Gifts from the box

Those cleaned hankies and my Nan's nurse's cap...yes, I said I was able to get all the spots off.  I did, but some have come back...oh well.  I am just as happy to have them at all.   

To you my Nan....just because.  I love you.

B is for "Bebe" my Nan's nick name

Hearts for someone who was so full of love

Dainty....

G is for "Gilmer" her married name

 

Nan's Hankies and Nurse's Cap

     The boxes are emptied, the photos in piles.  I've gone through the newspapers and clipped what I felt I would keep and tossed the rest.  My dining room table is still in a disarray but what a treasure hunt!


     That box that said "Bebe" on the side, the one that had the oddest collection of my Grandmother's, my Nan's belongings is the one I hoped to find and I did.  It didn't contain all that I wanted but I found the photo I was looking for in another box and that put a smile on my face and heart.  My Nan in her nurse's uniform.  You see my Nan was a public nurse.  I had heard she would go to folk's homes to tend to them when they were ill, driving her car to where they lived.  All by herself with no doctor, on quiet country roads.   Perhaps she even did a bit of midwifery for the country ladies.  Later she worked in hospitals as a Surgical Nurse.  I would love to have heard her stories of those times.  I think she tended folks too poor to see a doctor as a Public Nurse.  My Nan had such a good bedside manner.  I never really minded being sick as she would bring me my meals on an aluminum tray as I was propped up in my bed with pillows.  She took my temperature and kept me comfortable with all the love a Grandmother could give as well.  

     What I didn't expect to find was her Nurse's cap.  Still stiff with heavy starch.  It was spotted with a rusty color all over it and smelled of that musty odor that my nose wrinkled up too.  My Nan's cap.  Those were the days of the white cap, white uniform dress, white hose and white shoes.  She was a registered nurse that was given much respect by her peers.  She had years of experience.  


     I took that cap and brushed it with my special mix of hydrogen peroxide mixed with powdered Oxy Clean to make a thin paste.  I let it sit all day and then soaked it all night in a bowl of cold water and Woolite.   The next day nary a spot was in sight.  My Nan's cap pure white.  Tomorrow I will press it stiff just as she would have.  She would have put in on her head with hair pins to hold it in place for her hours of work.


     I found a pile of hankies, equally spotted and stained.  I did the same with them as the cap.  No spots to mar them.  Each different and dainty.   I can't say that I saw her use them all the time but I know she used tissue that she would tuck in the sleeve of her sweater to dab her nose.  I wonder if I gave her one of these hankies that I have in the pile?   The one with tiny red hearts around the edge?  The one with little flowers of blue?   Just the kind of gift a little Granddaughter would give her Grandmother.


     That box contained an old bra, a girdle, two pair of hose, two slips with one of white and one black, and a pair of her glasses in a gold cardboard box with a pink paper flower on top.  Why my mom saved her under garments I do not know and I never will.  My daughters were intrigued by these relics.


     As I attempted to make order in my dining room by separating the stuff I had trashed into recycle and garbage boxes, I came upon some wad of paper stuck to the bottom.   I don't know what made me try to get this out but I did.   It was unrecognizable of what it was, a foot long and a smashed roll of stiff paper with some rot on the bottom that was black.  Not good.  I tried to open it without success as I could see that it was more than just one paper.  I don't really know why I even kept trying but I gently rolled it between my palms and low and behold a seam opened.  I was able to unroll it and what I found was my Grandmother's Nursing credentials.  Two of them from 1925 from the school she went to in Tennessee!   How did they wind up so smashed up?   Why weren't they in a frame or rolled in a tube?  All those years buried at the bottom of a rotting box and I just happened to give that box one more look before I took it out to the garbage.  


     I don't know why I have become the custodian of the family treasures.  I do think I was destined for this though.  I am the keeper.  The older I become the more protective I become of what was "special" long ago.  I don't know what will become of what I so eagerly try to archive but I will take all the care in the world to help it find a safe spot of honor while I breath in this world. 

