Apparently afghans are back in style. I have one that my granny made for my mother more than 40 years ago.  Granny Rachel was a first-class needlewoman who could crochet, embroider, knit, and sew up clothes for her daughters and granddaughters.

Born in 1904, she had three sisters and a brother. She was a farmer’s daughter, then a farmer’s wife, until the early 1940s when she left her alcoholic husband back in Colorado and moved to Southern California where she bought a small tract house across the street from the beach that looked out over the Pacific Ocean.

Her real name was Ruth but most of the family called her Rachel after the person in the ditty:

     Rachel, Rachel I’ve been thinking

What a grand world this would be,

     If the men were all transported,

     Far beyond the Northern Sea.

She had a healthy contempt for men at the same time as she found many of them attractive.  She was a beautiful redhead, funny and fun to be with.  I suspect she was a good dancer, as were most of the women in our family.  She rarely drank alcohol, possibly because her husband, brother, and two of her three sisters were alcoholics.

In her early forties, living in Southern California where there were several large military bases, she had several boyfriends.  I inherited a beautiful jewelry box from her that was a gift from an ardent admirer. My mother said he was a good man who eventually went away because Ruth wasn’t ready to settle down with one man.

Once in California she may have gone to work in one of the many defense plants making ammunition, weapons, ships, and planes for the war effort.  I know that after the war she became a fry cook and remained one until I was in my early twenties, say 1960 or 1961.

When she and her husband moved to Reno in the early 1960s she became the cook at a monastery and was liked by her “boys,” the young men studying to become monks. She enjoyed spending time with them and cooking for them.  I find this amusing given that Catholics were one of our family’s prejudices, along with Blacks and Jews.

While they lived in Reno they bought a small farm in Sandpoint, Idaho and she became a farmer.  Her husband was the “hand” but she was the farmer.  She raised cattle for her table and probably sold some of the meat.  She also raised chickens for their eggs and for the table, and she had a large vegetable garden.

I don’t remember her being a great cook but she was a world class pie maker.  Her crusts, made with lard, were flaky and delicious.  My friends used to visit just to eat a slice of her pie. She also made fudge, chocolate and brown sugar (penuche).

I lived in Reno in the early 1960s and would visit her on her days off.  We would go grocery shopping together and she taught me how to choose the best fruits and vegetables.

In my late thirties I was a reporter at the Carson City newspaper.  Granny was proud of me and my mother sent her clippings of my articles.  I once wrote a five-part series about child abuse in Carson City but when I gave my mother the clippings she said she wouldn’t send them on because they might be hurtful for Granny to read.

That’s when I found out that Granny was a serious abuser of her three children.  I have a photo of my mother and her sister Virginia, probably ages seven and three.  They are wearing matching white dresses and somber expressions.  Looking closer I see that my mother might have a black eye and a sleeve of her dress is ripped.  I’ve studied that photo so many times and I’m pretty sure Virginia was scared.  My mother might have been scared but I think she was also angry.

The main thing I remember about the conversation with my mother was her saying that when she was 17 she “buried the quirt and the beatings stopped.”

My mother, brother and I lived off and on with Granny for years in the 1940s and 1950s.  She spanked me and my brother often (we were brats) and she wasn’t gentle. I also remember the time when my mother sent me to bed without supper and Granny brought me a piece of pie an hour or so later.  She owned a Model A Ford for a long time and I remember a teenage friend and I riding in the rumble seat.

One of her many Colorado nieces received a Christmas card with this inscription: “Been sitting here just a thinking and it all adds up that you have to have some thing to get up in the morning for, and be glad you got it.”

She loved fiercely and was loved fiercely in return. Her love was shown in meals, pie, fudge, knitted sweaters and hats, a roof and a bed.

She had a terrible stroke when she was in her late seventies and was in a wheelchair till she died in 1981 after a second stroke.  She asked her husband not to call the EMTs, to let her die.  He loved her fiercely and did as she asked.