In my large, French Canadian family most of the grandmothers adopt a nick name. My grandmother's nickname is “Gammie”. Now if this moniker conjures up an image of a plump, little cookie-baking granny you would be wrong. Gammie was tall, thin, somewhat stern and had a double dose of
GRIT❗️
In 1947, not too long after my grandfather returned from World War 2, he abandoned Gammie and his three children, which included his eldest daughter, Faye, my mother, Irene and his young son Harvey. I don't think Gammie minded him leaving because he was beating her, but it meant she had to be the source of everything for her children.
Before the winter of 1947 came Gammie had secured the use of a small, abandoned barn for her little brood to live in. It had no electricity or running water, but it had a wood burning stove and so they set up house.
Before the snow came they had harvested from their small garden and Gammie had a large wood pile for the wood cook stove.
Mom says she remembers two things very distinctly about that time period. One, how COLD it was when the snow came and two, the big muscles on Gammie's right arm from all the wood chopping she had been doing.
But at the end of November, deep into a Canadian winter (when average temperatures are -20 Celcius and there is a meter of snow on the ground), Mom, Uncle Harvey and Auntie Faye all developed some kind of horrible skin infection. There was no doctor available in the Canadian north, but they did have a District Nurse.
So Gammie bundled up her three children and they walked to the nearest farm to ask someone to contact the nurse. Then they went back to their barn. Gammie was carrying my 2 year old uncle in her arms and Mom at 5 years old and Auntie Faye at 7 years old plodded behind.
The District Nurse came to their barn two days later carrying a hard brush (Mom said it was like the kind you would scrub a floor with) and a big can of something that had a spout on it. This was the cure for their skin infection that had by that time become even worse and covered all three children from head to toe.
Here's what Gammie had to do and she did it to Faye first.
She would add wood to the stove and carry bucket after bucket of snow in to melt so she could fill the big wash tub and give each child a bath.
She would soak them in the tub to moisten the old, dead skin then take the scrub brush and remove it all until she had gotten down to fleshy, pink skin again. Then she had to liberally douse them with the contents of the can the District Nurse had brought, which turned out to be Kerosene ❗️
Then everything had to be cleaned and disinfected before she moved on to the next child so the infection wouldn't spread.
Each child had to have this done TWICE a day, EVERY day for TWO weeks.
When I heard this story for the first time I had the benefit of being in a room with Gammie, Auntie Faye, Mom and Uncle Harvey all present (although Uncle Harvey understandably had no conscious memory of it).
When I was alone with Mom later I asked her (gently) if she screamed from the pain it caused her.
“No. I never made a sound. I didn't want Harv to be frightened.”
So I think Gammie isn't the only one in my family with grit. 🤨
Through the years I gleaned more tidbits of details about those events until one day alone with Gammie I came right out and asked her how she got through it. I guess I figured she had some kind of secret emotional formula.
She simply said, “I got through it because I had no choice but to get through it. The only thing under my control was if I responded with faith or bitterness at what Life had handed me.”
When I was completely paralyzed in 2019 with apparently no hope for a cure, Gammie's words came back to me.
We are often handed things in life that are well beyond our control, but what we will always have is the freedom to choose our response.
To respond with faith or with bitterness at what we've been given.
(I hope I made you proud, Gammie. 😔)
The Truth with Love,
Always Laura-Lee
