I loved Grandma Johnson with a kind of idol worship. She was so cool! Because she was born and raised in Sweden she had a strong accent, which was one of the reasons she was so different from everybody else I knew. Grandma had tried for years to get ride of her accent, but it was still there. She also twisted her words around, although I didn't notice that because she handed her way of talking down to mom, who handed it down to me. You probably have noticed I say things funny sometimes, even though I try to use good English. When we started adding in-laws into our family they pointed out some of our strange phrases, like "Will you please pick off the table?" Julie's husband still laughs at us for saying that, although I can't quite see what's so funny about it.
Another thing I loved about Grandma was her ability to cook anything, and make it delicious! Of course there were the special Swedish dishes she brought with her which our part of our family tradition, like Moss Pudding and Peprakakor Cookies, but she could also make everything else taste good, too. Grandma made a mean lasagna, (we always refer to it as Swedish lasagna now, although it tastes thoroughly Italian,) and the best lemon merange pie in the world. In fact, once a burglar broke into her house and stole her purse, some cash, and some jewelry. When the police came to investigate they got the biggest kick when grandma told them that not only had the thief stolen her personal belongings, he had also taken a big piece out of the lemon merange pie that had been sitting on the counter, waiting to be given to a neighbor.
Most of all, I loved that Grandma Johnson loved me. She wanted me to come visit her, she liked it when I spent the night over at her house, she listened to my stories and told me stories about her when she was a little girl, and she was always there for me, even when other people seemed to let me down.
Grandma Johnson is the reason I have soft elbows today. Weird, you may think, but it's true. I suppose I didn't work hard enough at keeping myself clean when I was little, most kids don't, but one day Grandma told me that if I would scrub my elbows and knees with a scrubbing brush and soap every night for one week she would buy me a bottle of my very own fingernail polish! Now, that was an incentive! I'd never even worn fingernail polish before that, (you've got to remember this was back in the day when only fancy ladies who were going out on the town wore nail polish, not today when we even paint toddlers nails.)
Well, I scrubbed and scrubbed my elbows and knees. I remember scrubbing them so hard they turned red and sore at first. Taking a bath took a lot longer when you had to concentrate on those places, and as an added bonus somewhere during that week I discovered that I actually liked sitting in piping hot water, and I developed a penchant for taking long, soaking baths as well. By Saturday afternoon, when we went over to visit Grandma and pick sweat peas to take to our Sunday School teacher the next day, I was clean as a button, and kind of shiny, too. Grandma was duly impressed. She presented me with my very first bottle of fingernail polish. I was a little disappointed because it was not bright red like I'd seen the ladies on TV wear, but it was still pretty cool! It was clear polish, you could see right through the bottle, but somehow they had tinted it with pink so it gave my nails a pretty pink look. I was so proud of myself.
There was another added bonus to this deal, too, which I'm sure Grandma planned all along although I never figured it out. Because my fingernails looked so pretty once they were painted I wanted to keep them that way, so I stopped biting my nails and started cleaning, filing, and polishing them every Saturday afternoon. I have Grandma to thank for my good hand hygiene, as well as my soft elbows, I guess.
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