A house needs a grandma in it

In these strange times of social distancing that prevent me from spending time with my precious grandchildren, my thoughts have turned to my own grandmothers.

Sadly, I have no real memory of my dad’s mother, Ellen “Nellie” (Mitchell) Aitken, who died when I was not quite four. She was only 63, several years younger than I am now. Her grandchildren eventually totalled 10, most of whom never had the opportunity to know her.

But I was fortunate to know the love of my maternal grandmother, Jessie Strachan, with whom I spent a lot of time in my childhood. With today marking her 120th birthday and tomorrow the 100th anniversary of her marriage to my grandfather, this seems an appropriate time to reflect on her life and what she meant to me.

Born Jessie Gill Baty on June 8, 1900, in London, England, she was the middle of eight children of John Baty and Joanna Walsh. Sadly, three of her siblings did not survive: two brothers, one age three and the other only five months, had died before Jessie was born, and she lost a baby sister, just six months old, when she was five.

Jessie’s family appears to have been comfortably middle class, with her father, John Baty, steadily employed at a printing company as a compositor (also known as a typesetter). Perhaps envisioning an even more prosperous life, John and Joanna made the decision to emigrate, sailing to Canada in 1913. Settling in Toronto, John quickly found work in his trade and by 1920 they owned a 10-room house in the city’s west end.

Motherhood arrived quickly: Jessie gave birth to a son nine months and 16 days after her marriage, when she was still just 20 years old. A daughter—my mother—arrived four years later.

In the early years of their marriage, my grandparents lived in a large three-storey house built by Alfred’s father. My mother once told me her mother was so shy during those years that if someone came to the door, she would hide in another room. I never saw that side of her; I suppose that with age she came out of her shell.

In 1944, my grandparents downsized to a two-bedroom bungalow in the east end of Toronto. My parents, married in 1948, lived there with them during their first two years of marriage, until they bought a house of their own just a mile away.

Having children early meant Jessie also became a grandmother relatively young, at the age of just 47. I was her fourth grandchild, born when she was 52; she would eventually be a grandmother of seven.

Gram and my mother were extremely close, talking by phone every single day. She was a huge help to my mother in coping with the demands of running a household while raising five children. Two mornings a week, Gram would hop on a bus to our house, let herself in and immediately get to work changing bedsheets, starting laundry, doing dishes or whatever else needed doing. By noon she had to head home, where my grandfather was waiting for her to make his lunch!

My brothers and I would take turns having sleepovers at Gram’s house, one or two at a time, providing my mom with some small relief from the chaos of a too-full house while also giving each of us a dose of individual attention. I loved spending time there, playing solitaire or board games, listening to her old records, helping with housework, and at the end of the day falling asleep in the spare bedroom to the sound of the train whistle in the nearby valley. And she kept a stock of treats we weren’t allowed to have at home, like sweetened cereal and chocolate milk.

From Gram I learned to sew, something my mother had neither the time or patience to teach me. It was a valuable skill I used often, sewing most of my own clothes for years, even my wedding dress, shirts and suits for my husband, and outfits for my children. She also taught me to knit, which she could always do much faster than me, turning out multiple pairs of mittens for all of us every year.

The place where Gram seemed most comfortable was in a swimming pool. Although she didn’t learn to swim until she was in her forties, she soon became proficient enough to qualify as a swimming instructor. Despite her best efforts, I never managed to master the proper breathing technique that she was able to execute so easily, doing front crawl lap after lap—I would always be out of breath before I had even reached the other end of the pool. Nevertheless, I enjoyed going to her classes as it was my special time with her. After school on Wednesdays, I headed to Gram’s house for dinner before we caught a bus to a community pool where she taught. And during school breaks, I often accompanied her to a pool downtown where she not only taught but also practised and performed synchronized swimming routines with a team of other “senior swimmers” (Gram is back left in the pic below).

Thursday evenings were dedicated to grocery shopping. Since my grandparents had no car, my parents would pick up Gram on their way to the store and I usually tagged along to help her shop, pushing the cart as she wandered the aisles.

Gram maintained a beautiful English country garden in their large backyard and was especially proud of her many rose bushes. As soon as we were old enough, my brothers and I undertook the task of regularly mowing and raking their huge lawn. Their yard was also home to a long row of prickly raspberry bushes that kept us busy picking every summer.

As my grandfather aged, his eyesight failed and dementia set in, putting an increasing burden of care on my grandmother. In early 1972 she made the difficult decision to move him to a nursing home. Not long afterwards, however, Gram herself took ill, diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. My beautiful grandmother died, age 72, on October 28, 1972. My grandfather followed less than two months later, on Christmas Eve.

The year my grandparents passed away, Peter and I, newly married, became custodians of the small bungalow they had inhabited for 28 years. Moving in two days after our wedding, we learned my grandmother had died that very morning. My mother, although not a superstitious or spiritual person in any way, couldn’t help but feel Gram was saying, “this house is yours now.”

A house needs a grandma in it.
— Louisa May Alcott

When I became a mother myself, my mom was a huge help, paying forward the love and support her own mother had bestowed on her. Once we outgrew my grandparents’ former home, we moved to one just around the corner from my parents. They are both gone now, but I can still look out our back window and see the house in which I grew up and where my children were fortunate, as was I, to spend countless days of their childhood visiting a house with a grandma in it.

Tagged grandma, grandmother, grandparent, memories