Grandma Ham

"Your gradma's name is Fannie Ham!" the entire seventh grade GEMS group stirred with excitement.

In a way I always thought it was funny, that Grandma Ham's name was so silly, not too common, though she tries to be the most normal and common woman that ever was out in society.

Take her closet for example. It was the summer of 2007 and I was working as a nurse's aid in Churchill, MT. Grandma Ham was so proud that she had the luxury of service from her very own great-grand daughter. Surely I would allow her to live peacefully and comfortably, away from the mumbo jumbo abnormalities from other residents she apparently witnesses every day. In her Spring and Fall wardrobe she owns precisely seven slacks, organized in color from white to peach to blue to navy and finally to black. "Seven?" she would ask as I neatly clipped the cuffs to the hanger. "Yes, Grandma, seven."

"Goot." Oh, and Grandma Ham speaks with this articulate, need-to-make-sure-they-know-I'm-Dutch way. The foreign 'r' in "Surrre" or the hacking 'h': "Hhhave a candy." I believe she is third generation Dutch, so her grandmother and mother spoke it.

The bedding must be neat, no wrinkles, no uneven draping. If it lay askew, the loss is hers. She must sit and stare at it all day. As she crochets or reads or reads in her diagonal corner chair, a spot where her bed is so visible, she must remain in the presence of a kitty-wampus bedspread. And while nurses and cleaning ladies and nurse's aides and visitors come and don't do a thing about the bedspread, she must give herself up to an abnormality, to a potential discovery that Fannie Ham may not be as put-together as she desires.

Grandma Ham was originally Fannie Droge. The eldest of seven children, she also assumed the responsibility to clean after her siblings and to help her mother prepare meals. She cleaned while her siblings aided their father on the potato farm.

"So it is true that our family line has been here for over a hundred years,Grandma?" As she explained her history we folded "scrubbie" netting together, she showed the way to fold, how many times to fold the netting, where to pin it, and where to cut.

"Why, yes, hunny. I don't suppose Grandma has thought of that. Our family has been here for over a hundret years." I thought of how people now don't stay in one place anymore. They move, and lineages tied to places are broken often. Bigger dreams, newer places.

"So how did you meet Grandpa Overweg?"

"I wasn't too old, probably your age when I traveled to Warshington to clean for a family. One day I was out for a stroll with a friend when I met him. He offered to buy me ice cream, and I accepted." As we passed pins to one another, she continued folding and securing the netting--a practice she knows well--and she continued. "He didn't have a family. He was orphaned as a young boy and since had lived with brothers or sisters and always grew up very poor. When it came time for me to go back home, I asked my father if he would hire another man. Dirk came to Montana, but Daddy would not allow us to live in the same house, so Dirk had to live in Bozeman. Twenty miles was much further back then, and I rarely got to see him. Daddy bought him working gloves and boots from an old JC Penny that used to exist in Manhattan."

Grandma Ham held the netting while I continued to cut on our marked lines. "So then what?"

"Although it was nice to know he was in Montana, I still rarely saw him. But soon he had earned enough money from Daddy to afford another place to live." And soon Grandma became an Overweg. It was a goot, solid Dutch name.

They had a daughter named Genevieve Ann, and five years later another daughter Delores. They grew up and began their families. Gen's oldest Mike is my father, and here I am. And there I was with Grandma Ham, connecting the generational gap between us.

Grandpa Dirk died young, when my dad was about six or seven, and so Grandma Ham with all her health problems moved into the independent side of the retirement home when she was in her fifties and about ten years later she met and married Grandpa Ham, her name thus being Fannie Ham. Grandpa Ham died when I was six or seven.

She is 93 this year, and each time we see her she says, "This could be the last time..." as thought she is saying, "Well, it's been good to know ya. I'm off."

For all the ways Grandma Ham desires normalcy and expects normalcy from other people, she herself has taken detours and has explored new territories. And although she believes that a bed spread should never be crooket or that there should never be no more or no less slacks than seven in her Spring attire, her name suggests otherwise. Her name says that she has taken chances and has lived.



***Grandma called me the other day to say that Grandma Ham had a dream. She told the dream to Aunt Nell, her sister, sure that the dream was true.

"You must call Laurissa," she said in such a worry.

"Is she okay?" Aunt Nell said to her in confusion, "Fannie, Laurissa is just fine. She is in DeMotte teaching."

"No! She got fired!" Grandma Ham said, "Yes, they fired her because she could not teach in Dutch. But that is okay, because she moved back to Sioux Falls and she is going to marry one of Josh's brothers." Josh is my brother-in-law and he has three younger brothers. I'm friends with all of them. And Grandma Ham desires that I should find a man to marry before she dies, so that she can rest in peace. (Because a single woman off and on her own at 23 is surely an abomination.)

Aunt Nell assured her that no, I was not fired and that no, I was not going to marry one of Josh's brothers and that yes, I was doing just fine and I still had my teaching job.


***Grandma Ham called Aunt Nell in a panic one morning. "They're going to arrest us!"

"what?"

"You and I, we wrote fraudulent checks, and now they are going to arrest us!"

Suddenly, Grandma Ham has difficulty distinguishing reality from her dreams. For a woman so tied to normalcy, her dreams certainly suggest a crazier, more complicated, more exciting, more imaginitive Laurissa-like mind. I believe I am Fannie Ham's great-grandaughter after all.