Category Archives: Musings

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Ruth.  She was born in 1919 in Brooklyn; when she was seven, her family  moved cross-country for her father’s job (he was a cinematographer for early Hollywood).

Ruthie on the left, with her father, mother, and sister Jessamyn, 1926.

It was a job that involved travel but also risk.  He died when Ruth was eleven, of illness contracted while filming a movie in Borneo.

Though Ruthie grew up without a father, she had a devoted mother and sister, and many happy childhood memories.  As a teenager, she met a fellow student, Baxter, and they became high school sweethearts.

Baxter, a gifted artist, taught himself how to make cameos so he could make one of Ruth’s profile (I will pause while you swoon).  He wanted to give it to her as a ring but her mother thought a high school girl was too young to accept a ring from a boy, so he made it into a necklace for her instead.

A few years later, they got engaged.  They were married in 1941.

They loved squaredancing and boats.  They loved family, and created one of their own:  one girl and three boys.

Squaredancing, 1950

1958

Eventually they settled in Santa Barbara, in a small tract home.  Their two older children married; grandchildren came into their lives.  Then, in 1973, Baxter died suddenly of a heart attack while on a Boy Scout hike with his two youngest sons.  In her early fifties, Ruth was a widow, navigating life without her beloved soulmate.  Always a homemaker, she suddenly had to enter the workforce (she worked as a baker in the  local junior high school cafeteria) while raising two teenage boys.

And that was what she was doing when I first was old enough to know her: Ruth Elizabeth Stuart Adams Wolf, my grandmother.

Grandma and me, March 2016.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for the past two weeks, ever since Grandma died on April 13^th.  It’s felt a bit daunting, though, because I want more than anything to do my grandma justice.  And since she passed away, I’ve spent so much time reviewing her life and my experiences of it, and trying to put into words just why she was such a special lady, beloved by many.

In the process, I’ve been thinking about what just it means to live a meaningful life.  What sort of impact do we leave on the world?  When we die, what is taken out of the world?   When we go, what do people remember and miss?

By one measure, my grandma’s life wasn’t  notable.  She never had more than a high school education.  She did not have an impressive resume.  She never made a large salary.  Her world was very small; it was a big, BIG deal when we took her on a trip to England in 1996 (her ancestral homeland).  But she was perfectly happy with what she did have.  Few things gave her more pleasure than her little house, surrounded by garden. She was a fantastic baker and an accomplished seamstress and knitter.  I have homemade scarves, needlepoint, dolls that she has made for me over the years.

As small as her world was, though, her death has been felt like an earthquake by her family.  We all feel like the ground has come out from underneath us.

Because Grandma was always there: a rock that didn’t move even when everything around her did.  Her home, the home in which she was still living at the age of ninety-seven, was the place you went back to for holidays or for family get-togethers.  She’d have the Snickerdoodles baked for you, would serve you tamale pie.  For breakfast she’d have these Swedish coffeecakes that were like heaven in your mouth.  She was always glad to see you.

Grandma’s snickerdoodle recipe

At various points over the years, when family members were in transition or crisis of one kind or another, she’d give up the spare room and welcome them home.  Coming home was like entering a museum of your own life; the walls of her home were plasted with framed photos, and she created volume upon volume of photo albums, carefully documenting the lives of her four kids and grandkids and great-grandkids.    And in her own quiet, understated way, she had your back – always.  It was a family joke that if you said anything critical of Grandma’s kids, she would never forget. Her kids and their kids were her raison  d’être.  She believed in them – us – fiercely, always seeing potential.

Grandma and her kids, 2008

Others were the recipient of her kindness, too.  Every Christmas, she’d put together baggies of homemade cookies for the Arrowhead water delivery man, the postal carrier, the men who picked up her garbage.  At her celebration of life last weekend, I met her next door neighbors, who moved in last year from out-of-state.  They told me that Grandma had come over and said she wanted to host a coffee for them, so they could get to know the neighbors.   “We were so touched,” said the wife.  “No one does that kind of thing anymore, but your grandmother did.”   At age ninety-six, she was still spreading the welcome in the way she knew best: with homemade cookies and an open door.

