“Grandmothers are Mothers Too!”

By

Gerry Niskern

I was reminded by a grandchild one day that “Grandmothers are mothers too!”

We all knew, each cousin squeezed around my grandma’s big kitchen table back when I was a kid, that when we came to her house, she would give us coffee. The brew, the latte of our childhood, consisted of about one quarter cup coffee, a half cup of milk and heaping teaspoons of sugar. Our spoons clicked happily against our enamel mugs as we sloshed and stirred.

Raising her brown spotted hands, and putting her finger to her lips, she cautioned, “Shh…don’t tell Mommy I give you coffee.”

Our guilty giggles joined her chuckles as a grin deepened the wrinkles across her face. Her laughter revealed two teeth, one on the upper right and one on the lower left. We knew she had another one because many times she had tilted her head and let us peek at the gold molar in the back.

“What happened to all your teeth,” one of us would ask.

“You always lose tooth with every baby,” was her reply.

During the days of the coal mine’s  quack “company doctors” she was left crippled after the birth of her last baby. She stepped out with her right foot and dragged her left forward, creating a kind of bobbing gait as she shuffled between the kitchen table crowded with adoring grandchildren and the icebox. Grandma had iron gray hair pulled straight back into a tight bun.  A long straight apron covered her print dress and reached the edge of her high-topped black shoes.

She brought sour cream and apple butter to spread on our thick slices of home baked bread. We had already turned down her favorite, soda crackers. To our grandma, they represented a treat she didn’t have in the old country. She shook her head in disbelief at her ignorant grandchildren who didn’t recognize  something special when they saw it.

My grandmother was one of the many immigrants who, along with her young husband, braved harsh conditions and uncertainty on board ship to come to America in the late 1880’s.   As a young mother, she made an unbelievable sacrifice. Although it broke her heart, she agreed to leave her baby girl in the old country in the care of the grandmother until they were settled in America and could afford to send for her.

If she saw one of us grandkids accidentally drop our bread crusts, she admonished us “No, no. It’s a sin to drop the bread. “

In the small Austrian village where she grew up, the peasants worked very hard for their daily bread. They raised wheat and ground their own flour for baking.

By choosing to come to America my courageous grandmother gave our generation a future full of opportunity in America. She taught us to respect God’s gift of our daily bread.  She also gave us the thrill of a secret from our parents…she gave us coffee!