I don’t know if I was already thinking about Mootsie when I saw the purple woman, or if the purple woman reminded me of Mootsie.
Mootsie was my maternal grandma who, according to my mother, fancied herself to be too young to be called “Grandma.”
Mootsie wasn’t like any of my friends’ grandmas who had soft laps and aromatic kitchens. She had only two dishes she cooked well, her German potato salad, laden with butter and bacon grease, and her chili, redolent of the school cafeteria variety, orange with tomato soup. She always made these when I came to visit, and she stocked her larder with my favorite snacks, Zwiebach, Tang, and store-bought cookies.
She let me sit next to her in church and twist her rings and play with her charm bracelet and chew Chiclets (quietly with my mouth closed, she’d remind me).
Our relationship was simple: we loved each other. She thought I was perfect. If she wasn’t perfect, I barely noticed or cared.
Now as a grandmother myself, I recognize this uncomplicated kind of love that often exists between grandmas and their grands; parent/child relationships are more layered and fraught.
Mootsie wore purple clothes, only the “pretty” shades (I learned early there were ugly muddy purples). I remember when she shopped for weeks for a slip to perfectly match her purple Easter suit and shoes and, presumably, her brassiere and panty girdle.
Her house was accessorized with purple: purple toss pillows, purple lamps, purple bedspreads, purple-flowered china. And there was that great search for purple-flowered wallpaper for the master bath that yielded nothing, so she bought the paper she liked best, then hand-painted the centers purple.
And there was the time after she broke her arm falling on ice that she fashioned a sling from a purple chiffon scarf. Of course she did.
There was one color she could not abide, one that nauseated her, she claimed: olive green. She would not stay in a motel room decorated in this color if she could help it, which had to complicate travel in the 60s. (Mootsie told me there were beautiful shades of green, but olive was not one of them.)
This purple fetish was just one of the things that annoyed my mother about Mootsie. I could hear my mother’s eyes roll every time I quoted my very wise Mootsie.
My mother felt she never measured up in her mother’s eyes. Mootsie rewashed and ironed my brother’s and my clothes when we came to visit. One Saturday night she re-shampooed and re-set my lank hair with rags and brought me to church looking like Shirley Temple.
And Mootsie never liked my father, thought my mother could do better than a man who worked in a foundry and had grime under his fingernails.
Mootsie didn’t quite know what to do with my brother, who was “all boy” and didn’t like taking tap dancing lessons or playing a shepherd in church pageants or sleeping in her guest room which was, from the flounced bedspreads to the lace lampshades to the fluffy vanity skirt, like being suffocated by a square dancer’s pink petticoat.
My father called Mootsie “a hundred dollar millionaire,” because she gallivanted with the high society, or as high as society got in Wyoming, Ohio. She and Grandpa Gil lived in a blond brick ranch on the side of Springfield Pike that was new, but she courted the ladies who lived on the side with the Victorian mansions. Dad thought Mootsie put on airs, and this from a woman, he said, whose husband “never made more than $30,000 a year as an assistant bank manager.”
It may be true that Grandpa Gil never moved up the ranks at First National Bank, but you’d never know it by Mootsie. To hear her talk, he was the man that held First National Bank together, at least the Lockland branch, where he remained most of his career.
The real money was Mootsie’s, which originated from her father, who was a P & G handiman in the early twentieth century. He took advantage of every stock option offered him. I’m told my great-grandmother complained incessantly about George’s stock market foray, until, as an elderly widow, it all started paying off. Then she said, “Wasn’t George so smart?” I never ever heard Mootsie talk about the family money.
Mootsie did like the finer things, though: clothes from Giddings Jenny, diamonds from Newstedt Loring Andrews, a new car nearly every year from the Carthage dealer where “Paddock Meets Vine at the Big Indian sign.”
