I often wonder if Grandma would’ve lived this long given the other odds she beat; no other immediate relatives of hers made it as close and the diet my grandparents lived on would make my doctor wince. Although she died short of her 95th birthday from cancer, I feel Grandma could’ve made it another decade by listening to her doctors and not being a borderline shut-in.
Since it’s her birthday, I want to look back on the nice things my maternal grandmother did for me.
About 30 years ago, she and Grandpa gave me an unusual grade-school graduation present…a pair of binoculars (I don’t know when I lost them). Dad said something negative, like that’s a gift they wanted when they were teenagers during the Roaring Twenties. I was 13 so my reaction wasn’t exactly appreciative neither, I wanted a computer. The binoculars did come to the rescue whenever I had crappy seats at concerts which in the early years was all of them: Rick Springfield, Genesis, Duran Duran and The Cars. I lucked out with Adam Ant, 20th row.
The other great thing I will remember about Grandma was her emphasis on earning a higher education and having the foresight to help me attain it while my parents shafted me; I will never forget their “scholarship excuse” to justify their own selfishness. Anyway, I was very fortunate that she and Grandpa had money put away to assist Brian and me. They didn’t foot my entire $45,000 bill to attend Marquette ($78,000 in 2010 dollars), I did have my pride. I earned a partial scholarship ($5000), had CWS ($2000, I think) and borrowed ($14,000). They were generous enough to close a rather significant gap. However, I’ve never been insensitive to other people who don’t have such forward-thinking benefactors unlike Mitt Romney; gotta’ love his suggestions to us peasants on pursuing college.
On a superficial level, education was a class thing in Grandma’s mind but she was getting set in her ways/thinking during the years I knew her; Grandma was over 65 by the time I was old enough to have a conversation with her. When she was younger, going to college was a huge undertaking and she beat some rather nasty odds. Today, more women attend universities than men in the West. In the early Twenties, women were a minority and few degree programs were open to them. Despite being a brilliant student (graduated from high school at 16!) her family gave little support. Her father said she would either drop out and/or come home pregnant before the first semester ended. Seems to run in the family, Mom said I would die of AIDS. Grandma did receive one big endorsement from her Grandfather, he gave her $100 ($1300 in 2010) as a graduation present.
Not only did Grandma prove her father wrong, she earned a diploma and went on to graduate school. Afterwards, Grandma was a high school English and Latin teacher until her retirement. This made it funnier whenever she cursed because one would think Grandma had something more eloquent or creative to say. It also bursts the mythology about the “good old days” and people not using such language.