What I love and think what made you love her - is that she held onto joy and strong love - of you - along with the grit. If you had experienced chores - endless as they can be a a farm setting - even if paid for them - without that spirit, you would've have run from that farm.
What memories of her own past and sadness for her child's marriage break-up, as well as inevitable physical pains your grandmother must have had. She kept her chin up because you had to be cared for and you gave her joy.
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Well-timed, well-placed 'Well' article intended to nudge us into considering purchasing Hunt's forthcoming book. Very little happens in the literary world that isn't self-promotion or strategic. Here we sent Hunt's continued utilization/appropriation of strong female characters by a white, privileged male. Here it is the figure of the 'grandmother.' The pathos is wonderful and really does pull at our purse, I mean heart strings. Gorgeous!
So beautiful. I too benefited from the love of a strong and devoted grandmother. In the midst of my parents' chaotic marriage and divorce she stood by my four sisters and me ready to bolster our fragile selves Staying with her on weekends, I peeled apples fallen from her trees, rolled noodles for chicken and dumplings, worked in the huge garden, played solitaire in her kitchen filled with the aroma of percolating coffee. She taught me to love poetry and insisted we go to college. Aware of the fragility of our home life, she used her unending love and energy to help us transition to adulthood. She's been gone since 1999 - I'd give anything for her hug or current dose of wisdom.
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Thank you so very much for your exquisite tale. I too was blessed with hard working and fun loving grandparents on both sides - My grandmother on a potato farm in northern Maine, and both grandparents from Montreal. Each of them was full of never ending love and joy, which became the backbone and strength for each of our lives as children (I grew up in a family of 5 kids). We picked potatoes with our grandmother in Maine, and made donuts and bread daily with her for the crew that worked the farm. With my Canadian grandparents we went on endless adventures, taking turns winning the 'navigator' spot in the front seat as we scouted out Indian reservations to visit, factories to see how various items were manufactured, even horse farms to help care and muck the stalls. They never seemed to tire, exhausting us long before themselves. The beauty and possibilities of life with multiple generations is fantastic - gifting us so much joy while our parents were so busy with work and making a living. I like you, long for the days of kin folk who took the time to live life beside us, knowing intuitively what we needed to grow up to be strong, able and loving women and men.
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My granddaughter is currently in a similar position. My love for her enables reservoirs of necessary strengths that surprise me. To find this piece you've written, at this particular moment in our lives, I count as a true gift, and I thank you.
I cannot wait to read your books.
I cannot wait to read your books.
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What a touching story. Reminded me of my early life on the farm. But it was also a bit unsettling... What parent wouldn't want to see their kid for 5 whole years? Divorce or not, I just couldn't send my child away to live with somebody else full time, even if it's other family. I just don't get it. But that's on the parents. You and your grandma turned it around into a wonderful experience, and were perhaps better off for it.
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I look forward to reading,“The Evening Road.” The article reminded me of one of my favorite novels: My Antonia.
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beautiful
Beautiful. Nowadays city folk romance the idea of self-sufficiency and living off the land, and one would surely realize that dream... for about two weeks. Then it would start to get real. Farm life is tough, grueling, and without some salt-of-the-earth like your grandma, it can be kind of grim.
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Made my day, I will read your books! THANKS!
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Likewise!
As a grandmother myself, I imagine the challenge of finding ways into a traumatized teen's heart, mind and spirit with affection, hard work, and joy in order for a new capacity for life to emerge in him to be an unbeatable chapter in her life. And your tribute to her says a lot of good things about you too. In the man you've become, she has the best memorial anyone could hope for.
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Wish there were more women like your grandma to knit together the torn children of today.
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Brought a tear to my eye and reminded me of my grandfather. Thank you.
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Reminds me of my Popo. I try every day to be half as tough as her and never quite manage. Fortunately she's still around to remind me of the only things that matter: family, hard work and kindness to others.
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I had a very similar experience to yours. My father died the same year my grandmother died. I went to live with my grandfather on his diary farm so we could keep each other company. I lived with him on and off until his death 8 years later when I turned 16. The work load was ferocious, but there was a great deal of love and learning. I am thankful to have had such an intensive and profound experience in farming, caring for animals, and living in rural communities. I am also thankful that while I was "in" that life I was not completely "of" that life.
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Lovely. The demise of family agriculture in this country means that we have lost a unique reservoir of integrity, resourcefulness, and reality. For all of its parochialism and self-defeating politics, rural life puts to shame much of bourgeois suburbia and self-absorbed urbanity.
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Thank you for this wonderful piece.
