This was written years ago and edited early in 2022.  On December 10 of 2022 after a seven month struggle with an unusually rare illness, Joyce passed away.  This coming Valentines Day would have been our 49th wedding anniversary in our 50 year journey together.

Let us talk about grandmas

Let’s talk about grandmas. I was fortunate. I had four of them who shaped my life. My mom’s mom Orthello Fout; her mother grandma Riegle; my dad’s mom Leonora Stuber, and my grandfather Jonathan Fout’s mother Sara Elizabeth James.

Great Granny James outlived them all, passing away well over 112 years. She was a card, telling it like it was, a single working mother like Rosie the Riviter who rolled cigars for work and made bathtub gin when unemployed. She could see through all the bull crap.

Grandma Stuber was blind and crippled due to diabetes. She “saw” me by feeling my face with her soft wrinkled fingers. She was the first person to die in my life. I was six. It was traumatic for me as it was the first and only time I saw my father cry. He was named after her, as I was named after him, as one of my daughters was named after them.

Grandma Riegle kept chickens. I helped butcher 30 of them, shortly before she passed.

My favorite was Grandma Fout. My mom’s mom lived three doors down from me for the first six years of my life. Then she lived three blocks away for the rest of her life. This is the person I knew as grandma. I see her still in my daughter Leona. The long red outta control curly hair, the freckles that covered her body, the optimistic “let me do that. I can do it” attitude.

One grandma set the standard

Orthello baby sat us, and often just came over to pick us up (and sometimes mom) just to drive us everywhere. We fished at the quarry in Dunkirk, Ohio, off the Blanchard River or the banks of Lake St. Mary’s. Sometimes we’d go visiting Grandma Riegle, Aunt Pat, Viola, or others. Sometimes we’d go window shopping, or actual shopping at Goodwill in Kenton. We’d go strawberry picking down the railroad track. Sometimes we’d drive with no destination in mind. She was a big part of our life. She died when I was 10 in 1963. I still tear up when we sing old rugged cross in church because I learned to sing her favorite song while sitting on her lap. What can I say. I had some awesome grandmas.

One grandma exceeded the standard

Unfortunately, my wife, born Joyce Kay Brown, never knew her grandparents. They were all long dead before she was born. Many times I have felt so sorrowful for her missing out on this joy. She did get to know and love my granny James. But I am sorrowful no more. While she did get to see her parents become grandparents, it’s hardly the same. But with such little experience she has become the best of the best.

That’s right. Having seen six grandmas and four grandpas in action up til 1992, I can truly say that since that time when Joyce became a grandma she is truly the best I have known.

Excuse me: Mamaw. She would never be called grandma. Maybe it’s the sheer volume, having been mamaw to twenty-five grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.  With experience like that you got to get good being grandma.

More likely however it is because she has a child’s attitude. Like my grandma Orthello, Joyce concentrates on the fun things to do with her grandkids. And sometimes they treat her more like a playmate than a parent (pseudo-mom). But she also taught them life skills like sewing, knitting and crocheting almost a lost old-school talent.   She was fierce with anyone who might harm them and loved them with a gentle humor they have all embraced. And she taught them cleaning skills passed down from her own mother:  when you clean, no half-measures  everything in the room gets moved to sweep under or behind.

Another factor, which started with her own mother, is that she puts their interests first. No matter where she is, her eyes go to the thing that one of the grandchildren “would just love. We have to get this.” More often than not, we do.

It appears that Papaw’s Rule (“When we go in the store we don’t ask for anything, or, you’ll go to the car until I’m done.”) is meant to be overruled perpetually by Mamaw when she is with us.

While I always tell people that my grandchildren are my toys and that I am their favorite plaything: I know the truth. That is why kids go to “GRANDMA’s house,” and not “Grandpa’s house.” Although it is cool that he lives at Grandma’s house too. It’s the way of the world. I have no chance here.

I must admit, watching all of this with fascination, that my grandma Orthello was ALMOST this good. However, I will admit that Joyce is the best grandma (oh, excuse me) Best Mamaw, ever!