Granny with my father as a baby.
At 1 AM this morning the world lost, and heaven gained, my Granny Brown. A sweeter woman never existed. She was 87 years old.
When I was a little girl I would wake up in the mornings and walk down the cold, wooden steps of her attic, where my sister and I slept, to the kitchen table. There I was served such glorious southern breakfasts as biscuits and strawberry jam (homegrown and homemade), pancakes, biscuits and gravy - ohhhhhh. She kept big pitchers of sweet tea in her fridge and had a scruffy little black dog named Mr. T.
My cousin ran a beauty parlor out of Granny's basement. My sister and I spent hours there playing with our hair and spinning in the chairs. Sometimes we would tell my cousin, Scott, that Granny needed him in the basement and when he began descending those red painted stairs we girls would sneak up, slam the door and lock it from the outside. He would bang and holler and we squealed with delight.
My favorite spot in her house was the bathroom. It smelled of talcum powder and ivory soup. Her fixtures were made from real, old fashioned porcelain -something I rarely saw back home. Her tub leeked and to take a bath you had to plug it up with a wash cloth.
A family legend says that when I was born the nurses instructed no one in the room to touch me but my granny was overcome with joy and reached out and patted me on my head. She always patted you when she gave hugs, like she was sprinkling you with little blessings.
She taught me my first knit stitch on hot pink yarn.
When I was a teenager I watched my first episode of Beavis and Butthead in her den while she snoozed in her chair. In that same den I was first introduced to grunge rock via my cousin showing me MTV, something fairly forbidden.
Granny Brown was a strong, beautiful woman. A single mother of four children at one point in her life- she was a mom, a grandmother, a great grandmother and a step-great-great grandmother. She was a beautician, a terrific cook, a Christian, a patron of the Piggly Wiggly, and the driver of a massive steel car known in our family as the SS Frances Brown.
Rest in peace Granny. I love you.
