Daisy Was Her Name

Daisy Was Her Name

Daisy was her name. My Grandma Mac was a tall woman with wiry white hair rolled into a bun. At least that's how I remember her. Parkinson's (or what she called "the palsy") made her speech and movements shaky in her later years.

I have no knowledge of her education, but she was sharp, having memorized long stanzas of poetry. I know she had aspirations of an easier life. That's why she left the mountains of NC for the flatlands.

Birthing eight babies, three who died in childhood, I can't imagine the sorrow of that loss. But life went on, four boys and a girl to feed with a husband who lost his leg and often couldn't work. She ended up in a cotton mill in Gastonia, making less money than men doing the same job.

Later, she and my daddy did laundry and ironing for people. I wonder if she wished she could have dressed her children as well. As she ironed other's pretty things, did she daydream?

We went to an estate sale Saturday a few blocks from our house. It was the end of half-price day and they were packing up leftovers for donation, or whatever. I rummaged through a pile of tea towels and napkins for 50 cents or a dollar each. I picked out two, then grabbed a bigger piece of crumpled embroidered fabric. I paid my $3 and left.

This morning I plugged in my decades-old iron, spread the crumpled fabric on my portable ironing board and gave it a spritz of spray starch. When I finished, I imagined my grandmother's red, calloused hands gently touching the fabric and stitches and, like me, admiring her work.

Laney's Musings

April 2024