A Tribute to Grandma Anderson

Author’s note: On April 19, 2013, my sister, Susan, and I interred the ashes of our grandmother. Below are the remarks I made at her gravesite on that blistery day in Edgerton, Wisconsin, where every type of precipitation you can name made an appearance. The sleet was especially nice.

My memories of Grandma Anderson, as we called her throughout most of our lives, are . . . myriad. To pay tribute to her, and get it exactly right, I think might be impossible, for she was as many-faceted as the entire crown jewels of England.

She was a painter. Acrylics rather than oils. A small canvas with a perfectly stylized cumulous cloud sky with a fawn in the foreground. I thought it was Bambi.

She was a seamstress. Easter dresses, matching fabric, but styled to suit our age in yellow with girlie bows and sashes. Custom-designed Barbie clothes—a mink coat made from the old trimmings of a hat, gingham gathered skirts for Skipper and Skooter, a wedding dress for Francie and Stacy. The bridesmaids dresses for Susan’s wedding with a dress in matching material for one-year-old Ariel.

She was an embroiderer. Showing us how to transfer the pattern, stretch the hoops—cross, daisy, chain, and blanket—we made dish and tea towels, hot pads, and ornaments.

She was a crewler. Backstitch, buttonhole, featherstitch, and satin. A Thanksgiving cornucopia, a decorative pillowcase.

She was a quiller, which means to weave with pine needles.

She made Christmas ornaments with shells and sand dollars, she made porcelain dolls. She made literally hundreds of porcelain dolls as, at one point, I had 45 of them in my house. She poured the molds, cleaned up the bisque, painted the faces, hands, and feet, inserted the eyes, applied the wigs, eyelashes, and sewed the clothes. And she began this endeavor in her 70s and did it for over 15 years.

She was a musician. She played the piano, the organ, and the accordion. The accordion was such a large and heavy instrument that when I was a child, I could hardly wrap my arms around it. In fact, I couldn’t wrap my arms around it. And I couldn’t lift it either. She would set on the floor, and I would try to push enough air through the lungs of the thing to get some sort of sound out of it, but it was too hard. She, on the other hand, was a master. Deftly using her left hand to push the buttons, while her right played the keyboard, and her arms somehow (what kind of strength must that have taken?) squeezed the air in, and pulled the air out, bringing life to spectacular Polka, Jazz, and Pop tunes.

She was a bookkeeper. I’d watch and marvel at the way she could run an adding machine. The adding machine was, and I can just barely pull this memory from my brain, full of . . . push buttons. Vertical rows of buttons labeled from zero to nine. I don’t know how many buttons. 100? Perhaps ten rows of ten? She’d punch the number in or rather punch down the numbers . . . one, nine, seven, nine, zero, six . . . and then pull the handle on the right side of the machine. The numbers selected would cha-chunk against an inked ribbon, like on a typewriter, and $1, 979.06 would appear on the paper roll. Punch in the plus for addition, or the minus for subtraction, continue the process until whatever she was calculating was complete. Cha chunk, cha chunk, cha chunk, the final answer with an asterisk indicating Total would appear.

She was an entertainer. Her musical talents were at the heart of every family gathering. Whether it was playing in a combo, which she did throughout her lifetime, or a Christmas party in the basement of 6 Cherry Street where all of us would gather around and sing, or in the final years, listening to her play her signature song, “Alley Cat,” on her little electric keyboard, she was entertaining.

She was a shopper. And she loved clothes and shoes. An occasion would come along, and she’d get “dolled up” as Grandpa Anderson used to say, in something she’d pull out of her closet. “Where’d that come from?” Grandpa would ask having never seen it before. “Oh, this?” she’d answer, “I’ve had this for I don’t know how long.” She took me to J.C. Penny’s and bought me my first “mod” outfit. I think it was around 1972 or 73. She got me a bodysuit in a purple and black harlequin pattern, a pair of purple crushed velvet slacks in a hiphugger jeans style, a brown vinyl belt, and matching brown vinyl lace-up knee-high boots. Wow, I was cool. For the first time in my life. It was awesome.

She was a daughter, a sister, a niece, a wife, an aunt, and a grandmother.

She was a mother. Her only child, our dad, Lennie, named after her beloved brother who died young, was her pride and joy. During Dad’s last visit to her before it became impossible for him to continue without 24-hour assistance, she repeated something I had heard her say so often about Dad: “He was a good boy.”

She was a reader. Surrounded by books in the final years of her life, she read and read and read. Mysteries, romances, memoirs, it didn’t matter. She read all the time. And did crossword puzzles.

She was a neighbor, a co-worker, a friend. One time we asked her what the secret was for a happy long life. And she said that once she got into her 70s and she started to lose friends, and family members, she came to realize that she needed to make friends with younger and younger people. And that’s exactly what she did.

She was a documentarian. She spent untold hours researching and documenting her family tree, Grandpa Anderson’s family tree, and even both sides of my mother’s family tree.

She was my comfort and confidant when a childhood friend died. She was the person who taught us how to take care of our nails, our hair, apply make-up just right, appreciate pretty things and the loveliness of the world. The cardinal was her favorite bird. She understood the human condition, and taught us to think outside of ourselves. To put ourselves in the shoes of others, to be empathetic.

About the last thing she said was to Susan, in the hospital when we were about to transfer her to the rehab center knowing full well that she would not be going back to assisted living. She said in her philosophical way, “Well, I’ve lived a good long life. I have no regrets. I’m ready to go.” And about three weeks later that’s exactly what she did. And we admire this so much about her.

In a word, Grandma Mac—Maxine Grace Stricker Anderson Hussong—born December 2, 1909, died December 29, 2012, was amazing. She lived to be 103, and today we celebrate her life.