My grandmother used to keep three little ceramic pots on her kitchen counter. One for twist ties, one for bread clips, and one for rubber bands. Growing up in northern Ontario during the great depression meant my grandmother never wasted anything.
Granny's parents worked as cooks in logging camps and on the railway. She and her sister, Lily, completed their schooling by correspondence. I remember Granny telling me one of her assignments was to draw the spring flowers. Spring comes late to northern Ontario, so she drew lichen and moss.
When she and my grandfather married, they lived in a tent till they saved up enough money to rent a farm house. They farmed the land and eventually they were able to have their own dairy farm. They raised four children, and, as happened back in those days, they lost two more in infancy.
When my parents married, they worked the farm with my grandparents. In 1977, my parents and my grandparents sold the family dairy farm and we moved to Nova Scotia. As children, we had the benefit of grandparents that lived 12 feet away.
My grandmother taught me to bake and to cook old school. We had recipe cards, yeast that required proofing, and cream that was whipped by hand. We rendered pork fat to make lard for pies. When it was time to process chickens, Granny started me me off with cleaning gizzards, which we both agreed were beautifully coloured, and picking pinfeathers.
Granny predated refrigeration and there were always jars of rhubarb and apple sauce, beets, pickles, and chili sauce (chow, made right with red tomatoes) in the pantry beneath the stairs. I remember the pride in her voice when she told me about the peas she and her mother used to can that were every bit as as good as the ones you could buy at the store.
My grandmother was always happy to engage in any craft we could dream up. A lifelong painter and salvager of scraps of paper and fabric, she had a treasure trove of art supplies. Grandpa would supply the woodworking as required.
She taught me to sew and helped me draw, though her knitting lessons never sunk in. Nor did the piano lessons she paid for and attended faithfully. Pianos and keyboards, my grandmother discovered, could not hold a candle to ponies and puppies.
One day years later when I was studying applied arts, our roles reversed and I got to show her how to proportionally map out faces when sketching.
Granny loved to travel and visited to more places in Canada than I can possibly remember. Repeatedly. By car, by train, and by plane. She travelled right up until her health would no longer permit it.
Despite her tiny packaging - we were about the same size by the time I hit grade six - Granny could be tough. The last thing I wanted to hear from my grandmother were the words "I have a bone to pick with you." The life of a 1940s rural farm wife breeds impressive resilience. When my marriage ended, my grandmother called me and recommended I stick it out. She said "Marriage is hard. The first 20 years with your grandfather were hell on earth and look how well we turned out."
On the topic of marriage, we agreed to disagree.
Granny was also a fan of technology. Living in the boonies of Lochkatrine, our family was one of the first to have a satellite dish, courtesy of Granny and Grandpa's Lotto 649 win, which was just enough to pay for it. My grandmother learned how to use a computer in her 80s and has the distinction of being the only person I know who created paintings in Windows Paint that actually look like paintings.
Granny loved to talk and was a natural story teller. She hand-wrote her own biography. I suspect there is a lot more of my grandmother running through me than my stubby round toes.
While Granny's life was bountiful in length and experience, it was not always in the best of health. She had so many surgeries she said the doctors might as well have put a zipper in her. She survived not one, but two readings of the last rights. When my mother told me she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, I asked my mother how anything could be considered early at her age.
We always joked that when Granny stopped talking, the end was near. Granny stopped talking this week and passed away in her sleep in the early hours of Friday morning. The staff said it was quiet and peaceful and I could not wish for better.
Leafa Georgetta Humphrey was an intensely creative, clever, and resourceful woman. She was my second mother, my playmate, and my teacher. I am infinitely better for it.
Rest in peace, Granny. Yours was a life fully lived.