The piano

     When I was a little girl there were times when I walked inside the house after coming home from school or playing outside and I would hear the piano being played.  I could hear my Nan singing along to her simple chords of "Jesus Loves Me" while she sat at the piano in our living room.

"Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes Jesus loves me, 
The  Bible tells me so."

    I would come stand next to her and I think she was a bit embarrassed to be found singing.  Sometimes I would sit next to her but she usually didn't stay playing once she had an audience observing her.  She would stop and ask me about what I was doing.

     Her book of church songs would be open on the piano stand.   I would sing along with her if it was one I knew from Sunday school.  Jesus Loves Me being the one I remembered singing along to.

"Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong;
they are weak but He is strong."

    Most of the time I just listened to her softly sing her hymns.  She never preformed for us that I recall.  It seemed to be her time privately when we weren't at home that she would sit on the bench enjoying herself.   All her songs seemed to have been hymns which thinking about it now, I wonder why she didn't come to church with us.  I think she must of come every once in awhile for Easter or Christmas but otherwise she stayed home.  Maybe her piano time was her church time.  


    That piano now sits in my brother's home in his living room.  I should ask if in the piano bench are any of Nan's piano hymn books.  My mom kindly shipped it out to him many years ago when she decided a stand up piano wasn't the right look for her grand home.  She needed a shiny black baby grand even though she did not play herself.  It sits there like a fine piece of furniture dusted and well taken care of to the eye.  I doubt that it has been tuned in ages sadly as it deserves to be due to it's expense.  Occasionally one of my daughters has played on it while we visited but otherwise it sits lonely with it's white ivory keys shut tight beneath the black lid.


    The piano my Nan played had a life.  My brother took lessons and I tried to take lessons but gave up.  Sometimes I would  use some of the books my brother had or just plucked out some notes, but most of the time I played the tune "Chopsticks" along with "Heart and Soul"  with my girlfriends.   My brother's oldest son took lessons and played away on it beautifully.  It was used and isn't that what a piano should have happen?  To be played?

     In my home, we were given an old depression era baby grand by dear A. and C. before they moved to Seattle.  It's finish is worn and crackled, faded out of the black coat it had to a fine brown shade in the sunlight.  That piano has had much life in our house.  Our daughters loved banging on the keys to made up songs and then when two took lessons such lovely music came from it.  How much we enjoyed having a 'concert' given to us.  I loved to open the lid, prop it up, and have the sound come out so rich and loud when it was being played!   It needs restoration work but I cherish it because it was given to us just the way it is.  My oldest daughter sat at this piano with A. when just a little one, smiling with joy at the sound it made.  In fact A. is whom that piano is for me.  She may not live near me but the piano is a vivid memory of our times together at her home long ago.   

 


     At my parent's second home near us, they bought a player piano.  What a lot of fun that piano was!  It had all types of music scrolls that ranged from Christmas music, to old time music, to classical pieces.  I loved watching the music scroll down on songs we could sing along to as the words were right there easy to see.  Yet the best part was watching the keys play without a hand on them.  I think it felt like a ghost playing.  I don't know why my parents gave that piano away to some friends of theirs.  It sits in their family room at their vacation home in the mountains.  At least this family loves pianos and the husband plays splendidly.  In fact they have a grand piano there dominating the living room of that home  with special humidifiers to protect them from the dryness of the mountain air.  Sometimes  I want to ask them if they ever don't want it to please let me know.  I would find a place for that piano in our home just to have those good memories of singing around it as it played.  I would love to put one of the many scrolls in and listen to it. 



     A piano with a story, a song, fingers playing effortlessly, fingers, struggling to grasp the sharps and flats of a song.  Pedals for depth in a song, or the pedals hard to reach with young legs or not used at all.  I loved to push the pedal that sustained the notes.  The song "The Chimes" being a favorite song of mine to play just for that purpose, making me feel like I was in church with the echo of the lofty ceilings and high walls around me.  


  

The Piano from Ellen F. on Vimeo.