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Writer's pictureReed

Ma Wood and Gram

Of course, the surnames are changed. These are two women that I barely - but warmly - remember and that died when I was very young. These are not my grandmothers, these are my great-grandmothers, one by blood, the other by choice. Both of these women knew the toil and sweat of farm work, were uncomfortable with the idea of airplanes, and did not drive automobiles. They both sang to me the songs passed down through verbal tradition, told me stories, and bounced me on their knees. One drank her whiskey with branch water, the other sipped sherry. One called the south her home, the other went to the midwest on the back of a Conestoga wagon when she was a child and stayed there.


Froggie went a-courtin', he did ride Sing sang put 'im in a kimo Sword and a pistol by his side Sing sang put 'im in a kimo Keemo, Kimo Ring-tang piddle paddle sing sang sing Ring-sing put 'im in a kimo

That song is one that I remember Gram singing to me while bouncing me on her knee. Like all the other traditional songs, this has many different versions, and it's almost impossible to figure out where the version I remember above is actually from, but it's old. You can find several iterations of this on youtube, but none match the version that Gram would sing to me. It should say something that, though this woman died when I was very young, I still remember her face, the sound of her voice, and the joy of bouncing on her lap and singing this song with her. She was like grandma squared. Even more grandma than grandma.


Ma Wood, on the other hand, I have more vague memories of. Very old, very wise, and very thin are the overriding features of my memory of her - she died a day before her hundredth birthday when I was younger than eight years old. Most of what I remember of her was her nearly tree-like momentum, and her love. I remember her love, and her reed-thin but still-strong arms when they lifted me. I remember that she could move more stealthily than a ninja, and often scared the hell out of the people that she inadvertently snuck up on.


One of these women, as I said, was not blood related, but might as well have been. It's not important to this story which, but I will say that I was not aware of that fact as a child, and when I learned of it, it was filed away in my head as a matter of curiosity, but it changed nothing. She was and remained family until the day she died, and all that little fact ended up doing was solidifying in my mind that blood is not the same thing as family, and the two cannot be equated.



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