Ok, tonight we’re gonna have a little writing assignment. Hands in the air now ...
Who remembers the worst thing they ever learned when researching their family?
Now ...
Who remembers the best thing about their family?
Now weave them both into a story. 500 words or less.
You may begin.

Jeez! I hate these stupid, spontaneous, in-class assignments.
What does this guy expect? We’re a bunch of card carrying elite of the writers writers’ guild? I never expected this adult ed. stuff to include this kind of thing.
What’s he gonna do? Sit there and count the words?
Hah ... right! Fat chance.

He’s up there watching the pencils scribble, thinking he’s got the world in the palm of his hand. I’ll tell you one thing. He’s in for a surprise when he gets to my paper! It’s already got some mighty fine doodles circling the edge. Go ahead and read them hieroglyphics!

I wonder what everyone else is writing?
There’s Cathy over there. Bent over her desk, head down and looking for all the world like a frantic novelist with a 5 o’clock deadline.
My ol’ buddy, Don, just glanced over and gave me the high sign. His old man always worked at hard labor but that’s not the place for Donald. I can tell you that right now. He’s got a way with words. I bet he’s gonna ace this.

I was thinking about saying something about my grandmother. I dunno though. She’s dead now.
Died in 1989, I think, but I’d have to look that up to be sure. It was December 1st. I do remember that. Man she was something else. Got a little looney in her old age, but never really lost it. Know what I mean?
Although there were a few episodes of her trying to run away. Back to the farm when she had been moved to my mom’s house for her own good. Said she was going ‘over home’.
It would have been a good 5 mile hike, and there she was. Bent frame, and hands outstretched just a bit for better balance. Sneakers on, and headed down the shoulder.

Always wanted to be outdoors. Farm raised country girl. What she wouldn’t do for others.
Always had the old tin in the cellar way topped off with those molasses cookies. Nah ... not them fancy sugar dipped or rolled ones. Just the big ol’ soft dropped kind.
Cold glass of milk and one of those could keep you going til suppertime.

She cooked on one of them woodstoves with the warming cupboards on the top, and a plenty big oven down below. Had one of those little gas jobbies later on but never took to it.
She always called her cast iron frying pan a spider. I never knew where the heck that came from. No one else I knew ever called it that.
She called a water glass a tumbler too. And kept the teaspoons in a cut glass holder, right on the table.

She could make a pie hold more filling than anyone I’ve ever seen. Sit and peel apples, and slice them right into the crust. Nice and thin, and stacked like cordwood, with a satisfying mound in the middle. Just room enough for the sugar to sift down through.
God the pies that woman made in her life. No matter what season it was, there was always pie.

I told you she liked to be outdoors didn’t I? Hah ... and here I am keeping her in the kitchen!
Well I guess she did both. But when it came to the outdoors, she was a free spirit if ever there was one.

When I was just a kid, I went with her once. Now I wasn’t the world’s best berry picker, but I think I was sent along so she wouldn’t be alone. I didn’t know that at the time, but funny how things come around in a different light after time has settled them.
Off we went, headed for the River Road. Old Rambler revved up, with Gram gripping the wheel - a grin on her face. She was short. She might have even sat on a pillow. I don’t now know if I remember that right or not. Anyway, she was headed to see if there were any cranberries, and no one was in her way.

Now cranberries, you see, grow in the bog. I’ve seen them harvested on TV, and those folks got waders on, with water 'most waist deep'. We didn’t have any such equipment. Maybe wild cranberries are different. Really couldn’t say.
We found our way around the bog, and she amazed me because she seemed to know just where to look, and where to step safely. I don’t even remember if we found any or not. I think it was not ...
... but this was a long time ago.

I guess the part that stuck with me most, was a sense of her.
What she knew. How she used it. She was an amazing woman. Strong willed and stubborn, and fiercely proud but not outspoken.

I wrote a little poem about her a while back. Funny that she’s come up in my mind again today.
Well ... maybe not funny. You see, Gram was adopted. I never knew this when she was living, and Lord knows it never came up at the dinner table! My mom told me. Not that it ever made a bit of difference to me. She had been taken in as just a baby, and raised by a real good family.
There never were any clues to her origins, other than a hint that she had been born in a town some 30 miles or so distant. I wonder if she ever felt like a replacement, though? Since I started this family research stuff, I learned that her adoptive parents had just lost a baby girl a year or so before. There were two older brothers but no more babies after that.

I sure never thought twice about her fitting in to my family tree, or even the family that took her in either. She was my grandmother, and she had 9 other grandkids to boot.
I mean ... just what is family, anyhow? Didn't she inherit her mother’s parlor set, best bedroom furniture, and her wedding dress too? Do those things have any less meaning because this woman didn’t happen to give birth to her? Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t think so.

Maybe Gram was restless, and sought the freedom of outdoors because she didn’t feel like she belonged. I never much considered this that aspect.
She’d never complain though. Like I said. She was strong. Even when the asthma and emphysema tried to squeeze the life from her lungs, she held them off for almost 60 years.

It was just last night, I found her on the internet.
You know how some folks paste their trees into cyberspace, like victory gardeners bragging about the size of their tomatoes? Yeah, well I found Gram wedged in like an afterthought. In the online reams of bytes, this guy has her name wrong. Probably just a transcription error, but that’s really not my problem, is it?
There she was, just a wrong name and the information ...
b. unknown. d. unknown.
He did have down my grandfather’s name right, as who she married. Small wonder.
You know the thing that ticked me off the most though. Next to the name being wrong. There it is ...
... adopted child.
No mistake about that part, is there! Maybe he didn’t mean nuthin’ by it, but you know, just for a second, I knew what it meant to her. All my childhood observations and recollections informed me, in that one split second, that what he did just wasn’t right.
I was so peeved, I was gonna send him an email, and tell him off.
But then, I thought about it some, and wondered what Gram would do. I think she’d just turn the other cheek.
Like I said, she was strong but not outspoken. Probably made her even stronger.

You know, I think I will write about her! I better get moving too, if I’m gonna get it finished in time so I can ever get out of this class.