Grandma’s Loblollies

We take care of 92 year old Grandma Nina, my husband’s mother. She spent more than half of her life in Georgia, and although she still calls it home and still has her Georgia accent, she doesn’t like much about the South when she visits there. She’s a funny character, closely related to the pack rat. Everything she has is precious to her and has sentimental value. She lives alone in a small seniors’ apartment one mile from our house, and in that small apartment, she has a narrow path that goes from the doorway to the living room sofa or into her bedroom–to her bed. The rest of the house is filled with loblollies, that is a term she says means stacks of stuff piled up. This is true of even the furniture in her house; it is difficult to find a place to sit until you move one or two loblollies. Now we may refer to such areas as junk piles, but she prefers the loblolly word because none of her stuff is junk.

In order for you to understand Grandma Nina, let me tell you about another of her idiosyncrasies. She has a tendency to choose favorites–favorite child, favorite grand child, etc. Several of her descendants have been favored for a period of short duration by Grandma, but they always somehow fall out of favor. Right now her favorite is a granddaughter in law. My son Sam and his little family that live near enough to help take care of Grandma Nina, and my daughter-in-law Trin is an angel who has, because of her attention to Grandma, become the “favored child.” Believe me, it is not a coveted role. Although Grandma and Grandpa traveled to Utah with very little to call their own, these days just about every possession is claimed to have come with her from Georgia.

A few weeks ago while I was doing dishes at her house, I threw away an old green plastic glass. It had such an unsightly stain on it. Grandma Nina saw my wasteful deed and said, “Dottie, don’t throw that away! It’s a good glass!” My husband backed me up and said that it was stained and looked awful and we would buy her some new glasses. That green thing was only one of so many things that need to go in the trash. . . someday.

Grandma Nina has been talking to Trin or rather coaching her about the day when she dies. She has made Trin promise to be there with her on her dying day– not to hold her hand, but to stand as guard over her stuff! She has gone over everything in her house and told Trin who gets what. There are some things amongst her possessions that haven’t been assigned, but Trin is to make sure someone takes each item home, or they can go to the thrift store, but NOTHING gets thrown away.

Yesterday Grandma Nina bestowed on Trin one of her many precious objects that came with her from Georgia. It is an old pin cushion. . . don’t get any sentimental pictures in your mind about this. If it were one of her old faded, tomato-type pin cushions, yes that would be nostalgic. But. . . gee, I don’t even know how to describe this thing. . . it’s an old heavy cardboard cone that once had thread on it–the kind used in factories, and then this bare cone was wrapped with several men’s socks, but through the years the socks and part of the cone have worn off, the top of the ragged cardboard is bare with some sock padding, that look like rags, at the bottom few inches. It is really hideous to behold. Trin can’t have it until Grandma dies, but on that day, she is to claim it for herself along with the old green plastic glass. . .”the last one, since Dottie threw the other one away. They came all the way from Georgia with me, and you just can’t replace old stuff with new

If we are counting sentiment and age, then perhaps the ugly pin cushion has some claim and has earned its place in a loblolly, but the scarred up green plastic glass, uh sorry–it has a Tupperware mark on it and is olive green–very popular in the 1970s. Now that one belongs in a trash pile.

The honor of becoming the Guardian of Grandma’s Loblollies is one I would never want or accept, but I’m thinking that someday that memory will be a source of happiness and laughter for Trin.