Grandma Through the Fence


Marian says she’s the “ugly old lady who lives on the other side of the fence.”

She is anything but ugly.

Her white curly hair is like a halo and her smile may be comprised of false teeth, but it is genuine.

Industriously, she hangs her laundry on the line before the sun comes up. The damp cone-shaped bras, floral bathmats and eyelet lace curtains are like a row of triumphant flags declaring her existence. I look for them each morning and let out a sigh in relief over my coffee when I see them.

When she saw me outside today, she called me over just to hug me. She kissed both of my cheeks and my forehead. She told me I was a good mom in such a way that choked me up.

She knows all of my children’s names and talks to them over the fence. Sometimes she brings them cookies and asks them about what they are imagining while they play.

She always accepts short-stemmed dandelion gifts – through the holes in the fence – as if they are prized roses. She tells me she has little dishes on her windowsill just for that purpose.

Marian loves raspberry tea.

She works the polls annually and knows the names of all of the neighbors in her precinct. She flips to their page in the signature book as soon as they walk through the door.

She has many fancy hats and seldom wears the same twice in a row to church.

She stalks my white lilac bush as soon as it starts to bud. At the first few blossoms, she asks for me to cut her a few so she can take to them to her mother’s grave at the cemetery on the hill. She died when Marian was 12. Marian found her. White lilacs were her mother’s favorite flowers.

When Marian was in her 40s, her husband died. She says God used her suffering to help her become more aware of the suffering of others.

Her son lives with her now, but I have a feeling that, even though she’s ancient, she probably fusses more over him than he does over her — “I am an independent woman!” she says, stubbornly.

She will talk away your afternoon if you let her. (Sometimes I have to interrupt and rescue the unsuspecting workers who come to do various tasks on her property.)

She is like a grandmother to me.

I love her.

5 Replies to “Grandma Through the Fence”

  1. My Marian was named Ms. Davis. I moved and she’s gone to be with the Lord since then, but I loved her. Wish I had another like her. I think about her every time I’m in my flower garden or working on a needlework project, and wish she was around to show me how to do a certain stitch or tell me how to care for certain flowers. In fact, I still have a few of her flowers in my yard, that I’ve moved from home to home to still have Ms. Davis with me.

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