Two Old Ladies Who Were My Aunts, I pretended They Were My Grandmothers

When I was a little girl, I was the only kid on the block who did not have a grandmother or grandfather. All of my little friends had these folks who loved and adored them, but I did not. However, I pretended that my father’s two sisters who had no children of their own were my grandmothers. This is how I presented them to my friends. My friend Myra said that those two could not be my grandmoms because they lived together in a small apartment near our elementary school. After school I would walk with Myra to these aunts’ apartment because my mom was working and she did not get home to about an hour after school let out. So Myra, who lived near my two aunts, and I would walk with each other at 3:15 p.m. When mom arrived home, she would come and pick me up and we would walk from Aunt Sarah and Aunt Jenny’s, where I had gone after school, to our own home about six blocks away. One day a week, Mom shopped at a day old bakery to get baked goods and breads for the coming week at a discounted price. On that day, my brother Herbert, who was five years older than me, would come and pick me up at the two aunts' house, and he and I would walk to our home. One day, Myra, who was very outgoing and a little obnoxious, deliberately tried to pry from me that these two oldsters were not my grandmothers. Her rationale, which was a very good one, was that you cannot have two ladies living together to be my grandmothers. That was not normal or the norm. I insisted that Sarah and Jenny, were really related to me and surely were my grandmothers. Now Myra had two grandmothers, one in Baltimore where we lived and one in Toronto, where her dad’s mom lived. So Myra had two grandmothers and they lived apart because they were not related to each, just to Myra. I tried very hard to convince Myra that my story was an honest one and that they liked each so much that they lived with each other and knew each other because they shared a grandson, Herbert, and a granddaughter, me. I liked to write stories and reviews of children’s novels in those days and I convinced Myra that my "story" of Sarah and Jenny was a true one and really a thing of convenience for the two old gals because neither had husbands and neither had lots of money. So therefore, by living together they had companionship, saved rent and electricity and heat and they shared me, their prized granddaughter and the love of their lives. Another day, Myra said could she come with me and stay after school with me at their house, because her mom had something to do and would not be home. I said yes and brought Myra into the apartment and introduced her to the two old ladies. Myra took one look at them and said, "I bet you two are sisters. You look alike." I had not had time to warn the two "grandmothers" that Myra was suspicious of me and my story about them. Sarah who was the sweeter of the two and very gentle, I loved her so much for her gentleness with me, realized that I must have told Myra a story on their relationship. She replied, "Oh that is funny; several times people have said we resemble each other. How can that be since we are not related other than being Elita’s grandmoms?" Myra looked at the old gal, and in her knowing voice replied that surely their living together is really not the usual thing. Jenny piped in, she being the aggressive and stuck-up personality of the two, and said, "My dear little girl, we are her grandmoms. I am her father’s mother and this other lady is her mom’s mother. We live together because we cannot afford to live individually because our husbands have passed on and we have not much of an income and this is the best for us. Then seeing our beloved Elita every day is also a wonderful and happy time for us." Myra looked quizzically at the two old gals (my father was about twenty years younger than these two older sisters), and said, "Well okay, this is unusual, but I guess it could be." From that day on, Myra never questioned my relationship as granddaughter to these two old ladies. One day, she said to me that she guessed I was lucky because when I visited them, I got a two for one visit, and many times they would sew these satin pouches with a drawstring and insert pennies, about ten of them and give them to me to buy something that I would not normally have. I loved these two old gals and never forgot that they reassured Myra that I was telling the truth. They both passed away within a few years of each other and when I had a little girl, I named my firstborn, a daughter, Sharon Joy. Sharon was for Sarah, and Joy for Jenny. I loved these two old "grandmothers" and so I honored them in this naming. When Sharon Joy was about six years old, Herbert, my brother asked me who I named her after, and I told him this story. He was quite impressed how I remembered them and honored them so they would always be in my thoughts and heart. Myra, wherever you are, these many years later, this is the truth. Sarah and Jenny were really my beloved aunts. You were right, they were not my grandmothers, but I could not have loved them any more if they had been. They were my "GRAND (in the real sense) AUNTS." So Jenny and Sarah live on in my memory and in my daughter’s name, and even though Myra in her heart knew that she was right and that I was not telling the truth, she as a young girl could see the love these two old gals had for this youngster and she no longer questioned the story. She was wise enough in her young years to see that her friend, Elita, loved these two old ladies and whether they were her grandmothers or aunts, that there was a true and loving bond between them and the young girl. To all of you young people out there, if you are fortunate enough to have a grandmother or a grandfather, honor them and love them because from the first moment they saw you when you were born, a special love took over their mind, body and soul. You were their children’s children and this special feeling engulfed them and their lives changed at once. Emily Dickinson wrote, "A word is dead when it is said some say, I say it just begins to live that day." So when we become grandparents, we realize that no matter how many people we have loved in our lifetime; this grand parenting is such a special love, there are no words almost to express how we feel or act when we see our new grandchild. So as Emily said, we just begin to live that day and nothing is ever the same. I as a child never had even one grandparent, and I felt deprived and envious of my friends who had them, so I took to calling Sarah and Jenny my grandparents, not only to Myra but to myself. My dad was much younger than these two old ladies, so it helped to make that feasible. I have a friend who became a first time grandmother at the age of 72. She called me and told me about the child and that she was probably the oldest first-time grandmother in our area. I said, "So what, you are one and that is grand." Emily said in another poem, "That till I loved, I did not love enough." That certainly applies to us grandmoms and grandpops.We do love enough, when we feel this explosion of warmth, happiness and contentment with these grandkids. Grand they are and we are even grander than we were before, because we can "love more than enough now." elita sohmer clayman who is a grandmother of three handsome grandsons and one beautiful granddaughter and of course, they are very smart and very nice kids.