Celebrating Grandma

Florence (Bergman) St. Laurent, HS graduation
approx. 1932

My grandma St. Laurent is an amazing woman.  Next month she will turn 97.  Last night I was watching the BBC series Downton Abbey, and I realized hours into it that, while it spans a few years,  part of the story takes place the year she was born - 1915.  I watched with a new curiosity for her life experience, or at least the factors that would have been similar.  So today I called her.  I wanted to ask her more about her own life.  I've had the opportunity to see her a few times over the last few years and I've asked her about a few things when I can, but conversations evolve, distractions interrupt, and there just never seems to be enough time while visiting to get all I want to know in.   I want to know more and more importantly, I need to write it down so I don't forget.  Grandma won't be around forever, and there are few left - and none that I know - that have lived and seen what she has to ask about it when she has gone.  So here are the few tidbits I have gathered from today's conversation and previous ones, both of historical and personal significance.
 - When Grandma was born, she had neither a telephone nor electricity.  Her family used gas lighting.  She doesn't remember when she first had electricity.
- Her two older married sisters and their husbands lived in the same house as she and her parents did.
- She lived on the corner of Main St. in Brockton, Massachusetts.  There was a grocery store nearby (within a few doors of hers), a 5 and 10, and a few others where they would do their shopping.  Bread was 17 cents a loaf, and the best hamburger (she said "hamburg") was 35 cents/lb.
- Her family was very poor.  Her father worked in a shoe factory.  He was laid off at some point, probably during the Depression ("the first Depression").  Grandma said he got a job for the government fixing roads and such.  He worked for $9 a week.
- Her mother did the laundry in a big tub with a corrugated metal washing board.
- She had very few toys.  She remembers a large teddy bear she was given by her uncle when she was seven.  Her father gave her and her older brother (by 2 years) Flyer sleds, and some ice skates he had bought her from a thrift store (Salvation Army?) because they were cheaper there.

In 2008

- She said more than once how poor they were.  They didn't really celebrate Christmas (I want to ask her more about this - I was letting her talk without interruption), and didn't get presents.  Her father worked very hard for very little money, so they didn't have money to make the day different than any other.
-  She loved to go swimming.  She remembers her sister, who was quite a bit older than her, her sister's husband, and their kids would pick her up in their car and drive to the Cape or Nantasket Beach.  Interestingly enough, Grandma didn't learn how to swim until she was around 50 year old, 10 years give or take before I was born.   I remember her at around 70 diving off a little dock at the local pond and doing underwater handstands.  I couldn't have been more than 8 or 9.  It was the first time I realized that there was more to my grandma than I realized.  I'm happy to report that she remembers that day too.
- In school, if a student talked back to a teacher or got into any sort of trouble, he/she would be sent to the principal's office and be paddled.
- The farthest she has traveled from her home in Massachusetts is to Rhode Island, again with her sister and brother-in-law.  As mentioned before, she also made some trips to Cape Cod.
-  Grandma loves music.  She used to play the guitar, and enjoyed dancing and country music (I need to ask her which artists were her favorite).  She is a writer of poetry.
-  Grandma was keen on a young man who died in WWII.  She does have some pictures of him tucked away in a photo album.  After he died she met my grandfather, and if I remember correctly, she met him in the park.  They were riding a bikes.
- Her parents were immigrants - her mother from France and her father from Armenia - but neither of them talked much about where they came from.  She doesn't know for sure how they met.

While these details are not a full summary, nor do they define her, they do make up part of a wonderful record of the long life Grandma has lived.  I have many more questions about her experiences, but am ashamed that I have waited so long to start asking her.  One of the thoughts I had while she was remembering is how so often today we complain and talk about sacrifice - or the sacrifices we don't want our children to have to experience - when in reality the sacrifices we experience today put us in a better position than the average person had as their daily reality, no "sacrificing" being part of it for them.  Our lives are so comfortable in comparison, and even those who struggle (in some situations) still have it better than what what she and many others did normally.  The thing is, she described it so unemotionally - not trying to do a one-up on suffering.  She certainly is amazing, my grandma, and I can't wait to find out what she will share next!