Growing up, did you have a "Gramma?"

[Archae]

Not a Grandmother.

Gramma.

She baked cookies for you.
Had doilies all over her house.
Had a big bed for sleepovers with a quilt on it.

My Gramma died back in 1989.
I still miss her tons.

[chemp]

1. I had two mémère & pépère

Only one mem remains. I was lucky enough to still have three with me until I was 36. Then two passed within months of each other.

It's been ten years, and I miss them all a great deal.

[MADem]

2. I had a great grandmother who was born in the 19th Century.

She was, and still is, an enduring influence on my life. She helped to raise me.

[crim son]

3. I had two until seven and then six years ago.

One was as you describe, and the other was a one-time flapper who never stopped living the wild life until she was forced to in her late eighties. Both lived into their nineties, 96 and 98, and both of them are sorely missed. I loved my grampas too, but I think of my grammas on an almost daily basis.

[NYC_SKP]

4. I had a Nonnie and she raised me

And sister while mom was at work and her mom was our nonina.

[applegrove]

5. Oh yes. I had one who baked cookies and one who had the house with attic full on trunks, top hats

party dresses. I used to sit on my cookie grandmother's knees and play with the watch she had around her neck. She was hands on. Salt of the earth. A teller of oral stories that were 100 years old. The attic grandmother talked history and politics and was so interested in the world. So lucky we are those of us who had a lot of time with 'grannys'.

[WCGreen]

6. Oh yea....

My brother and I would sleep with Grandma... Big fluffy quilt, cold room even in the summer...

Made angel cookies and always had an apron on...

[pamela]

7. I had a NanNan and a GrandmaMother

I forget why we called her GrandmaMother. I only saw her once a year. She was nice to us but didn't do a lot of cookies and stuff. We did make homemade ice-cream most nights when we visited. She was very poor but I don't think I realized that until I was much older. She had an outhouse until my Dad and his brothers pitched in and got them indoor plumbing. Visiting them, and using the outhouse, seemed like an adventure.

NanNan was a good southern cook. She could whip up a huge dinner in 10 minutes. I never could figure that out. I think it must have been leftovers that she just reheated but it was still good.

NanNan was a racist. I can't say that I was all that fond of her, to be honest. I was the second youngest of 17 grandkids and I'm not sure she even knew my name. Ok, I guess she knew it but she never spelled or pronounced it right. My name is Pam. It's not that damn hard.

[Scuba]

8. Nope, I had a "Nana" and she was the kindest, wisest person I've ever known.

[Populist_Prole]

9. Yes, she was Gramma to us

Her mother, shorter and stooped over was to the whole family....for real....'Samll Gram'

[rug]

10. One was dead and the other was in a state mental hospital.

I don't think I ever heard her say one complete sentence.

[baldguy]

11. I had a Gramma.

But Mutti made the cookies.

[southernyankeebelle]

12. Yes I did and we called her Nonna (Italian for grandma). She was wonderful. She was so patient

with us kids. She had long hair and she would let me comb it for a very long time. I think she liked it because she would fall asleep. LOL. I remember back in the early 60s she would give me money to go down to the store below us and I could buy a little windup toy. I would have for hours with that $1.00 toy. She would let me help her breakup string beans. Simple things buy just being there with me. I loved her so much. She never yelled. She was in her late 80s when she died. I miss her terrible. I am 64 now. What a great role model she was.

[Raven]

13. I had Gummy and Pop and Will

had Yaya and Papou (his older cousins were born in Greece).

[Phentex]

14. My Nana had plastic on her furniture and a JFK ashtray...

although no one smoked.

She was very Catholic and a Democrat back when Catholics were Democrats.

[pipi_k]

15. Not exactly...

I had a "meme", who was my father's stepmom. She treated me and my two sisters just like her own biological grandkids. Never knew my bio grandmother, as she disappeared when my dad was five, and he didn't find her till nearly 50 years later, less than a year before she died.

My mom's mother died when I was 3 months old. My grandfather married a woman we called "Anna"... She was loud and brash and rather scary. I suppose she meant well, but I was always sort of intimidated by her.

[dana_b]

16. We called her nana

but she wasn't like your gramma. She was much more particular and fussy about her house and her appearance and I always felt like I shouldn't touch anything in her house. She was a bad cook and fairly strict. Don't get me wrong, I loved her but she wasn't what you would think of in regards to a warm grandmother.

[TuxedoKat]

17. Ahh...

yes, I sure did. She was wonderful. She baked cookies, cinnamon rolls and kolaches (a Czech pastry). She was a master seamstress and made clothes for me and stuffed animals. She passed in 2009, age 99, Greatest Generation. I miss her too.

[Brickbat]

18. I was lucky enough to have two. They were very different and both died before I could know them as

an adult, which makes me sad. They were wonderful and I am proud to think that half of me comes from the two of them.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

19. I had two grandmas

My dad's mom was way ahead of her time. A student of architecture and then a university professor at a time when women were generally not seen in the workplace, let alone in the architecture profession. We lived in a different country from her during the first ten years of my life but she'd send us Christmas presents every year and she and grandpa would come and visit us occasionally. We became closer in her later years when we moved to her country

My other grandmother was the one I grew up with and the one I was closest to. She was a devout Christian and a softly spoken, gentle and kind woman but she had a courage and steely determination about her which was inspirational and saw her through some very tough times. She raised a young family with my grandfather during the Japanese occupation of her country when times were tough and people were suffering. When my grandfather was imprisoned by the Japanese, she had to go and personally appeal to the Japanese Police Chief to get him released -and she was successful.