She liked having her “people,” too, house cleaners and caterers my Grandpa Gil would pick up in Lincoln Heights. They called her “Miz Buck” as they prepared Christmas dinners. When she asked for a recipe for one of the dishes (as if she’d every cook it) they’ said,, “Now, Miz Buck, when you want it, we will make it for you.” She would give her people bags of used clothes, which she said they very much appreciated. When they were in the house, Mootsie would whisper references to the “negroes” and the “colored women.”
And then there was her Persian cat, a big nasty hairball named “Scheherazade,” who Mootsie served fresh bits of bloody liver in a stemmed goblet.
But as far as I could tell, most people outside the family were big Mootsie fans.
My Aunt Liz on my dad’s side of the family called Mootsie “Hazel von Hazel” behind her back, but Liz’s children called her ‘Auntie Hazel.”. They all loved her and Grandpa Gil, and Liz was always on the lookout for purple bric-a-brac for Mootsie.
There was a passel of neighborhood kids who loved her. She was their elocution teacher, teaching them to enunciate and emote while they recited “pieces.”
She was a Sunday School teacher, I guess, forever, at St. Matthew United Church of Christ. She and my mother taught kindergartners in the first floor Sunday school room, which they had painted themselves in turquoise (Mootsie’s second favorite color). Mootsie and my mom spent whole summer days together in that un-air conditioned room organizing the year’s materials for their lessons. Those children loved both my mom and grandma, and that made me proud.
Mootsie and my mother directed the church Christmas pageants every year of my young life, except the year that Mootsie was mad at the minister, who didn’t beg her to put on the show. She didn’t like being taken for granted, and her martyrdom paid off with a gracious invitation every year thereafter.
The church’s children loved dressing up as angels and shepherds and random liturgical dancers, and they came to practice every Sunday afternoon in the month leading up to the pageant. Although I was Mootsie’s beloved, favorite, only granddaughter, I was not a shoe-in for the big parts in the pageant. I was the Virgin Mary for just one year, scarcely earning the honorific, “Virgin.” I loved wearing the pale turquoise gown and being illuminated by the spotlight hidden in the manger where the Baby Jesus should have been laid.
I thought of all this when I saw the purple lady seated two rows in front of me on our flight home from Savannah. As we deplaned, I ended up right behind her, and I discovered she was actually wearing very little purple. Some of her purple was, in fact, brown. Some of her purple was that ugly muddy shade.
She can’t carry off purple like Mootsie, I thought.
When you look up “purple” in the dictionary, Mootsie’s name should be in the definition.
She was violet, she was amethyst, she was plum, thistle, mauve, lilac, and mulberry. She was everything purple, even the mucky shades.
She was at least 20 crayons in a box of 64.
She was uniquely her eccentric self, but she was like all of us. Not one thing.
You night enjoy some other posts about love family:
When Hair Care is a Family Affair
The History of my Hair Raising
The Absolutely True Story About the Time I Lost My Grandpa in the Smokies
The Club: Motherless Daughters
My Husband Travels Without Me. It’s All Good
WAIT! How did I miss this? You are a grandma?
And BTW, I do love all of your blog posts and the laughter they bring! Just like our luncheons from the past
Much love to you, Christine
Thank you for reading and responding. Hope to see you soon.
This was so fun to read as I ate my lunch at work. I just recently subscribed and am so glad I did. Your Grandma Mootsie sounds like quite the character! Now I want to go back and read everything else you’ve written. I’ve read a few here and there that a friend shared and you never disappoint. Hurrah for Mootsie in all of her purple glory! Your writing brought her to life for me today!
Thank you for your kind words, Mary. It makes me so happy you enjoyed your lunchtime reading.
I love this story. Brings back memories about my own grandmother. I think her favorite color was olive.
Not olive! Oh, no! Mootsie is rolling in her grave.
