Things I Learned At Grandma's House

My grandmother was a frugal lady. She saved twist ties from the Roman Meal, wheat bread. She collected Fingerhut stamps that I licked and pasted into towers of booklets. For my sticky fingers and tongue cuts, she allowed me to open the brown paper package when the postman delivered it on the porch steps. The contents were always a curio cabinet necessity, a porcelain black angel or a lead crystal bell. Every Easter Grandma splurged and ordered out of the Sears catalog. She always settled on a picture of white Jesus, his blonde hair curled under at his shoulders and his palms touching in prayer. I once got popped in the lip for asking if Jesus was asleep. I figured if he was the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, like grandma said, who was he praying to?


Grandma’s Lesson: Sometimes Jesus talks to himself but it’s really rude to talk about it.

To save money, my grandmother made my clothes. I informed her that all the cool girls in school shopped at Macy’s in Memphis. We lived in West Memphis, which was across the suspended, steel bridge and west of the Mississippi river. Grandma said kids in her day walked 15 miles to school, got apples and oranges for Christmas and their Mamas made their clothes. But she did promise that if I saw something that another school girl was wearing and thought it was nice; she’d make it for me.

At the time, Jams were the latest fashion craze. I explained that Jams were colorful shorts with side leg pockets and stopped right above the knee. Grandma nodded quickly in recognition and told me she saw a pattern of something similar at Hancock Fabrics.

Before school one morning, grandma rushed into my room and laid what I thought was a new curtain down on the bed.

“What’s this,” I asked.

“James,” Grandma said. “Just like your girlfriends at school.”

Grandma’s Jams were a pair of pleated, polyester culottes that hung to my ankles. Seeing the scowl on my face, she explained that more than one color for short pants was wasteful and anything above the knee was for streetwalkers.

Grandma’s Lesson: Only streetwalkers wear Jams.

My grandmother was a devout Seventh Day Adventist. I considered it Jewish Light. We didn’t eat pork. We didn’t celebrate Christmas and Halloween. We couldn’t do anything from sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday. No cooking, cleaning or watching TV. We were allowed to listen to music but my grandmother only owned one album, “Rough Side of the Mountain.” On the album cover there was a man and woman in white suits walking up a craggy mountainside. I always wondered why in the world you would be dressed in your white, Sunday suit if you knew you were going mountain climbing.

But the Seventh Day Adventist rule I hated the most was that I could not wear jewelry, specifically earrings. One Saturday while I was sitting on the porch watching the other kids play I decided to find the passage in the Bible where it said, “no earrings.” After an entire afternoon of reading, I hadn’t found where Abraham, David, Sampson or Delilah said anything about not wearing earrings. Moses didn’t even say anything and he owned a stone copy of the Ten Commandments. At the next women’s bible study, I decided to voice my 8 year old opinion.

“I read the whole bible and I didn’t see anything about not wearing jewelry,” I snipped defiantly.

Dead silence.

“So why can’t I wear earrings?”

My grandmother smacked my leg with one of those green, plastic fly swatters and said,” Little girl, you save the jewelry for the streets of heaven. They are paved in silver and gold.”

Grandma’s Lesson: Don’t wear jewelry because it’s needed to pave heaven’s streets. Jesus is on a budget.

Over the years grandma taught me many more things, like:

1. Never processes a jheri curl on grey hair, it will turn green.

2. Too tight jelly sandals will give you bunions.

3. Government cheese and Velveeta are the exact same thing.

When I get to heaven I plan to tell her all the lessons I learned. Even the ones she thought I wasn’t listening to. I pray that she will remember me. I’m not 8 anymore and I don’t leave the house without my earrings on but just in case, I’ll be wearing my culottes.