Category: Memories

Today, 30 June, would have been my maternal Gran’s birthday. She was born in 1905. She raised my mother and aunt on her own in the 1940s, having left my grandfather when they were both very young. Those were not the days to be a single mother with a living husband and it must have been immensely hard. But she was an amazing woman with whom we spent every Sunday for as long as I can remember during my childhood. Here are two short pieces that I wrote with some random, specific memories of her.

My Gran gave me my name. And she taught me how to dance. She loved to dance but was a tall woman, something she said prejudiced the boys against her when she was growing up in the 1920s.

When she did find a partner, he turned out to be no good.

We spent every Sunday with her. She always made roast lamb lunch ‘with all the trimmings’. And jam roly poly.

I loved to watch her roll her stockings neatly up from toe to garter belt.

She always blotted her lipstick after applying it and checked herself in the tarnished wardrobe door mirror before leaving the house.

Even though the aroma of roasting lamb assailed us as we mounted the windy stairs in the funny old house where my grandmother lived, we knew there was also a chicken treat awaiting us.

For years, our Sundays never changed. Gran greeted us from the bus, hugging us warmly and then we set off for her flat at the same brisk pace that I keep up today. The house was a 3 storey Victorian mansion, its former grandeur much faded.

Its occupants were all single elderly ladies who, like the house, showed signs of advancing decrepitude.

The rooms had been randomly divided up, so the flats were of widely differing sizes, some with their own bathrooms and kitchen, whilst others shared. Mrs Cairns and Miss Welsh each had a one room bedsit, whilst the formidable Mrs Shardlow had a whole suite.

My Gran occupied the attic which had three rooms and a kitchenette, but she lived in just one which was kept warm and cosy.

After recounting our school week to her, we had lunch – the lamb. But, in between Sundays, Gran ate chicken. The special Sunday expense was just for me and my sisters. Lamb was expensive and apart from the leftovers which took her to Tuesdays, the rest of the week called for frugality.

 After lunch was cleared away, we would go to the top shelf in the kitchen and reach up for the dried wishbone that was waiting for us.  Gran had devised a rota to accommodate three sisters and the two ended wish bone.

I couldn’t wait until it was my turn to hook my little finger round the bone and pull. Like a Christmas cracker, whoever got the larger piece as it snapped in two, was declared the victor and got to choose the story.

Just 95 words to tell the story of the hearing journey of my son, Benjamin, barely seemed enough, but given the word ‘Listen’, it was impossible to think of anything else to write about. Now 21, Benjamin has bi-lateral cochlear implants which have made an immense difference to his ability to connect to the world around him.

Some days he was more difficult than others. We called him ‘perverse’ when we were angry and ‘free spirited’ when we felt more generous towards his contrary behaviour.

Mostly, he was just a normal little boy.

But he was often frustrated with us and himself. We took him for a barrage of tests. We were shocked to discover that his three year old chatter had been disguising a profound hearing loss and he had learnt to cope in his muffled world all alone.   

He taught us that there is more than one way to listen.

Some writing prompts are harder than others, and I felt sorry for most writers when the random number ‘Fifty-Four’ came up after we had been writing every day for over a month. Coincidentally, it had a special significance for me as 54 on Bath is a lovely hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg where my son, Sébastien chose to spend his 18th birthday, so what else could I do but give my 120 words over to that evening.

When asked where he wanted to have dinner to mark his 18th birthday, my first born chose the roof top restaurant at 54 on Bath, a beautiful boutique hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

My heart sank a little. We had marked a number of wonderful occasions there as a couple, which is perhaps why Seb chose it. He had heard from us how good the food was, and to him, it represented the epitome of being grown up.

It would be our first attempt at being grown up ourselves, post divorce. I wondered, could we be civil long enough to make the evening special, one for us all to remember.

We drank champagne, smiled at each other and toasted our son.

The prompt for this piece was Vintage and we had just 100 words in which to capture its essence. Although I no longer have the brooch that is the subject of this short piece, (it was stolen in a house robbery a few years ago) I loved the only item that I had managed to keep of my Gran’s.

The vintage brooch belonged to my grandmother. It was a cameo of a woman with long, curly hair, carved from shell, set in rose gold. Gran wore it on the collar of her best black wool coat.

I can’t remember her wearing any other trinket, except the plain, gold wedding band that she kept on, despite having thrown her husband out when my mother and her sister were still small. It was after the war when if you were lucky enough to find a husband, you kept him, whatever he had done. She lived with the shame her whole life.