Mormor

[akirlu]

carbonel is asking for stories about people's grandmothers. Hers will be gone soon, and she wants to write her a letter. Here is what I wrote:

My maternal grandmother is probably the most deeply set anchor of my life. There have been times when life has been shitty enough for me that what got me through was the bedrock conviction of her love. On the day I was born, my grandmother used to tell me, she walked through the house singing a little song for me and crying tears of happiness. When my mother was all set to give me up for adoption (she was unwed at the time) my grandmother bullied her into keeping me (though, in fact, my aunt takes credit for this too) - possibly the only time you'll hear of anyone threatening to throw their daughter out of the house if she didn't keep the baby. My first years were spent in my grandparents house, or with my sitter next door and afternoons with my grandmother before mom came to pick me up after work. Between my grandparents, my mother, my aunt, and my great grandparents, I had to have been the most loved and wanted baby on the planet. And the holdover I have from that time is a very secure center-place, where I am the most cherished and delightful creature imaginable. That holds me upright when I might otherwise be crushed.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

This is charming.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

It always amazes me when I find out that children often called "unwanted" turn out to be the most wanted and loved of all.

I used to work with a woman who was raising her granddaughter. She had two sons, one of them got his girlfriend pregnant and she kept the baby. After a year or so, she decided she wasn't really in a position to do right by the little girl so she gave her to her ex-boyfriend's mother. The girl's father didn't pay her all that much attention but the grandmother and the other son, the girl's uncle, loved that little girl more than anything. Now she's all grown up and married. I just remember what a happy, obviously loved, little girl she was.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. In fact, I cross posted to my LJ in part because I wanted to make sure you saw it. I was thinking of you and your friend who had to give up her son.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Of course, in my case, the story took place in Sweden, a rather less barbarous country than the U.S. at the time. Illegitimacy had been outlawed by royal decree decades before I was born on the king's belief that all children are legitimate children.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I missed this, for which I am sorry (I am not apolgising, merely commenting on my mind).

If there is still point to it, I wrote an entry about my grandmother, it should be on April 14th which was her birthday.

TK