She adored her grandchildren and she spoilt us and indulged us with her love and kindness which extended to making sure that we had our favorite foods, to spending time with us, to coming and helping our family when we were sick and much, much more. She also acted as an aunt, counselor and friend to her extended family and all the people who knew her and was a family matriarch. She had a wicked and mischevious sense of humor and she used it to great effect at times. Some of my fondest memories are just sitting on the sofa in her arms and her talking about her life and childhood and her life with my grandpa.

She had a sense of adventure and she made her first visit to see us in our new country of residence (which involved a long international flight) when she was eighty nine. She followed this up with a second visit when she was 91 during which time she enthusiastically participated in tourist activities and travelling a few hours to see friends and family despite her age. Her last international trip was to a civil war-ravaged country at the age of 95. I think she may have been contemplating attending my sister's wedding (which would have involved another long international flight) at the age of 97 but unfortunately she fell sick a few months beforehand. She died in 2005 at the age of ninety-nine and a half. I was privileged to have had her as my grandmother and I deeply, deeply miss her.

[grasswire]

20. oh yes

I had a grandmother and a grandma.

My grandma was the picture of grandma-ism, with 17 grandchildren she dearly loved and nurtured well. In a big stone house, we had more fun than humans should be allowed to have. She made cookies, she perpetuated her New England ways for us to appreciate. Baked beans, hot dinner rolls. She made us all pjs or nightgowns for Christmas -- flannel, of course. Lots of laughter -- happy to just be together and have her sons home from WW2. She spent time with each of us individually, too. She and I would go downtown on the bus and she would buy each of us a gardenia corsage. Sweet.

She fostered a love of family that continues today. Most of us cousins still live in the same area and get together now and then. I love my cousins.

This is how I feel about life with my grandma Nellie.

"Backward turn backward
O time in thy flight
Make me a child again
Just for tonight"

[Ikonoklast]

21. Yes, and she was a real hoot.

My mother's mother was Nana to us all, and she was a sharp and intelligent woman whose husband was a WWI veteran, and raised three daughters with her mother after he passed. My mother is the spitting image of my Nana now, and she is now Nana to twenty-three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren of whom she is immensely proud.




But my father's mother was Grandma to us kids, a woman who herself had eight children, only three of whom survived until adulthood. She was widowed at an early age and had lived on four different continents, met several presidents and popes, admirals and generals; knew scores of USN and USMC senior officers as well as enlisted men over the years and treated them all like they were her own kids.

Whenever or wherever one of them showed up at her doorstep, they got a hot home-cooked meal and got yelled at if they didn't eat every bit placed before them.

I was visiting her once when she had company over for dinner who just happened to be an admiral and his wife, and yelled at him because he didn't finish all of the massive chunk of lasagna Grandma had loaded onto his plate...and he then finished eating it, every last bite.

I thought he was going to pop. Poor Louie, he didn't want to upset my Grandma.

Grandma was there and helped evacuate civilians and base employees at Subic Bay when Mt. Pinatubo erupted and was commended by the Navy for her help in doing so during that disaster; was overall the sweetest woman you'd ever meet who treated princes and paupers exactly the same, and was hell on wheels right up to the day she died at age 93.

I never really realized just how beloved she was by the many people she had met and made a mark on during her long life until after she died; there was more military brass at the cathedral her funeral mass was said than I had ever seen outside of an active military base.


Grandma, I hope that you and Gramps are together and happy, wherever you might be.

[livetohike]

22. I had a Baba and a Grandma

Both were Slovak and baked wonderful kolaches (Slovak for pastry). Both always seemed to have something on the stove or in the oven. Both had big, fluffy perinas (down filled comforters) on their beds.

I was lucky to have them as long as I did, One passed in 1986 (I was 34) and the other in 1992 (I was 40). I have so many wonderful memories of each one and I will always miss them.

[TBF]

23. Actually several -

when I was born there were still 4 great grandmas and 2 grandmas. The one I was closest to I would stay with in the summer and learned a lot from - cooking, crocheting, needlepoint, etc... she died in early 1990.

[trof]

24. I had Granny.

A kindly stout little woman, in an apron, with a tight bun of gray hair pinned up in back.
Rimless wire glasses perched on her nose.
No makeup except a little lipstick if she was going downtown or to church.
That's how I remember her.


She made great fried chicken, fudge, cookies, cakes, and pies.
I've never had better chicken and dumplings than hers.
Or cornbread.

Her 'roast beef', not so much.
Cooked in a pot until it was gray-brown throughout.
And her boiled okra was yuck.

She was my second mom.
In fact, when mom wasn't around she WAS mom!
Mom (divorced when I was 4) and I lived with Granny and Grampa until I was 13 or 14.

I borrowed the down payment on my first house from her, some years after Grampa died.
(And paid her back)

She was a bit of a bluenose, raised in the Baptist church, and didn't like smoking or drinking.
Grampa was a 'drinkin' man, though never to excess.
He kept his 'red medicine' in a cabinet on the back porch.
Every day when he came home from work (Buick & Chevy salesman) he'd go back and pour himself a shot. Drink it down, and pour one more. When he finished that he was ready to come into the living room and read the evening paper in his favorite easy chair.
Granny always made it a point to be somewhere else in the house during his 'cocktail hour'.

[Old Troop]

25. I had both.

Grandmother lived with us in the late 50s, early 60's. My biggest memory of her was during the Cuban Missile Crisis when she said "of course we're going to die, but God will take care of us." She was tall, severe, thin and uncompromising. My Grandma was short, plump, encouraging with pink/ivory skin and perfectly white hair in a bun. She lived in a huge Victorian house with 2 of her daughters. I miss both of them for different reasons. Oh, by the way, neither could cook worth anything!