Who's ya' granny?!

September 8th is Grandparents Day. (Don't forget to call.) Here're the folks I'll be celebrating:

► My mother�s grandmother we called Mamah.

I�m a shade or two browner than a paper bag, and my hair is coarse and kinky, but Mamah had long, wavy hair that fell all the way down her back. And her skin was the color of honeyed milk.

At 84, she�d let my sister and me comb and dress her hair like she was a doll and feed us Coke and lemon custard ice cream even though we hadn�t had our dinner yet. She loved orange marmalade and baked tea cakes that would wake you up in the middle of the night wanting more.

She loved to eat as much as she loved to cook, and ever the pragmatist, she would put all the dinner�s courses on one plate: from salad to desert � and never mind if a little gravy got on the pecan pie. �It�s all going to the same place,� she�d say.

I don�t ever see a jar of orange marmalade without thinking of her.

► Pampa was my mother�s father. (Pampa, Mamah � is it a Southern thing?)

He was blinded by glaucoma and had had both legs amputated because of complications from diabetes, but he had the grandfather thing down pat. I grew up as a latch-key kid in a family that moved constantly from apartment to apartment. Going to Pampa�s house was, to use the vernacular, da� bomb.

He got me a fire-engine-red tricycle for my third birthday, had my uncle hang a tire swing from the sycamore in the back yard when I was about six, and purposely left an ugly bare spot in the yard just so that my sister and I would have our very own mud patch � great for pies on a rainy summer afternoon � just outside the kitchen door.

Pampa introduced me to peanuts-in-Coke. Oh yeah, baby. There�s nothing better than cramming a bunch of peanuts into a classic glass Coca-cola bottle and then drinking them down on a park bench after story time at the library. (Try it once and you�ll be hooked for life. Really.)

Pampa would sneak me candy money. He�d hide his cash in his wooden legs like his wife of more than 40 years didn�t know. (Everybody knew � we just didn�t tell him.)

Pampa let me help make his extra-secret barbeque sauce. It was my first job � sous chef.

And as free as he was with kisses and hugs, Pampa was wicked quick to suggest a whoopin�. Don�t wanna take a nap? Don�t wanna eat your lima beans? Threw mud in your little sister�s hair? �Do I need to take off my belt?!� he�d call with his hand on the buckle.

But for all the threats, he never, ever spanked me.

He was a big softy with scratchy, whiskered cheeks. Definitely one of the Good Guys.

► Grandmother Dear, my mother�s mom and Pampa�s wife, was an �action grandmother.� If they ever come up with a Grandmother Barbie, she�d be the model.

She was all into the haute couture thing. She dressed hipper than I did at the peak of my high school career. When jam boxes got big in the 80s � and I mean literally huge � she had to have one. The microwave in my kitchen right now is smaller than the monstrosity she bought for backyard barbeques. Wigs, Jeri curls, weaves � she sported them all as they went in and out of fashion.

Oh the battles that were waged over Easter dresses and school clothes! She loved me in lace and ruffles and floral prints. I was into grunge before grunge was cool.

But she was proud of me. And she let me know.

When I was small, she�d plat my hair on the front porch so she could chat with the neighbors as they walked by. �This is my oldest grandbaby,� she�d say. �Get�s straight As all the time.�

She never finished the 8th grade. But she got Shakespeare and literary anthologies for me to read when I dropped by after school.

I don�t know that she ever understood me, but she gave me what I needed: patience, love, affection � and a pronounced aversion to all things frilly.

► Gransiblings M�dear and Aunt G wrap up the tribute. They�re on my father�s side. Ever well-intentioned, their efforts have often provided the comic relief that make the holiday-hell stories worth retelling.

Remind me to tell you about the houseboat trip sometime.

Until they retired in East Texas about five years ago, M�dear and Aunt G had lived in the same house since before I was born. They now live in two houses that share a fenced lot. They are formidable when confronted individually. Combined, their gran-powers have come close to sinking houseboats. (Seriously, don�t drop bombs on Iraq. Send M�Dear and Aunt G in after Saddam Hussein. He�ll be a repentant, sobbing wreck in need of serious therapy within two days.)

To describe someone as �country� in Texas isn�t an insult � not like calling someone a �hick.� It generally just describes the way/place that person lives. So know that when I say this, I say it with affection: M�dear and Aunt G are country. Very country.

When they retired, my dad helped put plumbing into their country homes. M�dear and Aunt G decided that they�d keep the outhouses in the back yard � just in case. Spending Thanksgiving with them means you get a surprise in every pot. After finding a baked �possum in a roast pan when I was twelve, I stopped opening pots. Now I ask, �What�s in this one?� (It�s been years and years and years, but I can still see that little �possum face staring back at me�) They carry shotguns when they go fishing, just in case something they�d rather eat for dinner goes scurrying by.

Aunt G got Direct TV and now watches the Western Channel. All. The. Time.

M�Dear, who at 5-feet-nil is the only adult in my family I can bend down to hug, drives a Ford 350. Believe me, what you don�t want to see in your rear view mirror is her driving that massive truck, barely able to peer over the steering wheel.

I think my sister and I both get our vinegar � our stubborn, independent streaks � from them. Neither of us takes any crap. And don�t have the misfortune of standing between us and something we want � be it a good deal on a new car or a jelly donut.

I�ve got to go now. There�re a couple of women out in the piney woods of East Texas waiting for a phone call.

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