I love being a Gran, and I hope that my grandchildren will remember me as fondly as you do yours. I have learned so much by sharing and interacting with them, and I hope they feel the same. I was never that close to my own grandparents so that I have especially enjoyed being one. You are correct–the love for children and grandchildren is different and the latter is so much easier.
Your grandchildren, I am sure, have been influenced positively in myriad ways by your most excellent example. I am so honored that you read and respond m blog.
I, too, must have missed the “becoming a grandma” part of your life! How wonderful! Now you have a whole new world to write about! Being a grandma opens up a special kind of love.
Your purple grandma must have been a lot of fun for you as a child. Your piece has inspired me to write about my grandma, Mary Florence. So, thank you!
Ah, “Florence,” a name of a certain age, for sure. Yes, I became a grandmother! Thanks for reading and responding.
Isn’t it fun to say, “Now that I am a Grandmother?”!
I never had a relationship of any kind with my Grandmas so I am a bit envious, make that a lot envious, of yours. I am so glad you had such a loving one with Mootsie. I know Danielle will have wonderful stories about her relationship with Libby.
It was wonderful having four grandparents well into my adulthood. I am so grateful for their love and influence. Thank you, as always, for reading and responding.
There is a lot of Mootsie in you to this day.
How lucky you were to have such a loving and lively grandmother. Just her name alone speaks a lot and all the shades of purple. that is a color royals used years ago.
I was lucky to have four grandparents well into my adulthood. I also have two great-grandmothers until after I was married. I know how influential a loving grandparent can be. I think my grandparents have as much to do with who I am as my parents.
Your part in this about the rags….oh, I remember Saturday evenings having rags put in my ultra-strength hair..What a mess…basically, it didn’t work. Still a fond memory
Strangely, it worked on my obstinate hair, but my mother did not appreciate it!
“Our relationship was simple: we loved each other. ” I love this, Sandy! This entire blog is a delight. I’m so glad you stayed with it as it took shape! <3
I should have listed you as a co-author. Never would have gotten here without you. Thank, writer friend.
I LOVE Mootsie — what a hoot — I would have loved being with her. You have such fun memories and a great way of expressing them. You’ve sparked many memories of my own. Thank you.
That makes me happy! Thanks you for reading and responding.
She sounds like someone I would have loved to have known.
She was a pip! Thanks for reading, Nancy.
I love being a grandma…. Gigi. My memories of my maternal grandmother are wonderful, and I paid her visits in Chicago every summer. She would pin a St. Christopher medal on me before I was allowed to ride a roller coaster at Great American park.
Congratulations on being a grandma. Can’t believe my bridge friends didn’t tell me. So happy for you and Rick.
Love the anecdote about the St. Christophr medal!
Mootsie! The image of her cat, Scheherazade, eating liver out of a crystal goblet…well, that said it all!
I laughed out loud AGAIN!
“or sleeping in her guest room which was, from the flounced bedspreads to the lace lampshades to the fluffy vanity skirt, like being suffocated by a square dancer’s pink petticoat.”
Danielle is a lucky little girl to have a LIBBY
Thank you for reading the line, twice.
I loved this Sandy, as I love all your posts! Such enjoyable reading!
Thanks so much for reading, June.
What a colorful woman and memory. I too enjoyed the comparison to a square dancers skirt. You come from a long line of non cooks. Well, no one could say that about you. You like to cook and entertain. Lucky us! Enjoy the wee one as you make memories.
You always makes the nicest comments. Thanks so much for reading, Judy.
Now I know why you are as interesting and enjoyable as you are, Sandy — it’s in your genes! Thanks for sharing all these wonderful memories of Mootsie.
That’s an incredibly nice thing to say! Thanks, as always, for reading and responding.
Oh, I so love this and yes, it made me think of oth of my grandmothers. Neither were like Mootsie, but had their own charm. And yes, I too, missed the grandmother news for you. Congrats to all!
Thank you so much for reading and responding. Loved hearing about your Mexican adventure. Heading to Mexico’s warmth Monday.