Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 16, 1993 TAG: 9312160031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I rarely see a bill higher than a $10 these days, so I can't tell you which presidents are on which bills - except for Hamilton, Lincoln and Washington.
When I was 4, she taught me to read. Fun words like "boosterbar," the chocolate candy bars the Lions Club always sold on our street. Or "mint," those sugary pastel little dinner mints she was constantly sucking on.
By the time I was 5, she had me writing my full name - in cursive. E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H A-N-N M-A-C-Y. That Z was tricky stuff, but she saw me through it. It angered my first-grade teacher to no end - because she'd forgotten to teach me the capital-letter curly-Q's. Besides, everyone knew you were supposed to learn simple printing before you learned cursive anyway.
When I was 6, she took me to claim the free dinner-for-two I'd won in a helium-balloon contest. It was at Milner's Cafeteria downtown - the first place I remember eating out. I insisted on a hamburger, which they had to fix up special.
Grandma Macy didn't flinch.
Everyone should grow up with their grandmother in the house next door. Mine lived exactly 13 steps - 13 paces from the side stoop of my house to the side stoop of hers.
I used to walk those 13 steps - across our gravel driveway, across her yard and under the giant buckeye tree - with my eyes closed sometimes. Showing off.
Which rattled Grandma Macy, the consummate worrywart. "Now fiddlesticks, you open your eyes or you'll fall down," she'd call out to me. "You be careful, little Missy."
"Fiddlesticks" was the closest to cussing she ever got.
"You be careful" was her mantra.
"Missy" was her subtle way of showing me who was boss. I named my imaginary friend "Missy" so I could have someone to boss around, too.
Things weren't very pleasant at my house. My dad yelled a lot, got drunk. My brother once ran away from our small Ohio town to Indiana and found a big switch waiting for him when he got back. My sister got pregnant, moved out, got married, got divorced, got religion and, finally, moved back home. My mom was always complaining about something, usually her nerves.
Thirteen steps away, Grandma Macy's house was a dream world. Quiet, musty, full of imagination. I spent hours there every day playing "I Spy" and checkers, practicing multiplication tables and listening to her stories.
I spent hours in her attic, going through her '40s dresses and costume jewelry. On special occasions, she'd let me get the skeleton key and open her walnut cabinet, full of ceramic chatchkis and family treasures. I was allowed to look at, but not touch, the special red-glass pitcher that said "Mother," something she and her siblings had pitched in to buy my great-grandmother Dulin at the 1907 county fair.
Probably the first interview I ever conducted was with my Grandma Macy. I'd sit in the sunken-down chair across from her (legs crossed, or I'd be accused of being "unladylike") and fire away question after question: Where did she grow up? What was her family like? Where did she go to school?
I remember her bringing her old McGuffey Readers down from the attic to read to me and thinking they were too old-fashioned to be any good. But of course they were wonderful.
I remember her once confessing in a whispered tone that she'd hit a boy in the head with her lunch box in the eighth grade. She never said what he did to provoke her, but it must have been really bad.
I remember telling my friends, "My Grandma Macy is RICH," because she never once refused me change for penny candy at downtown Carmazzi's. I remember watching her walk the 10 blocks to her job selling clothes in a fancy dress shop downtown, carrying her little fold-up metal cart so she could stop at the grocery store on her way home.
She worked until she was 82. When she got to be 85, you had to keep your eye on her, or she'd mow her own grass.
By the time she hit 90, Mom moved her into a nursing home and sold her house, practically giving away all her things to some antique shark - the red pitcher, the walnut cabinet, the McGuffey Readers. Grandma threatened to take a cab home from the nursing home and make Mom pay the fare.
I'd visit her when I came home from college, and she'd still try to give me a dollar or two. If I refused, she'd get mad:
"Oh fiddlesticks, it's gas money," she'd say. "And you be careful out there driving. You go too fast."
About two years ago, she quit threatening to take that cab.
Last year when my husband and I visited her, she was in so much pain she was actually grumpy. It was the last time I saw her, and I knew it was time for her to go.
She died last Saturday, and I'm glad. She was 97.
When my mom called to tell me, she was mad at my uncle, who was handling the arrangements. He told the nursing home staff to give away her few remaining things to the other residents - though for the life of me I can't remember anything she had left. A few dinner mints maybe, some old housecoats and hairnets, a few pictures on the wall.
I didn't go home for the funeral.
I want to remember her my way - her quiet house, the musty smell, her wobbly cursive, that tricky letter Z.
And those 13 steps from reality to imagination, from hopelessness to hope.
by CNB