The Real Mary Clementine

The real Contrary Mary Clementine was my grandmother. She was, herself: practical, meticulous, curious, creative, fit, cooking challenged.

She always signed her name "Mary," and she was not a warm fuzzy grandmother, although she loved me.

She ran the farm after her husband died, the grandfather I never knew.

All her life she knew nothing but work. I have never met anyone in my family who had a good thing to say about her father. According to one member, he was "the devil." He worked all his children like slaves until the girls escaped by marrying and the boys by physically beating him up.
I look at the family photo. There he sits, like a king on a throne, solemn, severe, surrounded by his family. I have forgotten how many children he had. (He was married twice.) Who knows what a horror his childhood must have been, to have produced such a monster.

Mary Clementine was the second child. I remember her teaching me to stitch a seam. Her stitches were tiny. Mine were not. When I showed her my seam that had a tiny mistake, I asked if it was all right. She just smiled at me. I did it over.

My mother once told me: "You are like your grandmother. You like to work and read." She always read. It was at her house I first read Grit, a funny little tabloid (in size, not in content)full of recipes, hints, stories (It was the Chicken Soup series before there was such a thing.) I remember the smell. Something about the newsprint or the paper had a salty, bacon-like smell.

And speaking of bacon, she could cook bacon. She could cook bacon because it was pre-seasoned. If she cooked, say, a peach pie, the crust would be perfect, but the filling would be bland, bland. "I don't love cinnamon in my pies," she would say. She would use the word "love" for "like."

She cut her own hair; it was always about two inches long, all over her head, and it curled magnificently. She cut her hair this way because it was practical. The typical grandmother hairdo - in a bun- took too much fuss. And yet she was a beautiful woman.

She was ninety-six when she died. She had to be in the nursing home for the last two weeks of her life. Her doctor was amazed; "She has the heart of a twenty-five year old," he said. He couldn't believe she had had a heart attack in her fifties. Her heart wore out, because she kept it working hard until the very last. I'm not as fit now as she was.

She wore out; she didn't rust out. I hope she knows I loved her.