Dolls and furniture at the Foire Nationale aux Antiquites a la Brocante et aux Jambons, Chatou, France.
Today would have been my late grandmother Lucille's birthday. As children, when my brothers and I spent the weekend with our grandparents, Grandmother would bring a wooden table from a carport closet and set it up in the driveway. She also provided us with old enamel and aluminum dishes and utensils for making mud pies and hosting tea parties for dolls. Grandmother referred to our toys as "play pretties." She called little beads of caked dirt on our necks - after a day of playing outdoors in heat and humidity - "dinah beads." She made sure we scrubbed ourselves clean in the bath.
I've written previously that she was a talented seamstress and made a wardrobe of beautiful clothes for my Barbies. She also made a dress like one I admired on the cover of Seventeen magazine and later, a dress copied from the pages of Vogue.
She and her friends had occasional "quilting bees" and Grandmother's attention to detail resulted in beautiful and unique quilts. She sewed most of her own clothes, until her eyesight worsened, making sewing difficult. She always took pride in her appearance, visiting the hairdresser once a week. On Sundays, she donned her finest clothes for church.
Grandmother had carpentry skills, making lamps out of unlikely objects and side tables out of stacked wooden cable spools. She filled these tables with her collection of little porcelain figurines. A perfectionist, her home was immaculately kept. She was a good cook, making the best caramel pie ever (no one in our family has been able to duplicate it, using her recipe). Every year at Christmas, I make a "refrigerator roll" dessert using Grandmother's recipe.
Grandmother also had a green thumb: her house was surrounded by gorgeous hydrangeas and rose bushes. And she and Granddaddy planted a huge garden full of vegetables.
Our grandparents loved me and my brothers (and later my baby sister) unconditionally - but not uncritically. I wonder what Grandmother would make of me living abroad. I know she was proud of me and supportive when I went off to journalism school and later to New York to pursue my dreams. Still she worried that I wouldn't find a good man to take care of me - not understanding I could take care of myself. I think she'd be happy I've accomplished many things on my own, plus I married a good man.
I'm sorry Grandmother didn't live to know my daughter Jordana, who has inherited her amazing abilities with a needle and thread and a sewing machine.* They met briefly, when Jordana was a baby. By this time, Grandmother had suffered a series of debilitating diabetes-related strokes, but she managed to say, "My, doesn't she have such pretty eyelashes!" Just thinking about that episode brings tears to my eyes.
Throughout the years, I've often felt Grandmother's presence, as though she's watching over me. In her memory, I'm off to buy a huge bouquet of hydrangeas (or hortensia, as it is known here).
*Jordana is a young designer for an American fashion house.
Stopping by to wish you a Happy Birthday dear sister , I pray that is a wonderful and special day for you!! Love ya Mickey and Kathy
Posted by: Michael Bradford | 10 September 2011 at 06:34
Aaaaah. Play Pretties. Had forgotten that. I do wish I could tell Nanny about living in London. A long (thankfully) way from Alabama. She would go and examine the designer children's clothes in the early 60s and copy them for my sister and me. She sewed exquisite evening gowns for my Barbies—I don't think she owned one till I got married. She was not so worried about me finding a man but was supportive when i had to get a divorce. She would be happy about my current possibility. I think of her when I cook cornbread—made from cornmeal bought from a Turkish market. Scarlett is a long way from Atlanta.
Posted by: Michelle French | 27 August 2011 at 01:14
Tara,your Grandmother sounds SO much like mine. I wonder if the term "play pretties" was used anyplace other than the south of several years ago. I think it has disappeared, as have many charming and warm terms and southern customs. My Grandmother was also a wonderful seamstress. She saved to buy a couple of Vogue patterns just to get the basic foundational pieces, and from those could create any garment you might find in the finest of magazines. Her daughters - my mother and aunt - always wore the most fashionable, most beautifully crafted garments of anyone in town (made from precious fabric found in the piece goods store's overflowing remnant barrel). Rubye (Grandmother's name with no accoompanying middle name) was a great gardener, too, and preferred digging in cool dirt to the stiffling indoors before airconditioning in Texas. Her creative nature, her scrapping instincts and her powerful determination taught us well, and put three succeeding generations in good stead to manage through tough economies and good economies equally well with confidence, without despair, and with strong-willed optimism. What great legacies we received from our Grandmothers.
Posted by: Rebekah | 22 August 2011 at 16:54
Touching memories of your grandmother. We played with pots and pans and made mudpie too beind my grandparents house. The also had chickens and a peacocks running around. Good ol time
Posted by: marja | 20 August 2011 at 03:08
Wonderful memories of your grand mother.
Posted by: limo | 19 August 2011 at 09:59
Oh, Tara, what a wonderful recollection of what sounds like an amazing woman, and certainly a memorable one. She was indeed a special woman and what a person to have in your life. I am so very grateful you shared her story with us, and your memories.
Rick and I are planning a trip to Paris next May, probably. I'm very excited, but will be a little sad you are no longer there! He would have loved you and David!
Hope all is well with your summer. I've been very absent from blog world (posting but not visiting) but am working on coming out from under the dark cloud. It's good to "see" you again!
Posted by: jeanie | 19 August 2011 at 01:03
A wonderful tribute and memories of your grandmother Tara. It is so good to hold those close to ones heart!
xoxo
Karena
Art by Karena
Posted by: Karena | 18 August 2011 at 20:53
I can relate. My late grandmother was born on August 1, and I was named after her. She was a very talented person and an interesting, strong woman who lived a long life. She went to college to become a registered nurse after having had six children. She painted, played the piano and was a superb gardener. I inherited her love for sewing, creating, doing crossword puzzles, crochet, and many other things. She bought my first dolls so I have so many wonderful memories. She adored electronic gadgets and bought her first TV in 1948. She would have loved the age of computers.
As for me, I would love to visit a market with doll accessories as you have shown in your photos. What fabulous stuff!
Posted by: Helen | 18 August 2011 at 18:26
As soon as I started reading about your grandmother I said to myself, Jordana has taken after her great grandmother for sure. Yes, you see it too. What wonderful traits to receive. You can be proud of your daughter and remember your grandmother with loving, fond memories.
Posted by: Marilyn | 18 August 2011 at 18:08
How lovely! I'm fortunate to have inherited a great many things belonging to my grandparents and even great grandparents only one of whom I ever met. They're like having memories without ever having experienced them.
Posted by: Tracy Rowan | 18 August 2011 at 16:35
Wonderful memories!
Posted by: Mary H. | 18 August 2011 at 15:57