Writing About the Past
When I am working on a novel, I sometimes have to take a fork in the road and work on something else, just for a breather. At a local writer’s group, I suggested that we write a short piece about our past involving our parents or grandparents. I wrote about my great grandmother, Mae Stone, who lived in our home when I was a child, and I’d like to share it with you. Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.
July, 1944
Mae Stone took a tray of oatmeal raisin cookies from the oven and set it down on top of the stove to cool. From the dining room hutch, she retrieved a silver tray to hold the cookies and a two small crystal bowls, one for mints, the other for the mixed nuts. Her friends loved to munch while they played cards. She heard a familiar squeak as the back porch door opened and then slammed shut. Her great-granddaughter, Charlotte, ran into the kitchen.
“It sure smells good in here. May I have a cookie?” Charlotte darted over to stove and stood beside the tray.
“Just one,” Nana said. “You girls can each have a cookie. The rest are for my friends. “They’ll be here before long. Take a cookie outside to your sister, and then both of you girls have to come inside and get cleaned up.”
“Did you make those fancy sandwiches you cut up in little triangles?”
Yes, honey. I have the pimento cheese sandwiches in the refrigerator, and the iced tea, too. Your mother set up the card table in the living room before she left for work. Using the spatula, Mae took the cookies off the metal tray and put them onto the oval serving dish. Next, she filled the crystal bowls with mints and nuts. Charlotte popped a two pale pink mints into her mouth and then ran across the red linoleum floor and she headed back outside, her dark brown pigtails flying behind her.
“I’ve got a cookie for you,” she hollered to her sister, Lisbeth, who was sitting with a neighborhood friend underneath the weeping willow tree in the side yard. Her sister ran over to get the cookie. “We have to go in and wash up now,” Nana’s lady friends are coming soon.”
“I’m clean enough,” Lisbeth said, looking down at her shorts and T-shirt.
“No, you’re not. Besides you have to put on a dress. Follow me, or I’ll get in trouble,” Charlotte said. Lisbeth ate her cookie, said goodbye to her friend, Ruth Ann, and then sauntered toward the back porch.
After taking her flowered apron off, Mae arranged the food in the living room, putting the sandwiches and cookies on white lace doilies on the mahogany serving table, and the small crystal bowls on the corners of the dark green card table. Then she hurried into her bedroom past her sewing corner where she’d spent hours hand sewing quilts..
She used a hexagon-shaped piece of cardboard as a pattern to cut out the pieces from whatever cotton material she could find. She often took the dresses her great-granddaughters had outgrown and used the material for her quilts. The girls liked to help select which pieces to use next.. She’d made both of them a quilt for their twin beds. “Remember when I was really little and wore this dress,” Mae often heard the girls say to one another as they pointed to their quilts. She figured stitching quilts for them was a way of giving them a part of herself. She often thought about the girls as she stitched. She had been seventy-six years old when the girls were born. And now they were five and six. My, but the time had flown past.
Mae returned to the living wearing a navy dress, a triple strand of pearls given to her by her late husband, Henry, and her new navy shoes with a wedge heel. A small German lady, even with the one-inch heel, she still did not stand five-feet tall. Mae had powdered her pale skin, added a touch of rouge, and pulled her white hair back into a bun. She rather liked the new round, wire-rimmed glasses she wore.
“Nana, they’re here,” an excited Charlotte said when she heard the tires on the Cousin Ella’s black Ford hit the gravel in the driveway. Charlotte ran to the window and peered out. Lisbeth stayed in her room at her desk playing school. She liked to pretend she was a teacher. And besides, she hated having Cousin Ella and Nana’s other two friends, Bess and Ada Jane hugging her to death. They were nice enough, but they wore strong perfume that about gagged her. Lisbeth always waited until they were seated and playing cards before she said hello. At that point, the ladies were unable to give full hugs, only pats on the back or a half hug.
“They’re here now,” Charlotte ran into the bedroom and said.
“I know silly. I can hear the noise.”
“Nana wants you to come in and say hello. You’d better come right now. You can sneak food. Those ladies are so busy talking, no one even notices,” she said before she turned and ran back into the living room.
Lisbeth smoothed out her blue ruffled pinafore and walked into the living room, her Mary Janes clicking on the hardwood floor.
“Well, don’t you look like a little princess? I love those blond curls,” Ada Jane said. “Come over here and see me honey.” Lisbeth hesitated, then headed to Ada Jane’s side and received a small pat on the arm. “Want some candy, dear?” Ada Jane held up the bowl. Lisbeth took several mints.
“Thank you,” Lisbeth said, smiling. She quickly grabbed a few more mints.
“How old are you now, dear?” Cousin Ella asked.
“I’m five, but I’ll be six in September. I’ll start first grade at Lincoln School,” Liisbeth said.
“Well, good for you. Oh my goodness. Wait until I tell your uncle you’re going to first grade. He’ll be so excited.”
“You mean Uncle Adolph?” Lisbeth said. All four women turned and glared at her. A confused Lisbeth scrunched up her face, glancing at Nana, who put her short pointer finger to her chin and shook her head back and forth, gesturing no. Lisbeth didn’t understand. What was that supposed to mean? She had no idea what was going on. Was she interfering with their card game?
“Charlotte’s waiting for me. I’d better go back to my room,” she said, wanting to get away from the women.. She tiptoed out of the room.
“She’s just a child. You can’t blame her,” she heard Nana say as she left.
“Did you eat more cookies” Charlotte asked when she got back to her room.
“No, just candy,” she said.
That evening when it was time to tell Nana goodnight, Lisbeth kissed her on the cheek and then finally got the nerve to ask what she had done wrong at the card table that afternoon. “Honey, you must remember this. You cannot call Cousin Ella Dieckmann’s father anything but Uncle. No one dares to call him Uncle Adolph any more. I’m certain I told you that.”
“Well, why not. That’s his name?” Lisbeth said.
“Trust me. It’s simply not a good idea. Some day you’ll understand.”
