Great grandma had a pocketbook. The “pocket” part made sense, but I never understood where the “book” came in. But, to great grandma, it always was a pocketbook, never a purse.
The item in question was modestly sized, black, unadorned – a perfect match for her sensible shoes. A crisscross clasp allowed it to be shut with a decisive snap, useful for signaling the end of discussion.
Though outwardly dowdy, her pocketbook was filled with delights. Butterscotch and peppermint candies appeared from the dark, patent leather depths to distract little girls who squirmed during the sermon, and a sniffle brought forth brightly colored hankies as though from a conjurer’s sleeve.
Great grandma, whose Christian name was Lillian, and great grandpa Arthur were – happily – a regular part of my grandmother’s household, where I spent my formative years.
The greats stayed close to my grandma, their only child, until the end of their days. They even had their own bedroom in her and my grandfather’s house, and they were in residence several days each month. Whenever there was painting or canning or quilting or holiday baking or any other major project, along came the aged relatives rolling up their sleeves.
Although their farm had been sold years before, the routine and comfort of hard work had become as much a part of my great grandparents as their now gnarled fingers. Even as a small girl I could see that the old couple derived more pleasure from “a good job done” than they ever would have from sitting around with their feet up.
Even in great grandma’s final years, after her husband had passed away and she was living full time at her daughter’s house, the now wheelchair-bound octogenarian would roll up to the kitchen table each morning to peel apples, polish silverware, truss a turkey – whatever needed doing. Best of all, she was the adult most likely to play Uncle Wiggily with a little girl, and to let the little girl win.
Great grandma Lillian ushered in the twentieth century as a schoolgirl with carefully practiced letters on her slate tablet. Her only brush with celebrity came from an acquaintance with the Lindbergh family, who lived just up-river from her childhood home in Minnesota, though her impression of Charles was of a somewhat scruffy toddler.
Ten years and a move to Everett later, she met a handsome young man from Yorkshire, England, who, in his own taciturn way, swept her off her feet and away from her twelve siblings to the wilds of Graham, where the couple homesteaded 88 acres.
They cleared their land with horse and harness, a slower yet wiser method than that employed by many of their neighbors who got down to business with dynamite. More than once a mangled man was carried to my great grandparents’ farm. More than once, great grandma watched helplessly as he died on her kitchen table.
In many ways, Great Grandma’s world is almost unrecognizable today. For one, she wore dresses and aprons, never pants. Not only did she have a “pocketbook,” she had hair pins (not “bobby pins,” mind you) and hair nets, which she used to keep her home-permed hair in tightly regimented pin curls.
Her hobby was crochet, not the bulky crochet of modern afghans, but doilies and tablecoverings delicate as fine lace. Hers was the real generation of recyclers, and thrift was a way of life. Everything possible was saved, reused, made into something new. Even the occasional vacation was thrifty, taken at the ocean where the entertainment was clam digging.
So, as a new decade dawns, I resolve to look not only forward, but back. Back to the lessons of relatives who knew the value of hard work, respect for the land, caretaking of family and neighbors, and – as with peppermint candies hidden in a plain black pocketbook – the sweetness of simple joys found in ordinary places.
