This is a woman who shopped exclusively at the Salvation Army throughout the duration of my childhood, resulting in a veritable herd of animal print polyester blouses.
A woman who stored all the cookies we baked together not in trademarked Tupperware, Heaven's No, but in old yogurt containers and Cool Whip tubs.
A woman who once traumatized my sister by wrapping her Christmas gift in a Mini Wheat's box. (One of a collection of boxes she keeps in the garage for just such purposes.)
A woman who fed me so many green beans, blackberries and apricots from her garden every summer that I experienced the whole spectrum of gastrointestinal distress by the age of nine.
A woman, I kid you not, of whom you can ask: Do you happen to have a pick ax I can borrow? And she will saunter into the garage and come back five minutes later with the very pick ax that planted the flag at Iwo Jima.
Grandma and Grandpa never let anything, I mean ANYTHING, go to waste. Moreover, they never let advertising or egos or The Joneses confound the fact that what they had on hand was perfectly good, and good enough for them. We have so much to learn from that generation--those parents and grandparents who spent their childhoods in the Depression, were newlyweds during WWII rationing, and remember what life was like before modern luxuries like Kleenex and cake mix.
[Grandma the morning after Thanksgiving, dispatching with perfectly good, "unwanted" pumpkin pie.]
I've spent the last 15 years trying to jump start Grandma's consumerist streak with Coach and Saks and Ferragamo, but in a show of characteristic stubbornness, she's still cutting the toes out of her old flats when she fancies a new pair of sandals. (Kids, don't try this at home.)
And I love her all the more for it. Turns out she's been the cool kid all along.
A word of advice: if you didn't do it yesterday, call your Grandma. She's got a thing or two to learn ya.
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