I wish I could have known my grandma (my mom’s mom) much better. I knew her as well as a little kid could. I just wish she had lived till I was older. I would love to have shared grownup conversations with her and learned more about her life.
Her name was Eunice LaSenius Washburn, and I called her Gammy. We were very close, really good buddies, and we hung out together at least a few times a week. Eventually, she moved into our house—we built an addition for her—so we got to hang out all the time. I knew her as well as I could at my young age. She was my favorite person.
We did music and arts and crafts together. We watched TV (Lawrence Welk, especially) and shared meals together. She showed me how to paint with Artex paint, which is a type of fabric paint that she sold. She and I fed the fish in our pond together. She had a dollhouse that was my mom’s when she was young. I loved rearranging furniture in it. She taught me some words in Swedish, the language her mother spoke. We enjoyed conversations, often sitting on the swing together, but what we talked about was limited to a kid’s world.
Gammy passed away when I was still pretty young. I was only eight, just starting third grade. While I am so grateful for the time we had together, and we lived it well, I would have loved getting to know her from a grownup perspective.
When I was in high school, we were each assigned a decade to study in my history class. I chose the 1920s. That was a big era for my grandma. She was born in 1898, so in 1920 she was 22 and by the end of the decade she was 31. So, she was in her twenties during the twenties, and based on her affinity for culture, I know she really embraced all the 1920s had to offer in the world of music, art, and fashion.
She played the piano for silent films at the local movie theater. So cool! She and her husband were in a music band. In 1926, my mom was born, and two years later, my uncle was born.
My grandma was also an artist. I have one of her paintings on my wall. It’s a painting of Pocahontas, but she looks like a 1920s flapper. I can see how the style of that era influenced my grandma’s artwork.
I shared those things about my grandma in my history class, along with a little book my mom had saved. It was a book in which all my grandma’s friends, probably during their teens years, wrote answers to questions like, “Who is your favorite actor and actress?” The most popular answer was Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. I passed that book around in my history class. The students appreciated seeing it, and so did my teacher. It was really cool to see a real life history book, as it were, written by teens in a bygone era.
I appreciate all those things my mom told me about my grandma from the 1920s. But how I would love to have learned them from my grandma firsthand. I would have asked for so many details—what was that era really like, how did it feel? I would have asked so many things about her life, thoughts, dreams, hopes.
So, when I say I wish I could have known her better, it’s not because I didn’t know her as well as a kid could. It’s because I would have been delighted to talk with her as a teen, or as an adult. She just wasn’t able to live that long.
I was really blessed to get to know two of her sisters well, and for longer. My grandma was the oldest of six kids, and my Aunt Elwy was four years younger, born in 1902. She lived into my college years. I got to see her a lot, and we also wrote letters to each other and talked on the phone. My Aunt Ruby was the second-to-youngest, born in 1912, so she was 14 years younger then my grandma. Ruby lived till I was 36. I had great conversations with her and asked a lot of questions. I learned about her growing-up and young adult years in Miami.
So, even though I didn’t get to have that grownup relationship with my grandma, I got to experience an adult relationship with her sisters. I will always be grateful for those blessings.
Exploring Generations 