Friday, July 3, 2015

NANA, FISHING...

This is my maternal grandmother, Verna (Vernette)…born in January of 1885 at Bear Island, Queensbury Parish, Province of New Brunswick, Canada.
Her father had both a farm and a general store there—he sold flour, meal, dry goods, groceries and hardware. Her chore on the farm was caring for the chickens – feeding, cleaning the coop, collecting eggs, which she sold in her father’s store for her first earnings.

She relocated to the USA when she was just twenty-one years old; eventually worked as a nurse at Faulkner Hospital in Boston, where she met my grandfather. She was his operating nurse for a few years, then married him in 1911.
          She lived the rest of her life in Boston.

The photo was taken by my grandfather in 1911, at Bear Island, where they traveled to be married in her parents’ living room – their honeymoon was a week-long fishing and canoe trip along the St. John River (note the rod by her side, resting on the seats). She looks pretty fashionable: dark hose, skirt, middy blouse with tie; her hair’s swept up a la Gibson.

I have her eyes.

She fished for her supper in the St. John River as a child, fished later on in the lake near their summer house in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. She taught me to fish in that same lake; I caught my first perch in the shadow of Mount Monadnock—I remember the quiet grinding of the oarlocks as my grandmother rowed me about in that soft, purple light.

She loved dogs (several cocker spaniels, oftentimes in pairs), fast cars (my mother remembered her bombing around Boston in a bright yellow roadster). She ate apples and ripe pears (Bosc preferred), liked the smell of horses and farmyards; she insisted the alphabet ended in “zed.” She talked to crows, made fantastic blueberry pies, sewed matching pajamas for me and my teddy bear, took me for long walks in the woods and taught me to build houses for the Little People (who, she said, migrated to and from Canada with the geese every spring and fall). She bought me jeans and soft flannel shirts, Red Ball Jets and sweatshirts.
And she loved me; she was the first person in my life who accepted me unconditionally.
I adored her.


She died in Boston on May 27, 1957. 

21 comments:

  1. Ah Deb. Your maternal grandmother sounds wonderful. I am with her on the ending of the alphabet. And I love that she made you matching pyjamas for you and your Teddy. I had to google Red Ball Jets and am now deeply envious....loved those sort of shoes. Might have had a pair of blue ones once...can't remember what we called them.

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    1. She was wonderful, Alex! And you may have had Red Ball Jets -- they came in red and blue, as I recall; my brother got black high-top Keds, I think. Sneakers were the absolute BEST, weren't they?

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  2. You couldn't have asked for a better grandmother. I think I had both Red Ball Jets and PF Flyers at various times.

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    1. Never had PF Flyers! It was Red Ball Jets all the way for us. Now, sneakers are so complicated -- but I guess they're better for our feet, right?

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  3. I think I needed a grandparent to teach me how to fish like that.

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    1. The irony of it, Brett, is that I'm intolerant! Can't eat fish -- but I acquired her philosophy of catch-and-release. It really wasn't for the fish, she said; it was more for the peace of it all...

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    2. I love fish, but I'm hopeless at catching them. I enjoy trout fishing in rivers and streams, though it's more the outdoors exploring part of it that attracts me.

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  4. Lovely memories of obviously a special person. The photo reminds me of Anne of Green Gables.

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    1. Oh, she would have loved to hear that, Anne! That was one of the books in a huge collection she had in their summer house; I read it when I was about 10 or 12...time to read it again, now that you've said that. Thank you.

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  5. I had two wonderful grandmothers too - but both very different. One was a very 'down home' sort who sewed me beautiful clothes & made us all laugh with her entertaining stories when she came to visit. The other grandmother was very proper, but she loved music and encouraged me in my singing and love of acting. She also had a wry sense of humor that showed up every once in a while in surprising ways. I guess that's where my Dad's very dry sense of humor came from. :)

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    1. Wonderful, Gail, that you should have two grandmothers with such different personalities...I'm willing to bet that you picked up the best from each of them!

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  7. What lovely memories to have of your grandmother, and that is a very nice photograph, apart from the fact that she is looking a bit apprehensive, or perhaps just solemn. In Australia we we would agree with your grandmother, that t's definitely 'zed' , not 'zee'!

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    1. My teachers (in the first grade) had trouble convincing me that the alphabet didn't end in "w, x, y, zed, zee." I had 27 letters, and hung onto that concept for years -- the zed from Nana, the zee from my parents!

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  8. Such a sweet photo, and great stories of your love between yourself and your grandmother. You were so fortunate to have that early relationship! Thanks for telling us about her...and the way fishing isn't always the actual goal of "going fishing."

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    1. Still, Barbara, she was the most important person in my life, mostly for never demanding that I change! Such an important first lesson on the concept of love!

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  9. I love your selection of details to capture the essence of such an important person in your life. Anybody who makes blueberry pies and matching pjs is a champ in my book, too.

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    1. If we ever get a Sepia Saturday prompt involving pjs, Wendy, I'll surely post a photo of my bear in his finery; I still have the bear and I still have the pjs she made for him! He's 68 years old and the pjs are pushing 60!

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  10. A very special grand mother. It's a good photograph too. A woman sitting in a boat is a popular pose in old photographs, I have found.

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    1. Ahhh...but do they all have fishing rods?

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    2. Ahhh...but do they all have fishing rods?

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