Essay Collection: Matriarchs 1

There is so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That it barely behooves any of us,

To talk about the rest of us.

Those are words to live by, taught to me by my maternal Grandmother, Francis Edith (Bayles) Ramsey. A small, deceptively light-figured woman – one could easily make the mistake of thinking she might be frail. She was anything but. She spent her life in kitchens and on farms, building houses along side my Grandpa after he lost half an arm in a farming accident. She raised six kids and wielded a mean cast iron skillet. I can remember her voice, telling stories as we played cards, and her “horse-apple” laugh – you couldn't hear it and not laugh along with her.

Her percolator is enshrined in my kitchen, and it gets used almost every day. This in itself, is a miracle, considering that my Mom can't remember her ever having another coffee pot. That puts it at upwards of 50 years old. To back this up, the brand on the little light that tells me when the coffee is done says “Hoover.” How long has it been since the vacuum people made a coffee pot?

In spite of this, it still brews a killer pot of coffee.

My memories of family, and the Ramsey matriarch, are held in the swirling scent of coffee from that percolator. It was the thing that everyone gathered around. I remember watching her set it up, setting the tube down into the little depression at the bottom of the pot carefully. It was almost a meditation. So many scoops of Butternut or Hills Brothers. The coppery looking lid thing set down on top of the basket, and finally the lid to the coffee pot itself, topped with a glass piece through which you could watch coffee bubbling.

Some of my most happily remembered mornings as a kid are caught up in the scent of coffee swirling into my room and the soft sound of my parents and grandparents talking in the other room. I would lay in bed for a few minutes and just enjoy the sounds of family and home, and let myself feel completely secure. These mornings were special because we lived a minimum of two thousand miles away from my extended family at any given time while I was growing up. The time I spent with family was absorbed almost greedily.

She was a little gregarious – the one who stayed in contact with everyone. The one that people came to visit. The one who took care of others when they needed it. She used to worry about people she didn't even know driving home in the ice and snow. She was, simply, one of the most utterly selfless people I've ever known. There was a permanence about her; she was integral in mind and place for me. I couldn't imagine Wisconsin without her, and in truth, I still can't. My last visit was the year that she died, and I haven't made it back since.

I keep pieces of her with me constantly, though. I 'meditate' as I make coffee, and again as I clean out the percolator, and in my mind, I can still hear her calling me “little girl” in that soft way she had. Depending on the day, though, I might be a “little shit” or a “fart blossom.” Even those were always spoken with affection, usually with a smile in her voice. No matter how grown up I got, I was always those things.

That last visit was hard. She was going through chemotherapy a second time (in her 80s, no less), and living with my Uncle since Grandpa had died a few years earlier. She had needed someone to take care of, and my Uncle lived alone as well as having health problems of his own, so it fell together. I had just graduated from college with a dual Bachelor's in political science and writing. I'd always been pretty different from most of the Ramseys – although in that I took after my Mom. Even though I perpetually had a book in front of me, listened to classical music, and went to operas and plays, I had always still been one of theirs. Just...kinda different. Like my Mom. But once I had that piece of paper, things seemed to shift. For the first couple days of the visit, I kept getting this feeling that they weren't sure how to talk to me, and the only thing that had changed was I'd spent five years getting a very expensive piece of paper.

And, of course, the education to go with it. But even in my education, she was present. I wanted to go into a field where I could help people, and leave the world better than I came into it – something that Grandma and Mom had always instilled in me. After the initial discomfort wore off, there was the fact that Grandma had cancer running rampant through her. Deny it as I might, and I did (mightily), a piece of me recognized that it would be the last time I saw her. I have Crohn's (the pain from this is compared to childbirth that doesn't go away when a person is flaring), and I can't fathom the pain she must have been in. Her hip, which had been replaced twenty years earlier, and slipped out of it's socket finally, and she was getting around with a walker. Yet, she refused to take her pain medication most of the time because she wanted to be aware of the world around her.

She was still full of “it” though. One day I was dragged out of bed (laying there sniffing coffee fumes) by my Mom, because Grandma was going “down cellar.” With a walker, Mom in front of her, and Uncle Randy in back of her. Once she had it in her head that she was going to check out the cellar in that house, though, nothing was going to stop her.

A few months later, Mom went out by herself to be with her during her last days. Then, the Uncle who she had lived with moved out here to Washington. The family was slipping outwards and away without the matriarch to anchor everyone to one central point – defined in the kitchen by the coffee pot.

I don't know that there is anything I can do about the distance in my family now, but it's left to me to pass on what she taught me. She had me memorize the 23^rd Psalm one year when I visited and I still remember it. She taught me how to identify goldenrod (and that it attracted bees as well as butterflies), sumac from poison sumac, and all sorts of other plants – weeds, outdoor, indoor, didn't matter. She knew them all and knew how to take care of them. She taught me how to make fried potatoes. How to use a cleaned out, open ended can for all sorts of things in the kitchen. How to plan meals for a diabetic (Grandpa was diabetic late in life). How to plan meals at all. How to play rummy, but not how to cheat (that she kept to herself and always denied). My first experience with a bird's nest was in her front yard, where the robins had built one in the shrubs. Thanks to her, I know how to read the trees too see if it will rain.

She didn't read books much, but she read everything else. When things were ripe or done, when to make pies and freeze them for Christmas, what days were best for making bread and candies.

It's a heavy job, but I'm glad for it. I hang on to those pieces of knowledge so that no matter how far I go in life, I'm never forgetful of where I came from. I'm reminded of all of it, every time I make coffee.