The posts I share from 101 Days of Sunshine are the work of
my sister, Karin. Her writing has inspired me to likewise share stories each
time I post her link. She is much more disciplined as a writer than I am, but I
am trying to keep up.
This author's note reminded me of Mom's Wild West Show. We
had a neighbor with a dog who roamed free. It was the norm for country folks
where we now lived. However, she was not a friendly dog, like most of the ones
whom we knew. She was sneaky and aggressive, and had attacked more than one of
our dogs, causing a few trips to the vet. That was bad enough, but she had also
tried to attack Karin, making her scramble to safety at the top of her swing
set on more than one occasion. Dad had spoken to the neighbor very bluntly
several times, but nothing changed.
Mom's mother, Grandma Hull, began visiting us in PA once
every week since we moved from Cleveland. When we lived there, she visited her
daughter every day. On the day we moved to Pennsylvania, there had been a major
scene in the driveway of our old home. She wailed and cried and said she had no
daughter from this day forward. She said if Mom loved her she would abandon her
husband and children and stay. She piled on guilt trip after guilt trip. She
bemoaned how she would die alone, never seeing her daughter again. She did not
lie down in front of the car, but I think it was one of her next moves. Some
time later, after seeing a sitcom with a Jewish Mother stereotype, I sincerely
asked Mom if Grandma Hull was Jewish. You could see how, as a child, I made the
connection to that stereotype, based on her behavior. |
| Gramma, holding my sister Colleen, and Uncles, Kenny, Chucky, and Jimmy |
Grandma vowed that day that she would drive two hours from Cleveland to our house to visit us once every week. At first it was done with resentment and in hopes of convincing Mom to return home. For years she wore a black armband in her heart, mourning that such an ungratefully independent daughter had been her misfortune to bear. Eventually she lightened up and enjoyed her visits, but we were all prisoners of that one-day-a-week schedule. If Mom tried to make other plans, the drama and guilt was dusted off and hauled back out. We also spent every holiday at her house, but at Christmas she would always get teary-eyed and say, "I guess I won't see you until next Christmas. The children will have grown up so much by then." Mom patiently ignored the dramatics and guilt and reminded her mother that we saw her last week and would see her next week as well.
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| "TRIGGER" WARNING- warning shots will be fired! |
So on one of Grandma's visit days, Karin ran into the house
terrified that, while she was playing on the swing in her own backyard, the
neighbor's dog had chased her yet again. Mom had enough. She went and got Dad's
pistol from the lockbox and stood on the back porch and fired off four rounds.
Mom was a very good shot, if she had wanted to hit the dog, she would have, but
she just wanted to scare it off to protect her little girl. In the moment, she
completely forgot her own mother was seeing this.
Grandma was a city girl, other than the occasional visit to
her brother's farm. She was still suspicious of vegetables that didn't come
from the supermarket, and she ignored the connection between ground beef and
cows. She was still trying to get used to the idea that her daughter had not
died from walking outside barefoot. Now, she had the shock of her life. In her
world, criminals and police fired guns. No one else. Certainly no one she had
given birth to. She stood there with nothing to say for a few moments until it
sank in.
I am sure it was not funny to my poor Grandma, but we
laughed about it for years after. It sank in and she was off- "Janet Mary!
You just shot a gun! How can you shoot a gun?! What is this place you live in?!
The Wild West?! You shooting a gun like you are Annie Oakley! The police are
probably on their way to take you to jail! You should have just called the
dogcatcher! Instead my daughter has a shoot-out like it's the OK Corral!
Shooting a gun, with bullets! I knew you should have stayed in Cleveland! But,
no! You live out here in John Wayne country, where everybody has a pistol on
their belt!"
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| NOT Gramma's daughter! |
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| Gramma's mental picture of Fredonia |
I don't think I need to point out my Grandmother's love of
Drama. Mom did not have a holster on her hip at any time in Fredonia. Neither
did our neighbors. We lived in green, rural farm country in PA, not in some
arid, tumbleweed-infested frontier town. To my Grandma, anything outside
Cleveland and its suburbs was not civilized, and this did nothing to convince
her that she was mistaken. The three of us children did not need to be told that
we should carefully omit that we knew gun safety, and had target practice, and
were all decent shots ourselves. For some things, it was better if Grandma did
not know. She had enough Drama already.
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| Our actual house in Fredonia |
