Lessons Learned From My 100 Year Old Grandma

Today is my Grandma’s 100^th Birthday!  Last Sunday, we celebrated with cake and ice cream.  Her remaining children and siblings were there along with many of her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  It was fun to look back at old photographs and reminisce. 

In Grandma’s 100 years this world has changed greatly.  Instead of family farms we now have factory farms and GMO’s.  The number of cars on the road, the size of cities, and the height of high-rise buildings must seem baffling.  Cell phones, computers, and the internet have changed how we communicate and interact with each other.  Medical advances, birth control, feminism, globalization….the changes keep on coming.  Grandma, however, has stayed pretty much the same over the years because her life has been shaped by the era in which she was born and her conservative Mennonite beliefs.  She has never had a TV, let alone a cell phone or computer.  And the radio was only used at noon on weekdays so you could listen to the farm markets and death announcements.  She has lived a simple life yet one that I can find many lessons in. 

My Grandmother was an environmentalist even before we knew what environmentalists were.  She has made “reduce, reuse, and recycle” into an art form.  Plastic bags and tin foil were carefully inspected and, if deemed acceptable, the bags and bits of tin foil were careful washed and hung to dry so they could be used again.  Plastic yoghurt containers were kept to freeze or send leftovers home with lucky loved ones.  My Grandpa loved to garden, so every summer and fall Grandma canned everything into her reusable glass mason jars.  Newspapers were carefully stacked and used to light the woodstove in the basement.  Organic waste was taken out to the compost pile or fed to the livestock.  Under Grandma’s watchful eye very little made it into the garbage.

As a child I spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s as they lived on a corner of our farm.  Whenever we were at Grandma’s we knew that we had to behave or Grandma would begin to sing to us.  Regretably, Grandma sang to us a lot!  If my cousins and I were arguing over a game in the living room, Grandma’s voice could be heard from the kitchen, “Children be kind to each other….”  She would sing and that would be our cue to settle down and be nice to one another.  Grandma never yelled and never spanked although she would occasionally scold.  “Andrea!” she would say to convey her surprise at my words or actions.  Grandma’s lessons in kindness by singing to us is something all her Grandchildren remember but, unfortunately, we only really remember that one line from the song!

Grandma is an excellent cook and everything was homemade.  Meals at her house were legendary!  Roast chicken (which we had all helped to butcher in the fall), mashed potatoes, gravy, salads, homemade buns and rolls, and all the pie and cookies you could eat all washed down with cups of apple juice and hot peppermint tea. I have yet to find an elderberry pie as delicious as hers and believe me I have tried.  Because she was such an accomplished cook, she was a great resource as I learned to cook.  I remember her helping me make a batch of salsa at her house because I had never done any canning by myself.  She told me how to boil water and to pour over the tomatoes to crack the skins so they would peel easy.  And then, even though my recipe did not mention it, it she said that we should also remove the seeds “so the product would look better.”  You always learnt something cooking with Grandma!

Thinking back on all the wonderful meals Grandma has made for me brings to mind her favourite saying, “Everything in moderation.”  I definitely did not follow her motto when she was cooking me dinner!  Grandma could apply her motto to just about anything.  Food, exercise, work, play, naps….  Everything was good for you as long as it was done in moderation. 

Whenever you would visit Grandma and Grandpa’s you would always be offered some of Grandma’s homemade cookies.  I have come to believe that a homemade cookie can fix almost anything.  If you are sad, go see Grandma for a cookie.  If you are lonely, go see Grandma for a cookie.  If you are bored, go see Grandma for a cookie.  And sometimes, if I was hungry, I would even go see Grandma for a cookie.  The list is endless of what one of her cookies could fix.  Of course the cookies were also offered with a hug and a dose of her cheerful outlook.  Her cookie jar was always full, literally and metaphorically speaking!

I am glad that I grew up living close to my Grandparents.  I am grateful for the many lessons that they both taught me.  Being able to visit almost anytime I wanted to, even for short periods of time, was a gift.  They were an island of peace, love, and acceptance in the turbulent waters of my youth.  So thank you and Happy Birthday, Grandma!