I suddenly remembered this afternoon, coming out of a monster NAP, that November 30 is my Granny Dimmick’s birthday. Of course she died in 1982 on the night before her 91st birthday, which would have made her almost 130 now. But she was an expansive person with a big smile who loved her family and having them around, and is not easily forgotten by those who loved her.
I wrote this about her two years ago, looking at the similarities between her and myself. Today, at this moment, I remember the good fortune my sister and I had growing up with grandparents right next door. I don’t know that we were popping in and out of the house all the time, but we were there quite a bit.
Occasionally one of us would get invited over for lunch - sometimes together, but I think more often it was separately. I remember these luncheons around the large glass-and-white-wrought-iron table in the glass-enclosed sun porch one step down from the rest of the house. My memory is that it was always sunny, that the room was dusty, and the black wrought-iron stand of African violets was dusty and rusty. And as happy as Granny and Grampa were to see me, I knew I’d have to be on my best behavior, sitting between them at each end of that large table.
Uncle Tom, Daddy, Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Clinton, and Granny, sometime in the 1940s.
Because you just did not get out of line with Granny. But she was always, always radiantly happy to see you. Coming home from Interlochen one spring break I wanted to go see her immediately after getting out of the car. Mother, a bit exasperated, made me go unpack first. “Mother, you know Granny is going to call,” I argued. And sure enough, not five minutes passed before the phone rang. “I told you!” I called as I ran next door, not unpacked yet. But that’s how she was - she wanted to see you right now. She pronounced “darling” without the R and the G - “Hello, dallin!” - almost rhyming it with “talent.”
She probably taught all the grandchildren how to play canasta, and she and my sister and I would play together. We played Hearts, too, and I remember how tickled she was when I nicknamed the Queen of Spades “Bloody Mary.” (How I came up with this I have NO recollection. Certainly by the time I was ten I was reading about Mary, Queen of Scots in the World Book encyclopedia, but she was never called “Bloody Mary.” And growing up in a household of teetotallers I sure didn’t see anyone drinking a bloody mary.) And if she didn’t have someone to play cards with, she’d just play solitaire at her card table in the living room.
As I remember her, she was always happiest at the big family gatherings: so many Thanksgivings and Easters at Aunt Betty and Uncle Hutch’s, and always Christmas Eve at her house, which could be >30 people if everyone showed up. Like me, I think she just loved the hustle and bustle, but I also think she liked being anchored in it in one place - at the center of it all. And it’s lovely to remember her that way today.