Grandma's House

My mom is the last of nine children born to Chester and Nancy Price.  We are a very large family (I'm one of 33 grandchildren), and most of us really enjoy the company of the other family members.  As extended families go, we are a very close family.  Grandpap was a farmer in Western Maryland, and he died in 1973.  I was young at that time, and I don't have too many significant memories of him.  Grandma lived for fifteen years after Grandpap's death, and she seemed to be the very center of our family.  (At times, I was concerned that she was the "glue" that held us all together, but many of us have chosen to maintain those family ties since her death.)

One mainstay of our family was "Saturday Dinners" at Grandma's house.  She lived in an average-sized ranch-style home in rural Western Maryland, yet anyone and everyone was welcome at Grandma's house for dinner on any given Saturday.  I remember arriving early so that Mom could join some of the other aunts to help Grandma prepare the meal.  The duty of setting the table would often fall to the younger generation (myself included).  We would put all the leaves in the custom-made table (I think there were about ten table leaves.).  Then we would set up the drop-leaf table against the big table, covering both tables with the long, hand-made tablecloths.  We could then fit about 21 place settings around the table.

When Grandma would call "Soup's On!", the men and children would scramble for a seat around the tables (okay--the men ambled, the kids scrambled).  Since there were usually at least 21 men and children, the women would wait and talk in the kitchen, allowing the men and children to eat first.  (This was mainly because the men needed to eat and head back to the work on the farm.)  Once the kids finished eating, the plates would be cleared and new place settings put out for the women, and they would get a chance to eat.

Saturdays at Grandma's house are a great memory for me.  We cousins had a lot of fun.  We would play outside--playing with the water in the "run" at the end of the long driveway (we even made walnut soup in discarded coffee cans with water and fallen black walnuts), exploring the woods behind the house, or making outlines of "houses" with autumn leaves on the little wooded hill.  Sometimes we caught tiny guppies or tadpoles in the run.  Sometimes we walked down the road to the calf barn.  The boys would play pick-up games of football in the big yard, and if they were so engrossed in a game that they didn't want to come in to eat, Grandma would invariably say, "What are you livin' on?---love??".

I could fill page after page of memories at Grandma's house which make me smile, including the time that so many of us piled on Grandma's wooden porch swing that it broke and we all landed with a THUD on the ground . . . and whenever anyone bought a new car or truck, all the men would go pop the hood and gather around to inspect it . . . how one time the uncles trimmed back some of Grandma's bushes so badly that they looked REALLY sad, but she just smiled and said, "Oh well--they'll grow out nice."

Life is not always easy, and Grandma's life definitely wasn't.  However, I think she left us a legacy--of keeping an optimistic outlook, of not dwelling on the past, but moving forward--of opening our hearts and homes to our friends and families.  Saturday dinners live on at The Parlor, and Grandma lives on in each of us as some of us attempt to emulate her ability to love unconditionally, to face life cheerfully, and treat even strangers as if they were family.

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