Google and My Grandmother

Our youngest, Mary, recently told me she used to laugh when I would call her during her college years. She said other moms called to see how their kids were doing, but I called to tell her some piece of interesting trivia I had just learned. She and her sister Liz snicker when they’re together over Ron’s and my “bird books”, as they call them, kept very accessible by the back sliding door so we can look up any new species we see.

They have Momo, my grandmother, to thank for their moments of mirth.

I’ve often thought, as I’ve aged into grandmotherhood, how different my interests would have been without her to influence my early years. As she moved around, she surely must have given possessions away to lighten her load. Because she was so well-read, I know many books made their ways into the homes of more permanently-planted friends. The books she kept say a lot about her.

On the lone end table in her living room, along with her dog-eared Bible, was a miniature, 10-volume set titled "The Complete Writings of William Shakespeare." She kept a first edition of "Peter Pan," some Elsie Dinsmore books, a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, and a little set of paperbacks, covers so shiny I called them “Momo’s yellow patent-leather books.” There were four of these, each a catalog covering a different subset of the animal kingdom. One was about insects; the next, birds; the third, mammals; and the last, reptiles and amphibians.

My first memory of those books is sitting on her couch, nestled into the crook of her arm, while she showed me the differences between doves, mockingbirds, and pigeons, all common occupiers of our trees. “Now, when you see a bird, you can call it by name.” she finished. And I went right out in the back yard, spotted a dove, and marched in triumph back into her room to show her I had learned well that day. “The differences matter to me,” she explained, “because they mattered to God when He made them.” And so, those books became my search engines – the googles of the past - my destination when I spotted an unknown creature.

Ron found a spider under one of our patio chairs last night, and as he described it to me I followed my familiar routine: I grabbed my laptop, and googled “brown spider with elongated body southern California.” Ah, the ease of it all. What incredible richness of knowledge, accessible in nanoseconds.

Katie was at our house last week, and suddenly she gasped, “Grammy! There’s a beautiful yellow-and-black bird on your hummingbird feeder!”  I had googled it several years before when it first showed up. “It’s a Hooded Oriole. Look how bright the colors are!”

Momo, your great-great-granddaughters are coming along nicely.