For several years before I actually retired, I occasionally said I wanted my grandmother's life. I am not sure any of you remember Grandma Hofmann, but I really loved her.
She was born in Oklahoma in 1901. Her family traveled to Washington in a covered wagon in the early 1900's. She was a farm wife, complete with chickens (for egg money), feed sacks (for quilts and housedresses), a vegetable garden (for canning), and beautiful flowers everywhere (for Sunday bouquets at church). She taught Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. She picked fruit in the Yakima Valley to "bottle" and had an honest-to-goodness dirt root cellar. She wore a hat and gloves to the Methodist church every Sunday and served chicken and dumplings for Sunday dinner and soup and sandwiches for Sunday supper every week. She drove the truck sometimes on the farm, but never the car or the caterpillar tractor. She crocheted, heated her 100 year old farmhouse with oil, and shopped at Sears in Spokane once a month. She taught me how to plant stuff, and didn't get mad when I dug the bulbs up two days later to see why they weren't growing. She gave me a Bantam hen, Henny Penny, for a pet, and held me after the coyote got her. She let me eat chicken noodle soup in her bed when I had the measles. She let me watch when she caught an old hen or young rooster for cooking and took it with the ax to the stump in the back of the house. Because of her, I truly know what it means to "run around like a chicken with its head cut off". She didn't mind that I climbed her trees, but she drew the line at my dropping nuts on the minister's head as he waited at the back door. She gave me my own bowl and chair under the same trees to help shell peas or shuck corn. She came to my high school graduation and to my wedding. She held Eddie when he was 6 months old, and had the opportunity to hug every one of you.
Today I picked and chopped and froze about 5 lbs. of peppers from our little garden. I cut some cosmos and zinnias for a vase and smelled the roses. Then I went downstairs and worked on my latest quilt project. Tonight I will kneel by my bed to say my prayers as she taught me, and tomorrow I will read from the scriptures as she did every day of her life. I am so grateful to the First Presidency for granting me permission many years ago to be sealed to her line. Thank you, Lynn, for working on this family for me and all of us. I know Grandma is watching, and smiling.
2 comments:
I love you. I remember Grandma Hoffman, sitting in one of the blue chairs by the piano--my own memory is soft around the edges and the color is faded, as though seen through a veil of nostalgia; aging like a celluloid photo.
Thank you for being the kind of grandmother who my daughters look to and want to be like as well--what a legacy.
After Julie's comment, what I have to say seems so flat. I'm happy for you, I know that this is what you've longed for. There must have been somethind about yesterday. I, too, was busy in the kitchen: two batches of strawberry freezer jam, and a completely from sratch pumpkin pie (none of that canned pumpkin pack this time).
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