“I admire intergenerational families that live together successfully. But that was not the model for my family.”
When Barbara was sixteen years old, her grandmother moved into the house. Her mother and her grandmother didn’t always see eye to eye.
It’s hard to have two very capable women living in the same house, with both of them wanting to run it. I remember when Grandma said she had reorganized the towel cupboard and folded all the towels into thirds, instead of halves. Mother looked astonished, and had to walk out of the room to keep her from saying anything. My dad said to me one time, ‘I should have put Grandma in an apartment near us, instead of moving her into our home.’
Several years later, Barbara came home from college and found a truce in the house. Grandma had found something to keep herself occupied that wasn’t rearranging things.
Mother had invited Grandma to join her at the women’s circle group at church, then stepped back and watched her become president in no time. She just needed an outlet for her abilities and energy.
Barbara thought it might be time to make amends with Grandma herself. She sparked a conversation by asking about the items in a curio cabinet in her grandmother’s bedroom.
We began to pull each item out, one at a time, starting with the dominos. I remembered Granddad teaching my brother and me how to play, suggesting strategies, and making sure we won enough to want to play with him again. At last I reached for a curious item; it looked like a seed; a big seed. ‘Why keep a seed?’ I asked. ‘Shall we plant it? Throw it out?’
‘Oh no, child,’ she replied. ‘That seed comes from the Civil War.’
Grandma told Barbara about her great-great grandfather being captured at Ft. Sumter, off the coast of South Carolina. He’d picked up the seed there, and it had been passed down ever since.
‘That’s how he was able to come home alive, so that later on, you could be born.’
But as Barbara did some research about Ft. Sumter she found a curious inconsistency – her grandfather had fought for the Confederates during the Civil War. The prisoners of war at Ft. Sumter were Union soldiers.
Did I just misunderstand my grandmother? Was my Confederate Great-great grandfather actually one of the soldiers to capture Ft. Sumter?
Regardless of the authenticity of the story, or the seed, Barbara refuses to throw it out. She keeps it in her linen closet, where she folds her towels in halves instead of thirds.