Gramma Cookies, Midnight TV, and the Case of the Missing Crabapples

Author’s note: Our family uses the informal, less common spelling of Gramma and Grampa instead of the traditional Grandma and Grandpa.

The author, Shara Cooper with Ann and Wayne Kangas around 1986.

It’s twenty…thirty…no, thirty-five years ago on a cool fall day and I’m walking to my favourite place.

Gramma and Grampa’s house is a safe haven of warmth and generosity. The cookie jar is always full of Gramma Cookies, a sturdy oatmeal and chocolate staple. As soon as I walk in the door—no knocking required—Gramma stops what she’s doing to hug and usher me in. She sets me at the green Formica table and offers whatever is seasonal. If it’s close to lunch she’ll make me my favourite—grilled cheese with bacon and tomato, ingredients she always keeps in stock…just in case.

I’m lucky in many ways, but largely because Gramma and Grampa live kitty corner to my elementary school making it my go-to place any time after school care is needed or if I am ever feeling unwell (real or fake). I can tell the principal and he’ll send me on my way. I’ll see Gramma watching out the window for me as as the Witch Tree waves me across the intersection. Soon I’ll be on the couch and under blankets with hot chicken noodle soup on the coffee table.

Grampa will turn down his show and watch me curiously as if trying to gauge whether my life is on the line. If my “sickness” is due to bullying, they will listen carefully to my story, never finding any fault on my end, and remembering the names of my antagonists for years, blaming them for the world’s atrocities.

“A storm is coming,” Grampa would say, looking pointedly at me. “It must be Jason’s fault.”

“Taxes are going up, I bet that’s Lisa’s doing.”

I felt seen.

Many nights my sister and I would sleep at Gramma and Grampa’s while our parents were at dinner theatre or whatever weekend event they had attended. Often the sleepover would be planned, but other times we were supposed to be picked up. My sister and I would cram ourselves into the impossibly small space behind Grampa’s chair when our parents arrived, pretending, as the door flew open and cool air saturated the room, that we were invisible. Gramma and Grampa would play along announcing loudly that they hadn’t seen us and had no idea where we were.

Mom and Dad would look everywhere except at our corner of the room and express deep concern for our well-being. Finally, when we couldn’t contain ourselves any longer, we would spring out and say “here we are!” The glee at our ruse would dissipate quickly when they would inevitably announce it was time to go. We’d beg to stay overnight and if not overnight at least a little longer.

I’d crawl on the floor, nestling by my mom’s tall, tan, leather boots. Even though my parents weren’t smokers it was the 80s and a faint smell of cigarettes would cling to her fur coat, leftovers of whatever venue they had attended. I’d cling to her legs, begging to stay and eventually she’d resign, as if the idea of extending their childfree evening was a difficult decision. They would breeze out as quickly as they had breezed in, leaving the room several tangible degrees cooler.

Grampa would say “Let’s watch a movie!” and close the curtains, leaving a one-inch gap for light to stream through. My sister and I would sit on the short, burgundy shag rug, but instead of facing the TV we’d face the wall, eagerly anticipating when a car drove by. As the headlights appeared they would cast long shadows through the two maple trees—one for my family, one for my cousins’—onto the wall, creating a scene and (much like cloud watching) we’d shout what we saw in the display, waiting for the next car to come by, each version slightly different, depending on their approach, speed, and strength of lights.

Not long after Gramma—now having taken responsibility for us getting to bed—would herd us to the bathroom to brush our teeth with the toothbrushes we kept there, just in case. She always had a flannel nightie waiting for us, and warm flannel sheets. Everything about her house was warm.

Gramma would tuck us into bed, pushing the blankets tightly under our bodies and ask if we were warm enough. Then she’d say “you know where I am if you need me?” as she had every night since we were babies. We’d say yes and laugh at the ridiculousness of losing her in her tiny house. She’d only be a few feet away, across the hall, in her room with ornate, dark oak furniture, dresser with lace doilies, and a silver hairbrush and mirror set. On the shelves were Reader’s Digest collections with their numerous short stories and other published-long-ago books that I’d spent hours reading and re-reading.

Unlike at home, going to bed at Gramma and Grampa’s wasn’t something to fight. My sister and I slept in the same bed and could whisper as late as we wanted as long as we didn’t fight. In the morning we would sleep in and usually woke up to the smell of bacon frying. If it was too hot for bacon, Gramma would give us toast with crabapple jelly or any preserve of our choosing. If we remembered there was leftover pie or cake for breakfast and asked for it, she might attempt to redirect us, but she wouldn’t say no.

Shara Cooper, with her sister

Lyndsay

and

grandparents, Wayne and

Ann Kangas.

Both my grandparents had Scandinavian backgrounds. My gramma was Norwegian and Grampa was Finnish. The Finnish ancestry gave him the bluest eyes, we called them the colour of robin’s eggs. He had the strongest handshake. Once at a family reunion, he was heartily greeting everyone and I jokingly put my hand out, pretending to introduce myself. His grip brought tears to my eyes.

