A memoir--someone to love me

If the tapestry of my life has been woven on a loom, with magnolia and pine and hawthorn woods on its sides, the wood from my sweet sugar maple maternal grandparents--Granddaddy Clark and his wife Etta, my step grandmother--would definitely have been on one side of that loom.

As you know maple trees are renowned for their autumn colors. They put on a display of oranges, browns, yellows, and reds every year. My Granddaddy Clark was quite a colorful character, and I knew him best in the autumn of his years.

As you probably also know an important product from maple trees is maple syrup, which is made from collected sap. One gets sap from these trees by tapping them. I believe that as a child I somehow tapped into the sweet love of my maternal grandparents.

Because my mother's parents were divorced in the 30s (shhh), I had two other sets of grandparents: my mother's mother Mama and and her husband Wassil, (who lived far away in New Jersey and were rather distant in their demeanor as well) and my father's parents Papa and Mama, but Papa was really quiet, and Mama Drawdy never seemed to pay much attention to me. She seemed to have eyes mostly for my cousin Butch, my father's older brother's son, who was one or two years older than I.

But I shall never forget the love of my Granddaddy Clark and Etta. Decades later in my life as I was trying to put the pieces of my life back together, someone said that it may have been their love that saved me.

It was the autumn of  1958, and I had just turned nine. My mother had gone to Columbia to visit her father in the hospital. He was 54 years old. The day before she had called to tell us that Granddaddy was doing better. We three, my father, my older sister Lynda, and I were "on our own," so I was trying to be particularly "grown up."

As I pulled my ballerina pink bedspread over my pillows that morning, my father with my sister trailing not far behind him entered my bedroom. He told me that he had something to tell me: that my mother had called late last night with the news of my Granddaddy's death.

So many emotions at once hit me--pain and sadness, yes, but also anger and resentment that my father had not awakened me to tell me the most important news of my life so far. I was shocked and devastated, but in my family, we kept up appearances. So I put on a strong front, as I had learned to do from the grow-ups in my world. I tried to act "mature"--as if his death didn't really matter that much to me. Though I wanted to crumple to the floor, I simply finished making up my bed.

Through a somewhat turbulent childhood I never once doubted that my Granddaddy Clark loved me--and only me--or so it seemed at the time. Everyone else seemed  to be more enamored by my other family members--my successful father and my beautiful mother and my pretty older sister Lynda. She seemed to have it all--she was the pretty one, the smart one, the best one--or at least that's how it came across to me back then. But ah! I had the love of my Granddaddy and Etta!

Granddaddy Clark was quite handsome with salt-and-pepper hair and the kindest brown eyes. And his wife Etta was beautiful, like an angel, with her gentle blue eyes and fluffy, soft white hair. Though they must have been in their mid-forties when I was born, both of them were already grey-headed. The one faded photo I have of them reveals them to be a somewhat short and stocky couple in their early 50s. But of course, it wasn't their appearance that mattered the least to me.

Indeed, they were ordinary people with no special talents, rather poor even for the 1950s. They ran a small, dark corner grocery store in a somewhat shabby neighborhood on a dusty, dirt road on the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina. My family would usually stop by to see them for a few hours during the summer--perhaps on the way back from my father's parents, who lived on a farm in Bowman, SC.

One of my fondest memories was Granddaddy and Etta's giving my sister and me small brown paper sacks and telling us that we could fill those sacks up with any kind of penny candies that we wanted. Back then, most all of the candy was a penny, and back then, we kids didn't often get candy. Our eyes would shines like full moons as we checked out the colorful assortment of candy offered in front of the cash register. Colorful jawbreakers, fat brown taffy suckers, and big plugs of pink bubble gum were some of my favorite delights. I always felt as if Halloween had arrived early that year!

But the absolute best thing about visiting my grandparents were the times that I would get to stay by myself for another whole week after my family had gone back home. Then I was indeed the princess of the hot, humid city streets and of that old country store with the living quarters behind.

Early in the mornings, I would awaken with the sun streaming through the window into my very own bedroom, relishing the fresh adventures that each day would bring. There would be meals prepared with all my favorite things. My grandfather taught me how to eat grits properly with bacon and eggs and lots of catsup on top, all mixed in together. There was plenty of conversation and lots of laughter. Unlike at home, my Granddaddy and Etta never got impatient or angry with me. I romped with their German shepherd dogs and played with the neighborhood kids, whose skin was a different color from my own.

When the afternoons heated up, I would explore the dark coolness of that old wooden store. I'd help Etta and Granddaddy with various customers, who came in several times a week for milk or bread or whatever--always making much ado about me and my visit to my grandparents. Oh, how special I felt then!

In the cool of the evenings after the store closed and while Etta cooked my favorite foods for supper--fried chicken drumsticks with mashed potatoes and biscuits with plenty of butter and honey--my Granddaddy would sit in his big rocker with me on his lap and read the newspaper. He would read tidbits of the news that he thought might interest or amuse me or Etta. Then pretty soon after supper, I would begin to nod off, and Granddaddy would carry me to my bed and give me a comforting back rub as off to innocent sleep and childhood dreams I went.

I knew that my father did not like my grandfather, but I didn't know the reason and didn't dare to ask. I just knew that he was not welcome in our home. There was some secret about him. One night after I had fallen asleep at my grandparents, I was awakened by some commotion in the front room. As I tiptoed out of bed to the bedroom door where I saw a light, I saw Etta trying to calm granddaddy down and get him to be quiet. He was not his usual self--seemed particularly loud and agitated and overly jolly. Then I remember those terrible words, "drunk" and "alcoholic" that I had overheard my parents say about my grandfather in one of their many middle-of-the-night fights. With the images of my grandfather's strange behavior still in my mind's eye and the words of my parents echoing in my ears, I slunk back to my tall, overstuffed bed, pulling the covers over my head. In the morning, my Granddaddy was back to good humored self, and no mention was made of the night before.

Always too soon that week, my parents would return to fetch me, and I would say my sad farewells to Granddaddy Clark and Etta. And they in their turn would stand and wave goodbye to me, or so I would imagine, long after our old black car had turned into the next dusty street.

Then my older sister Lynda would start whining about where the dividing line came for us on the backseat. And she would push me hard, bruising my arm. My father would lose his temper once again and swing his long right arm, slapping our bare legs to get us to be quiet. And my mother would start crying, and they would begin arguing again. All the way on the hot trip home, the tension would return. And I, trying my hardest to disappear in the back seat corner behind my mother's seat, would miss my Granddaddy and Etta all the more.

Still after all of these decades, what I remember most about him was my Granddaddy's love for me. I named my only child after him--Ellen Clark Mallernee. I never felt so safe and comfortable as in my grandfather's arms.