BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—HONEYMOON AT GRANDMA’S [F, 5-31-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—HONEYMOON AT GRANDMA’S [F, 5-31-24]

When Helen and I married, 65 years ago today, naturally I wanted to spend our honeymoon at my grandma’s house. Grandma had been the most important woman in my life. I thought she should meet the woman who was replacing her in that role.

 

It was just an extra added benefit that we got to go to a Reds double-header at Crosley Field. When people ask the secret to our 65-year marriage, I say that you just have to know what will please your wife most. [1]

Also, Helen now knows that there is a special bond between a grandma and an only grandson. [Grandma eventually had ten grandsons, but I was the only one for ten years.] It’s not that grandmas don’t love granddaughters just as much, or are willing to do anything necessary to care for them. Grandma Mac proved that many times, including raising Genevieve, a niece who was thrown out at age four by a stepmother who didn’t want her. Helen has proved that special grandma love for granddaughters many times with Brigid.

But grandmas know that nothing can ever separate a granddaughter. Not true with boys. Grandmas know that some little girl will come along and take that little boy away. I wanted to prove to Grandma Mac that she had nothing to fear from Helen, so it was necessary for us to spend our honeymoon at her house. [It was also the least expensive honeymoon ever. As our financial advisor once said, “If all my clients were as frugal as you people, I’d be a genius.”]

I started my life and spent my first four years at Grandma Mac’s house, a big old farm house, replete with barn, on the edge of Oxford, Ohio. My mother named it Cedar Crest. It was Great Depression days, and whenever my father didn’t have a job, we would move to Cedar Crest, Daddy and Mother and my older sister, Mary V, and me.

We weren’t the only ones. The young bachelor brothers, Bob and Randall and Mike, couldn’t get jobs, so they couldn’t marry. They lived on the side porch. Genevieve lived at Cedar Crest until she graduated high school and went into nurses training. So with Grandma and Grandpa’s only daughter, Helen. Whenever her husband, Harvey, didn’t have a job, they would move in, with their daughter, Elizabeth Ann, whom I called Zibby Ahn. The same with oldest son Glen, and his wife, Mable, and their daughters, Joann and Patty. Mary V remembers that someone slept in a hall on a cot that was packed up and put away during the day. It was not unusual to have fifteen or sixteen of us there at the same time. I thought it was wonderful.

Grandma and Grandpa McFarland [Arthur Harrison and Henrietta Ann] supported us all. They had jobs at Western College for Women, now part of Miami University. Grandpa was the stationary engineer, and Grandma was a maid and salad cook. We kids would get into Grandma’s room while she was at work and take her stuff to the barn, where we set up a store. Grandma would buy her stuff back when she got home from work.

Grandma and Grandpa had moved from Oxford to Hamilton by the time Helen and I married, to 909 Main Street, another house big enough to hold any number of grandkids, even though all their fathers had jobs by then. Grandpa died at age 72. I was a sixteen-year-old pall-bearer for him, the first funeral I ever attended. Grandma, all five feet and 85 pounds of her, lived on to 96.

When I graduated high school, my mother was embarrassed by Grandma. “Why did you have to get so many awards? Every time you got an award, your grandma clapped and cheered like a crazy woman. It was embarrassing.”

No, it was a grandma with an only grandson. To a grandma, every grandson is an “only.” So that is why we spent our honeymoon at 909 Main Street in Hamilton, Ohio.

John Robert McFarland

1] After all, it was from Grandma Mac that I got my love of the Reds. She listened to every game on the radio. On Ladies Days, she and Aunt Nellie, Grandpa’s maiden sister, would ride the bus from Hamilton, OH to Cincinnati to see the Reds play. Grandpa was once seeing them off at the bus and said, “Now be careful down there. You know what kinds of people go to ball games.”

Grandma was one of the world’s great Chinese Checkers players. So was Helen, although I did not know that when I first introduced them. In Grandma’s declining years, she would become confused and make amazing multi-jump moves. The problem was, they were usually with Helen’s marbles. Poor Helen was discombobulated. What do you do with a beloved grandma when she’s not playing fair but doesn’t know it?

When I was 3, I got my head stuck between a wall and something. Everybody in the house came to try to help. Uncle Randall, my main babysitter, tried to calm everyone, without much success, as all and sundry shouted suggestions. Of course, my mother just grabbed me and yanked me out, which may account for the slanted way my brain works. Grandma, though, all five feet and 85 pounds of her, was trying to pull the wall away from me! She was willing to bring the house down to save her grandson!