Vanilla Yogurt and Clothes on a Line

My maternal grandmother died in 1995. Fourteen years later, I still have sensory recollection of the woman who inspired me to travel the world. Henrietta Phillips was not a warm fuzzy kind of grandma. In fact, one of my cousins looked at me askance when I actually called her “Grandmama.” Most of her 15+ grandchildren knew her with the formality of “mother” status. I understand. She gave all that kind of vibe. I just didn’t always succumb to it.

She was a brilliant woman. Attended Duke. Had more education than my granddad did. Both my grandmothers married highly intelligent, successful men…with less formal education then them. Who cares about degrees when you can have the real stuff of genuine intellect that leads to true familial provision and genuine care?

I never knew my maternal grandfather, though I hear my dad is a lot like him, and well, I’m a lot like my dad… so I can imagine his strengths and acknowledge his weaknesses. Granddaddy Phillips drank too much alcohol. Still provided for his family, but hurt them with his choices when he was drunk, too. He died in his 50’s. Dad and I don’t drink much. Alcohol isn’t an issue with us – food might be ;) – but not alcohol. I wish alcohol hadn’t been an issue for my mom’s dad; I would have liked to know him.

However, his wife, I knew. And loved with a depth that even now is hard to give word to. She could be cold. I remember leaving her house in tears as a child. She’d criticized me, and to this day, I internalize others’ opinions too much. But God was gracious. He let me grow up and know my grandmother as an adult. And, oh, the difference age can make. My grandmama Phillips was definitely “iron sharpening iron” to me. She was one of the few people I could be sarcastic with, and it wasn’t the lowest form of wit; it was an insightful knowing of the world and its ways.

Once she reared her own six children and my granddad’s sister’s twins – whose parents both died of cancer within a year or so of each other – she began to travel around the world. I think she visited six of the seven continents, even countries that were still Communist and not the safest places to be as an American (Go, Grandmama! ☺ ).

I will ever acknowledge that it was her postcards from different spots in the world that influenced my own wanderlust. It was her house décor from around the globe that still tickles my memories and leads my choices of what to bring home from other places. She, like few people in my world, would understand my favorite framed saying: Travel – I am not the same having seen the moon rise on the other side of the world.

My grandmother read multiple books at a time, and was an advocate of women’s rights before it was the politically correct thing to be… though she held on fiercely to her rights as a married woman as well. I can remember her not wanting me to address letters to her personal name, but rather to her Mrs. (my grandfather’s name) Phillips. Ticked me off a bit at the time, but I so appreciated my grandmother’s blending of ideas and marching to the song of her own cymbal. She set the tone for my own life’s mix of meshed ideology.

And my grandmother liked vanilla yogurt and clothes that looked pretty on the line. This week, here in Slovakia, my tongue tasted the plain flavor of unsweetened vanilla enhanced by muesli and bran. As it did, my heart welled with the sense of my sitting in Grandmama’s kitchen for breakfast, especially during the summer we lived together when I was in college. I think members of my extended family wondered if there’d be fireworks with us sharing the same residence, and there were.

We were both hardheaded and liked doing things our own way. But I think, like her, my head’s obstinacy couldn’t overtake the tenderness of my heart, and I learned a lot from her that year and those that came afterward. My mom’s mom was definitely a chocolate with a hard shell covering and a delicious soft center. Love melted her protective outer defense; she cared passionately for her family and her community.

She also cared deeply about how clothes were hung on an outside line. As an environmentalist (who recycled and conserved before it was the “in” thing to do), she appreciated nature; as such, she preferred to have her clothes dry in the crisp N.C. mountain air rather then tumbled about in an electric dryer. I preferred speed over the spice of outdoor drying (still do usually).

However, when I was living in her house, I learned to do as the Romans… so out on the line the clothes went. As long as they were hung to where the air could have at ‘em, what did it matter if they were balanced beautifully on the wire taunt between two trees. Right? Wrong. Grandmama Phillips was an artist, and it offended her creative eye to see clothes hung haphazardly on her line.

She seriously took me to task about any crooked clothes I put out to dry. I didn’t relish having the hassle of a teenager and a geriatric dispute (tho’ she was never your typical elderly woman – she was known as “Road Runner” in her community, all the time up until cancer came as an unwelcome visitor into her colon and her brain). Therefore, I learned to create a clothing canvas of sorts - ready for her to approve and frame. Truth be told, I never did it as well as she did. She had a heart for it; I did it out of grudging obedience.

This week, something clicked for me. I was hanging clothes on the wire racks my European friends use to dry their clothes, and my senses dashed back to recall my grandmother’s predilection for pristine-looking clothes lines. I found myself trying to perfectly balance the sheets and the shirts, the towels and the trousers… and I grinned while water sprung up in my eyes. No longer did I find myself begrudging the practice. In fact, it reminded me that obedience isn’t a dirty word when it’s done out of love…