Conversations in the Kitchen with My Grandmother
I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother lately. Her name was Margaret Taber Gruskowski, and she died a few years ago, just shy of her hundred and second birthday. A photo of her holding my daughter sits above my desk, where my grandmother peeks out from behind my daughter’s curly hair with a smile and a twinkle in her eye.
My grandmother was one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. She had six children, after her first child died just after childbirth. She was a nurse, while she mothered those six children, and she had been a nurse in the Army during World War II.
I used to think that fact— her being a nurse in the army during the war— as an incredible fact. Lately, I take more from it than that. I use it as daily inspiration about what we can survive, what we can endure, and how we can meet the hardest moments in our lives with bravery.
By the time I met my grandmother she was, of course, an old woman. Though she was quite impressive to me in that she was a loving presence who hosted many of my favorite holidays ever at her house, I didn’t think often of all she had accomplished in her long life. I was impressed by her ability to walk three miles a day at a faster pace than I could withstand, but I still thought of her as somewhat quaint.
Now, multiple times a day I think, “Bamie (that’s what I called her), what would you have done here?”
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