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This was beautiful & resonated powerfully. I also had an indefatigable grandmother who saved me with love and a connection to a life of farming and hard work when my parents divorced (there was even a Farmall - my grandfather's proudest purchase). At a time when children of divorce spent time largely with their mother's families, my father's mother took the brave step of making sure I had a place in her family's life. As a kindergarten teacher she shared countless vacations with me, often just the two of us. While walking on snowshoes herself, she pulled the little me and all our food on a toboggan over a mile to get to our family's cabin. She taught me to make pickles, jam, bread and Christmas Pudding. She taught me to pick wild raspberries as though my life depended on it, lifting up the prickly branches to find all the berries underneath. I learned who my great-great-great grandparents were and many of their stories. But mostly, when I was very small and had no idea, she wouldn't let me go. Putting the best version of the love you have into the world reverberates for generations to come, as your grandmother's love has in your writing. Thank you.
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I am my Hoosier father's Hoosier son and "ain't God good to Indiana"!
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What an inspiration!
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You done her proud!
Beautifully written. What a fortunate man you are to have had her in your life. Thank you for the moving piece.
Beautifully written. What a fortunate man you are to have had her in your life. Thank you for the moving piece.
7
I wish I had read this as a young mother. Lots of life lessons here. You were very fortunate to have been loved and nurtured by such a woman. Beautiful. Thank you.
5
What a beautiful elegy....I'm sure it would make your grandmother very proud.
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Very much reminds me of my banishment of my mom during my married years at the urging of my then wife only to seek her love and care during a messy divorce
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your grandma sounds like a wonderful person. amazing what a an appreciation (and even a satisfaction for) hard physical work over video games, fostering of an ability to concentrate and stay on task w/o having to pick up a "smart" phone to ruin it, a talent for toleration of minor frustrations destroyed by too much tv and other unnecessary screen time, the sense to ignore minor physical bumps and bruises let alone feel sorry for yourself about them and also to take pride in a job well done. plus I bet you didnt spend your time at night watching cooking shows and making 1500 calorie deserts and wondering why you're fat and physically unwell from too eating much junk food. and that would make you unlike 97% of america. those values are what this country what it is. too bad some of those people think electing a vain, self-important, molly-coddled rich brat from new york is the answer when he is the antithesis of everything that made you who you are.
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I hope you have read A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck. The last scene makes me cry even after the umpteenth reading. God bless grandmothers.
When I spent summers with my beloved grandmother and her elderly sister in the midwest, I would wake up early to go to the bathroom. When I staggered back to bed, I would find that my grandmother had made the bed! So aggravating! My mother would call, I would complain, my mother would intercede, but my grandmother was unmovable. Her perspective was that I needed to learn that the day started at 6 am...in the summer...at age 12.
She also limited baths to 3 inches of water; she kept a ruler by the tub.
She grew up during the Depression, but she gave me a silver dollar once a week for reciting the books of the Bible in order, and she bought me books because I loved to read.
She made everything from scratch and kept lightbulbs only partially screwed in so that you had to turn on the light AND screw in the lightbulb. I miss her.
When I spent summers with my beloved grandmother and her elderly sister in the midwest, I would wake up early to go to the bathroom. When I staggered back to bed, I would find that my grandmother had made the bed! So aggravating! My mother would call, I would complain, my mother would intercede, but my grandmother was unmovable. Her perspective was that I needed to learn that the day started at 6 am...in the summer...at age 12.
She also limited baths to 3 inches of water; she kept a ruler by the tub.
She grew up during the Depression, but she gave me a silver dollar once a week for reciting the books of the Bible in order, and she bought me books because I loved to read.
She made everything from scratch and kept lightbulbs only partially screwed in so that you had to turn on the light AND screw in the lightbulb. I miss her.
21
Fabulous writing! One of the best, IMO.
2
thank you so much for this beautiful gift.
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This is a beautiful tribute to your grandmother!
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I have been gifted to know strong women who shared some of your grandmother's abilities and wisdom, and it has made all the difference in my life, too. thank you for this piece.
5
You have been so fortunate! Wonderful writing. Your grandmother's legacy is YOU. Thank you for making the most of your upbringing with her.
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This is gorgeous writing. What a woman your grandmother was. What a great legacy you are, both as a man as as a writer.
Just lovely.
Just lovely.
55
Ah, women, the weaker sex. Thank you.
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Lovely. Thank you for writing this.
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Beautifully written. A most valuable piece. Thanks for publishing .
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Beautiful piece! I really enjoyed it.
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