A grandmother's gift


My maternal grandmother, Carolyn Holmes Yarbrough, was a public school teacher for more than 35 years. She died in 2003 at the age of 92 frail but not invalid and certainly of a good mind. If you didn't know her, I wish you could have known her. We called her Mema.

She was not a "crawl up in the lap for a hug and a story" grandmother (I had another one of those). She was the "help me figure out this problem" grandmother. She was educated and smart in a math and science kind of way. She was an academic.

As a widow in her 50s, she went back to college and finished her degree work at North Georgia College. That enabled her to teach Algebra, which she absolutely loved. She also loved her azaleas and all of her other plants, and she knew the scientific name of them and why they grew the way they did. Plants were her never-ending science project.

She kept a daily journal that included the day's weather, important sports scores, and a note about anything of significance happening in the world. She left behind dozens upon dozens of these small, spiral-bound notepads.

She never stopped working crossword puzzles - never stopped. She always had one going and subscribed to TV Guide only to have another crossword puzzle to work.

She kept her hands busy with a crochet needle. No kidding, I have at least seven of her crocheted afghans still today - my favorite is a black, red, and white one she gave me when I went off to college at the University of Georgia.

Did I tell you she loved Algebra? She did. She also loved Geology and rocks. She loved everything about math and science. Teaching these subjects to seventh-graders was not a chore, but a passing on of the information she was passionate about learning.

She cooked a fantastic chocolate layer-cake - the chocolate so rich it bled into the layers - and I can still close my eyes and taste her fried chicken. Every Christmas, we counted on her ambrosia with a slice of homemade pound cake.

She loved old movies, Perry Mason, Lawrence Welk, and she loved Dallas. Afraid to miss an opportunity to learn something new or explore something different, she was willing to give everything a try. She tried and loved Chinese food long before there was a buffet on every corner.

She was not a jokester, but she enjoyed a good story. She also loved chocolate milkshakes from The Dairy Queen, traveling, high school basketball, her local garden club, the retired teacher's organization, and she loved the Bible. After she died, I found just about every Bible translation in her basement, marked up with an ink pen, and with notes to herself. She even researched the editors of the translations to better understand their credentials for writing translations. Get this - during the 70s when her students were reading The Living Bible titled The Way, she went out and bought a copy and read it, too.

In addition to all these great memories - and a lot more I could write about - she left me a gift that I only now fully appreciate. I'm writing my new book titled Hickory Trail. It's the last in my three-book Memories of a Home series and focuses on main character Frank Wilcox and his journey in and through high school during the 70s. The book also focuses on Frank's high school job at the local Acorn County News.

As I worked to create a timeline for the chapters in the book, I discovered - stashed in an old filing cabinet - an old blue and white folder that my grandmother had bought on a 1970s trip to Hawaii. On the outside of the folder, she had written in her beautiful handwriting, "For Scott." Inside that folder, I found the newspaper clippings of just about every published story I wrote for the local newspaper - The Forsyth County News - while I was in high school. If the clipping didn't include the dateline, she carefully wrote the published date in a margin.

Those clippings not only helped me establish a timeline for the stories in the new book but also helped recall some precious memories.

I don't know why my Mema thought to save those clippings other than she loved me and didn't trust me to keep up with them. But, I am thankful for her life, I am thankful she was a lifelong learner with curious little habits like clipping from a newspaper, and I am thankful she was mine.

*****
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www.scottdvaughan.com

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