Glad to be Alive

J.T. Knoll

Around this time of year, you might still see one of them roaming the yard with an old colander and paring knife, eyes intently surveying the grass for wild greens which they will clean, dress with vinegar and oil and serve with the night's supper.

Nonnies. Nanas. Gammas. Grandmas. Wearing their homemade, print dresses and aprons, they search out the sweetest greens with an ancient rhythm...a lifeline that stretches back generation upon generation.

It is the vision I see in my south yard as I think back to 1982 when my wife's grandma came to live with us — and help with our 2-year-old first-born son. The kind of help, as the saying goes, that's hard to get these days.

Born Francis Femec in Sale, Yugoslavia (formerly Austria), she came to the United States in 1914 with her mother, brothers and sisters to join her father. He had come six years earlier and settled in the then-thriving city of Franklin (population 1,600), where he stayed in one of the numerous boarding houses while struggling to save enough from his coal miner's wages to bring the family to America.

The happy reunion was short-lived though. For even with her father and three brothers (her oldest started at age 10) working in the mines, they struggled financially. So, to make ends meet, they took in bachelor miners for whom they washed, cooked and ironed as well as provided meals.

A typical day began at 4 a.m., when she would arise to build a fire, start breakfast and fix the miners' buckets. Then it was on to the gardening, baking, washing, ironing, cleaning, mending, quilting and canning that filled her day until she sank exhausted in bed (she slept on a canvas, corn husk filled mattress) around eight o'clock.

Even her happiest childhood memories are tied to work. "Sometimes I'd go to work for other people," she once told me, "and with the extra money I'd buy myself something pretty....like a new dress."

She met her husband when he came to board with her family. John Paulin, an Austrian immigrant, was some 15 years her senior and already a seasoned coal miner when they met (this was crucial since miner's were paid by the amount of coal they dug).

They married in ‘22 and settled in Franklin where they raised three girls, no small task on a miner's salary in the 30s with the great Depression enveloping the country. "The mine only worked six months a year (coal wasn't in demand in summer), so we had to watch every penny to survive. I was afraid to even spend five cents for pop for the kids sometimes."

For her, gardening was not just a relaxing hobby. It was a necessity. The garden largely fed them in the summer and provided a cellar full of canned goods for the winter months. "Oh yes!" grandma exuberantly said when asked about her cellar, "Back then, I canned 500 quarts!" She also baked all of her own bread and, with her husband, made beer and wine.

So you see, when she came to live with us at age 81, she had quite a resume. Our hundred-year-old house was filled with the labor and love of a lifetime. We had fresh bread and rolls, a variety of Austrian dishes and exquisite strudel made with fresh apples and real cream. (She and my wife stood long hours at the kitchen table kneading the dough and working it to just the right thinness.)

Once she related a poignant childhood Christmas memory about how one year her sister received a tiny China tea set while she and the other children received only fruit and nuts. After hearing it, my wife bought and wrapped a child's porcelain tea set and presented it to her on Christmas eve as we all looked on. The resultant look in her eyes and her excited "Oh!" were proof that the child in us never dies....nor loses its appreciation for a little special attention.

Unable to attend school as a child, she taught herself to read and write — skills she put to use in learning more about her passion...sewing. Not that she needs to read much anymore. She can look at a stitch or pattern and instantly reproduce it.

Her afghans and quilts, created with great patience and arthritic hands, are absolutely exquisite — their color combinations indicative of a unique way of seeing. An artist's way.