“The shoes of all grandparents are inestimable mysteries, hold them in your hand and they are strange and tender somehow, and hers were particularly so, polished and worn, mucked and puddled and polished again with that kind of human resolve that to me is inexplicably moving.” This is Happiness, Niall Williams
The years pass and who will remember us? My children do not remember my great-grandmother. Is that how long memories of us will last—three generations, at most?
We called her Mummy—she was my great-grandmother, my mothers’ mother’s mother. Three generations of mothering is a lot of middle-of-the-night feedings, a lot of diapers changed, a lot of worrying and waiting up and praying.
I knew Mummy as gentle (though her children might tell you of other qualities) and thoughtful and, mostly, unseeing. By the time I was old enough to remember spending much time with her, various things had conspired to take most of her vision. She would often sit quietly in a corner, thinking to herself, waiting patiently for someone to come over and chat with her.
As she grew older, after nearly setting her house on fire when she forgot to turn off the oven, she began spending one month with each of her children, if I’m remembering it correctly. One of her sons told me that when she would stay with them, she liked to listen to audio versions of Louis L’Amour novels, westerns that gripped her imagination and even had her calling out for someone to turn off the recording—it was too intense. She needed a break.
And one of her children, my grandmother, lived with my parents at the time, so every seven or eight months, here came Mummy, living with grandma and my parents, shuffling slowly from one chair to the other. Sitting quietly. Eyes cloudy. Hands in her lap. Waiting.
One night, when she was living at my parents, my dad heard a strange sound coming from the side of the house where Mummy slept, so he crept along quietly and peeked through the door. There she was, praying in German, her voice droning on hypnotically, loudly. She made her way through the names of each of her children, praying for them one by one. She shifted front and back while she prayed, like a reed in the wind, like an oracle in some mystical city.
My dad listened for a long time. When he turned and went back to bed, she was still praying.
My grandmother, or Grandma Beiler, was just like Mummy. Two peas in a pod, separated by maybe 25 years or so, which doesn’t seem like much when one is 90 and the other is 65. At least it didn’t seem like much to me, when I was a teenager. Now that I’m 45 I can better see the difference between those two ages.
Grandma Beiler hired me when I was only 11 or 12 to run the register at her market. Maybe I was younger than that. She taught me how to talk to customers and how to make change in her cash drawer and how to line up the bills just so, and sometimes she gave me money to walk across the market aisle and buy candy at the candy store. One year, when I was in fourth grade, I saved up $10 and bought my girlfriend a glass jar of root beer barrels for Christmas. I’ve never even liked root beer barrels. I don't know that my girlfriend particularly liked root beer barrels. Maybe they were on sale, or maybe I liked how they looked. I don’t know.
Besides the root beer barrels, I remember my grandma’s shoes, the ones she wore to market. They were always very plain and soft and small. Later, when she lived with my parents, I would sometimes see those shoes sitting inside her door. They were, as Niall Williams writes, “inestimable mysteries.” Strangely enough, I wish I still had a pair of them. Maybe they would remind me of her.
Maybe if I had a pair of my Mummy’s shoes, I could set them in the corner of my office. Maybe then I could pray like her, pray for everyone who means anything to me, pray in another language and go on and on and lean forward and back and feel the Spirit of all things as it sweeps from the furthest galaxy through my tiny little office and back out again, around the sun, racing comets, visiting far-off stars that have already exploded.
The shoes of all grandparents. Inestimable mysteries indeed.
Really enjoyed this memory. Especially of Mummy rocking and praying in German. Got me thinking how I might be remembered by my grandchildren. I spent summers at my grandmas in Glassport and Homestead Pennsylvania and for an extended stay when my mom was hospitalized for several months when I was 7. Several generations married late in their 20s so I never knew my great grandparents. But I have many treasured memories of Grandma Carpenter - sitting on her bed at night helping her brush and braid her long but thinned white hair. During the day she wore it on top of her head in a bun. I was given her hairpins. My children had only one living grandparent, (my mom )Memom, as my first son dubbed her. They have many treasured memories with her. I try to make the rounds every year at least so my grands and great grands will have some special memories.
When my Granny died and we were clearing out her things, it was her shoes that tipped me over the edge into tears. I always thing there is something so humbling and vulnerable about a person's shoes. Something that reminds me of our shared humanity in a way that really is 'inexplicably moving' as the quote says. Seeing someone's shoes always opens up a huge well of compassion for them in me. I don't know why, but there it it.