Irish grandma
Well, I was lucky because I had two grandmas. I remember my dad’s mom, who was born on an island and came over probably when she was nineteen or so. I don’t believe that she ever did learn to read and write. As a farm wife in northern Iowa, you know, it was hard times, in the twenties and thirties. There were stories of her helping neighbors who had kids that were sick. But when she was older and she stayed with us, a couple of things I remember–she was afraid of the thunder. So if we had a thunderstorm, she would go into a corner. Even though she was probably eighty-eight at that time, so she had been in the United States for seventy years, her Irish brogue was still so strong that sometimes you couldn’t understand her. But she was just really gentle. And she lived long enough to see our two children, which was a cool thing.