And Grandma had a great sense of humor too.  She was a huge fan of the Martha Stewart show years ago and watched it religiously.  When Martha was arrested for insider trading, Grandma was indignant.  She proudly wore an apron my uncle had bought her:   FREE MARTHA it said on the front.  Seeing that slogan on my gray-haired eighty-something grandmother was a sight that will always make me smile.

But though Grandma was so many things to so many people, she was the most modest person you can imagine.  And I’ve been thinking about how she represented the polar opposite of the selfie culture of today, in which we put ourselves out there constantly, hungry for recognition and approval and likes.  Grandma didn’t need recognition and approval and likes. The doing of a thing was its own reward.  She lived quietly, happy with her home and garden and family.  She didn’t need or want anything more.  It strikes me that this is an increasingly rare quality.

Moving into her new house, 1961

To see everyone who gathered last weekend was quite something.  More than eighty-five people came to her home, the small happy home in which she lived for fifty-five years, the home in which she died.  We shared food and stories and memories and laughs and tears.  And Grandma’s spirit was so very much there; alive, actually, in all the people who were shaped by her example and absorbed the lessons she quietly taught.

So no: she didn’t make a lot of money or have an impressive degree or a long resume.  But she did make a home that, for decades, has been a place of peace and welcome.   She had four children whose devotion to her knew no bounds and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who loved her more than they could put into words.  And in a changing world where image is often valued over substance, she showed everyone the power of quiet dignity and concrete acts of kindness, done simply because they are the right thing to do.

I love you, Grandma.  Thank you.

On Grandma’s fridge, in her writing: “When God measures a man he puts the tape around the heart —  not the head.”

At my local Barnes and Noble the other day, I noticed that an entire display by the door is nothing but adult coloring books.   There were easily fifteen different ones on the shelf, each one offering intricate designs for frazzled adults to sit and color in hopes of restoring their sanity.

Apparently 2015 was the Year of the Adult Coloring Book, a publishing success story that very few saw coming.

But frankly, I — like a lot of moms, probably — figured this one out long ago.  I’ve known for years that sitting at a table with my kids and coloring in outlines, be they of Sesame Street characters or Hot Wheels cars, is a very renewing and positive thing.

A few weeks ago, in fact, the boys and I sat down on a rainy Sunday to color.  We had kids’ coloring books of the robot and cars variety; we had an old Ballet coloring book of mine from days long past (you find all kinds of things when you clean out your desk).  I colored in the picture of the ballet “La Sylphide” as the raindrops fell and the boys and I took turns sharing a box of color pencils.  A good time was had by all.

From a parenting perspective, there is something about coloring with your kids that leads to conversation.  I’ve found that when we are sitting at a table, each with our head bent over a coloring book, conversation seems to go in directions I wouldn’t have expected and could never orchestrate myself.  It’s akin to what parents of teenagers often say about driving; when you are sitting in the car with your kids, they tend to open up, maybe because you’re not looking right at them and that little bit of space makes it easier for them to venture into more difficult topics.  I like that my boys will bring up random subjects over coloring books.  I learn a lot about them when they do.

And for my own self, I find it enjoyable to do something that focuses more on the visual than the verbal.  I adore writing and love playing around with words, but I find it renewing to branch out every now and then.  There’s a school of thought that says that any creative pursuit, even if it’s not the one in which you specialize, helps you as an artist, and I have to agree.  Doing things with pictures makes the words come more easily.

Some might argue that coloring in coloring books is  a watered-down sort of creativity.  I get that argument; coloring someone else’s picture is not as creative as drawing my own.  But I’ve found that isn’t really the point, and that coloring books still shake something loose inside me. There’s actually a prayer analogy here; I like to pray with my own words, and I often do.  But there are times when putting my own feelings (which may be a mystery even to myself)  into words simply makes it harder for me to pray.  Those are times when I turn to the Our Father or the rosary, glad that I can use someone else’s words and free myself from the self-imposed pressure of having to do it all myself.  I let someone else draw the prayer lines and I move within them, some part of me freer for doing so.

So I can’t say I’m surprised by the success of coloring books among the over-twenty set.  It’s a simple pastime that really isn’t simple at all.