty sort of laugh, passed down to all her female blood relatives (as I discovered later at a family gathering). Grandma used to keep stacks of old magazines under the bed in the spare room, some of which had paper dolls in them along with their clothes, which I was allowed to cut out and play with.
I used to skip down the road and visit cousins, Karen primarily. She had Barbies! Donna was not around much. Cheryl was older than I and had other interests so we didn't interact much as friends. There were a couple of ponds up the hill on the property, and I used to go up there and catch frogs and listen to them plop in alarm to safety, or even to sing. There were also wild blueberries that I ate my fill of when they were in season.
Grandpa kept ornamental pigeons and other fowl in a shed next to the house and I would go inside and watch all of them go into a tizzy, flapping and squeaking in alarm. Tried to make friends without success.
The front porch had an old screen door that made a sort of sproinging noise when you opened it into a sort of mudroom where Grandma kept all her gardening pots and tools. It always smelled good.
I was scared to go into the cellar because the stairs were so tall and steep and had no backs, just empty spaces. Took me a long time to conquer my fear. I also remember playing inside on the stairs leading up to the second story, peering through the railings at the grownups below and eavesdropping on their conversations.
Grandpa painted primitive scenes of American Indians in their natural surroundings in the woods, on horseback, etc. One wall in the living room was covered with them. Grandpa used to scare me a little because he had such piercing icy blue eyes. I felt he could see into my soul, so I tried my very best to be an angel while there. Grandpa also had acid reflux disease and suffered terribly with it after every meal. No wonder he was so skinny in later years. He walked with a cane. Wore glasses.
Grandma was very skilled with a crochet needle, using the smallest needle and the thinnest thread to turn out crocheted masterpieces, some big enough for a tablecloth. Always busy with her hands. She was the first person who taught me how to shell peas and shuck corn. Eating plenty of those raw peas as I went along, of course! Wild strawberries grew in the grass above the house and I made a beeline for those, let me tell you! That's when strawberries really tasted like strawberries. She fed the birds and put the bird feeders right outside the house on the patio in front of the big picture window in the dining area so she could watch them all day long.
Grandma would always remark how much I had grown since the last time she had seen me. She would put her hand under my chin and look at me. Many times I got carsick on the journey to see them. My mother took a picture of me in the early 60's, standing stiff as a ramrod by the bird bath on the side of the hill. I remember her taking it, and trying to make myself look taller for the picture.
Grandma put her hair up and used white bobby pins and a white hairnet. I never saw her with her hair down, but knew she had very long hair. She always wore an apron, sometimes just around the waist, sometimes all the way up and tied around the neck. Always pretty and feminine and interesting. Her clothes I remember as being pretty severe and boring.
I remember Grandpa reading a lot. Always religious material, mostly the Bible. I remember him praying for me and surreptitiously crying because I wanted to be so good and felt I fell so far short.
Steep gravel driveway around the side of the house and then leveling off and curving and coming to a stop right in front of the doorstep. Always excited to see them, and in later years, Grandma only. I can walk through every room in my mind and tell you all the furniture that was in that house, and where it was placed. I can tell you about the favored chairs for sitting and what they looked like and where they were placed in the living room. I can tell you about the carpet on the floor, and the linoleum in the kitchen. Treasure trove of candy upstairs in Uncle John's room--when he was home, sometimes he shared some.
Grandma put up with too much in Uncle John, who was mentally ill and much stronger than she. He called her "Big Mama" and swatted her behind, which she hated. He spent a lot of time sleeping on the couch. After she had her series of strokes and was bedridden, in order to communicate, she wrote names of relatives on a piece of paper, and pointed to them--very smart.
My last memory is sad--she was unable to be cared for anymore in her home, and the paramedics were at the door to take her away. She didn't want to go, was crying, couldn't talk. She was on the stretcher. Every room she was carried through she grabbed the side of the doorway with her hands. They pried her hands off. Then they would go through another doorway and it was repeated. She knew she was never coming back. It was heartbreaking and every affecting to me as a child, to see a grownup so helpless and unable to fulfill her wish to die in her own home.
Overall, those were innocent times, and I look back on them in fond memory, nostalgia and love. I am writing these things down for you, my dear family, so you can know a little bit about them as real people, not just names on your family tree.
----Diane Bush Bradbury, October, 2013------
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