My Dynamo Grandma
I’m diverting from my chronological narrative a bit because my Aunt reminded me that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of my grandmother LaVern. She was a woman one would describe as a ‘firecracker,’ or a ‘dynamo,’ in that she was small in stature and size but would handle business efficiently, with gusto - and often joyfully in my experience. She loved her people fiercely; a hug from this Grandma was a Crusher in the best possible way.
When I was born in 1968 she was a mere 46, but that looked different than 46 looks in the 21st century; by the time I have memories of her in the 1970s, her hair was already mostly gray. But she also played basketball during breaks at work assembling headphones (despite being only a couple of inches over five feet tall), and played softball on a team - in fact, I have her softball bat in my house today.
LaVern was my father’s mother. (She married Al, who was the son of Anton Pietoff, about whom I am sort of mainly writing this blog.) She was the fourth of six kids, the youngest girl of the family. When she was 20, she married Al, and they had three kids: my father and his two sisters. After Al had a stroke in the late 1960s and then passed away in 1970, she worked, she traveled a small bit, she grand-mothered, and she spent time with friends and family. These are the (I believe) factual statements I can provide.
However, I can also provide some additional stories that I remember about her. (They’re my stories so they’re based in fact, but someone else might remember a detail differently. If you remember something differently or something additional, please add it in a comment, because I’d love to know more about LaVern.)
When I was an elementary-school-aged kid playing softball in the summer, she came to visit us from Milwaukee - we were living in Idaho at this point - and of course she came to watch whatever games were scheduled during her visit. My team was pretty decent, we weren’t the team that crushed everyone in the league, but we occasionally held our own against that team, so she was excited to see us play. At some point the umpire made a call that she didn’t see the same way, and she loudly and enthusiastically stated her views from the stands. She was told she’d need to quiet down or be asked to leave.
When I was very small, I remember the adults raving about her cheesecake - like before I understood what cheesecake actually was. My little Wisconsin preschooler mind could only picture a chocolate cake with decorative slices of cheddar. Thankfully cheesecake turned out to be far, far more delicious. She also made an amazing stroganoff. <drool> I don’t have her recipe, and I regret this.
She went to Hawaii on vacation and sent us grandkids little Hawaiian swimsuits. Pictures exist but I’m not sharing them here, just trust that they’re adorable. It seemed very exotic and exciting to go to Hawaii, I think it was in the late 70s when she went, so this would have been slightly before the softball game incident. I didn’t think about it a lot at the time, I was only 7 or 8, but I did think it was pretty cool for my grandmother to go to Hawaii just because she wanted to see it.
She suffered from migraines for much of her life, and did not have much beyond aspirin to aid her. I remember her visiting us one time and my family going to, like, the county fair or something similar, and her having to go back to the car to rest. I remember witnessing her leaning out of the parked car to vomit and reassuring me that I should go back with the rest of my family and have fun. I was SO sad that she would miss the fair, because I knew she loved fun! But I could tell she couldn’t join us. Later when I started getting migraines I understood how she’d felt, and I have been so grateful to live while triptans have become available because they seem to work pretty well for me, certainly better than aspirin or ibuprofen. I am honestly amazed she did so much while suffering, because she had to take care of raising a family. My aunt told me she had coordinated an entire family vacation when she had teenagers (I hope I’m getting the timeline correct here), and when it was time to start the road trip, a migraine started. She refused to adjust the vacation plans and they drove from Wisconsin to the Badlands in the Dakotas while she was ill. I frankly can’t imagine.
She was interested in style and clothes and would compliment me on outfits or on shoe choices. But she would never do it in the way that some people did - letting me know they thought my style was weird, or bold, or out-of-the-mainstream - she just complimented me. She gifted me cute underwear when I was in 7th or 8th grade, like it had lace on it, and if I remember correctly, it was lavender. I was old enough to be interested, but too young to think it was for anyone other than me. I do remember my father saying “I’m going to have to talk to my mother,” with a bit of a furrow in his brow, but I thought nothing of it. A few years later, by the mid 80s, I wore a red sweater, red tights, red flats with a houndstooth skirt - we had been shopping and I had purchased some final pieces in order to put this ensemble together - and she exclaimed, “Oh this looks great! I wasn’t sure when you were shopping, but now that I see it, I love it.” I mean, I could worry that she was just being nice - but she wasn’t the type to tell it any way other than the way she saw it. So I’m going with honesty from her.
She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - this is how she died - which is a type of cancer that is often not found until it is terminal. One blessing from this is that my youngest sister and I were able to schedule a trip to Wisconsin to visit her, because we knew time was limited, but it was before she was extremely sick. She was still in her own place, though I remember going clothes shopping with her - she was still scoping out stylish (if comfy) pants, but they were in an extra-small, because she was already losing weight. It was during this visit when I was in my mid-20s that she told me a few stories about her life that have stuck with me.
“Of course by that time, I was hooked!”
After she finished her schooling, she moved from where she grew up just northwest of Milwaukee to live with her sister and brother-in-law (am I remembering this part correctly? Or was it an aunt and uncle? In any case, it was a family member) and to help with their tavern/restaurant. This is where she met her husband-to-be, my grand-father, Al. He was a customer, and he started asking her out. At first she declined, and she said that she told him it was because he drank too much.
Now, there is a bit of problem-drinking/alcoholism that runs through my family down this line - and I myself had to quit drinking in order to have any success in acting like an adult. I had already gone through my own struggles as she told me this, so I really appreciated her being frank with me about her life with my grandfather.
She said he really wanted her to go out with him and so he stopped drinking. For an entire year while they started dating… and then he started up again and it was as bad as ever, which anyone with experience in this arena will tell you is par for the course. But she said, “Of course by that time, I was hooked!” and shrugged her shoulders. I could only smile because I had heard about how charming my grandfather was before his stroke. Apparently after his stroke, he became a much more difficult drunk, but for much of his life he was an engaging, life of the party drunk, but a drunk is difficult to live with and be married to, no matter what. My sense is that she truly loved him dearly, though.
She also told me about going out dancing with her best friend before meeting Al. Of course this was just around 1940, just before the U.S. entered WWII. She told me how much she loved it (I also love going dancing, still to this day - and now that I’m typing this story I just had a flash of her enthusiastically learning different dances at the wedding of one of my cousins) and I could tell from the way her eyes lit up that what she was telling me was how I felt too. I was slightly scandalized when she told me that a few times she and her friend would have to cover for each other if they came home separately, “you know, if she met a boy.” But by now I know that every young generation thinks they invented flirting and sexual chemistry, but every grown-ass adult generation knows humans have been sorting it out for millennia. Again, I’m just grateful she was frank with me and told me stories about her life from the heart. She knew living to the fullest meant something.
I aspire to be at least a little bit as cool as LaVern, to approach what’s important with tenacity and gusto like LaVern, and to love my people fiercely like LaVern did. I am grateful and proud to be in her lineage.