Often I’d sit at their kitchen table, next to the windows that were decorated with Gramma’s glass birds and overlooked the garden. Grampa and I would drink buttermilk with pepper sprinkled over the top, a Finnish tradition. In the summer we’d shake dirt off of onions and eat them raw. At first I didn’t actually like these Nordic delicacies, but I wanted to impress Grampa and be more like him. Over time I grew to love them. Every now and then I will still buy a litre of buttermilk, pour a glass and crack some pepper on it—a drink I’m left to enjoy on my own.

On this fall day thirty-five years ago, I’m heading to my grandparents on my own volition, a thing I do regularly despite being an independent tween. The fastest way to their house is out the back gate and down the alley. I’ll walk a couple blocks until I get to the shortcut that everyone takes to get to school. This particular route goes over two random, grassy hills that to this day haven’t been developed and continues to be used for sledding and hijinx.

On the other side of the field is a small shopping centre that had always contained a little grocery store that sold candy for 1¢ each and kept a ledger (the only one I’d seen) in the tiniest writing for customers who paid their bills at the end of the month. Next door was a video store with a small selection of VHS followed by a pharmacy. At the end, for many years was a 50s style diner with tiny jukeboxes on the wall.

As I pass the grocery store, I lament that I hadn’t had the foresight to raid my dad’s not-so-secret coin bowl so I could get some candy. At the video store I pause for a moment and try and remember the name of the movie that had scared me so much in school, on one of those cold weather days when they hadn’t let us out at lunch and had instead rolled the TV into the library and put in a movie (Child of Glass, 1978).

As I walk past the drugstore I eyeball the glittering decorations suspended from suction cups and make mental note of any birds I could buy to add to Gramma’s collection. At the diner I wonder why we never eat there and if I could convince Mom and Dad to bring us there for ice cream (it never happened).

The little shopping complex is kitty corner to the far side of my elementary school playground and I cross the still-green field, stopping first at the swings and then moving through muscle memory over the wooden playground equipment that Grampa had helped build, ending with the green plastic slide.

I’m in junior high at this point, and even though I spent seven years at this school, the memories seem both familiar and far removed. I remember being in kindergarten and knowing how to tie my shoes before anyone else. I remember our class being lectured on not touching the projection screen because the oils from our fingers would destroy it. Much later, I remember sifting through the garbage in the room next to the gym, helping my parents looking for my sister’s retainer and the excitement over having a microwave on a rolling cart cruising the halls at lunch time.

On weekends the school is just a concrete brick with dark windows and I have to skirt around it, following the line of the building and passing my old classrooms where other kids' art hangs on the walls.

“The Witch Tree looms in front of me. She’s grown a lot since becoming the Witch Tree, her outstretched arm pointing down the road and she sways softly, currently at peace, but in a storm when the sky is dark and she rages with it, leaning and shuttering savagely.”

I can still see the clear outline that made us define her witchy form when we were younger.

Gramma doesn’t know I am coming. If she did, she'd be in the window, still watching for my safe crossing. The neatly trimmed caragana bushes are shedding their leaves and I follow their line until I get to the little white picket fence of the side gate. The spring swings it automatically shut behind me. Ahead of me the crabapple tree is heavy with fruit, its branches hanging low. After the first frost the skins will be bright red and they will sweeten slightly. That’s harvest time.

I open the back door and yell “surprise!” at Gramma, who is cooking in the kitchen. I think it’s hilarious to scare a 70+ year-old woman, despite my mother’s warnings. She jumps, clutching her chest. Laughing she says “You almost gave me a heart attack!” Thankfully, when we lost her many years later, it wasn’t because of her heart.

Even though I don’t need help, she comes down the three steps to the landing where I’m standing and frees me from my coat, hanging it on the hooks behind me. I take off my boots and pile them, not so neatly, on the stairs.

Can a house smell warm? Hers does. It smells like cookies, damp flannel, and the laundry that is rumbling in the machines downstairs. Her washer drains into a hole in the floor of the unfinished basement. I glance down the stairs and see the tell-tale bubbles collecting around the hole, with a bucket loosely covering the drainpipe.

A moment of nostalgia hits as I look at the empty carpet in the basement where our train had sat. The train was a feat of Grampa’s. He had collected appliance-sized cardboard boxes and carefully painted each train car a different colour. He had an engineer’s striped cap and a set of matching overalls that we would wear. My cousins, sister, and I would play for hours. Then one day we came over and it was gone. We were told it had been loved so much it fell apart. Unlike the Velveteen Rabbit, it was never seen again. There’s still plenty to play with in the basement, including my mom and Gramma’s old clothes from the 50s, but those days are getting farther away.

Shara and Lyndsay Cooper with Gramma—Anne Kangas—at the big cougar outside Brigham Young University.

Gramma sits me at the table. Her famous cookies are cooling on a rack. She makes dozens a week, enough to fill her cookie jar, the jar at our house, and to send some home with my cousins. Without even asking, she scoops two off the rack and puts them on a little dish in front of me and pours me a glass of milk.

As I’m eating, Grampa comes in and tells me about the two apples that he’d been saving for my sister and me. Two of the biggest apples the tree had ever grown, one for each of us. He’s been waiting to see how big they’d get before he gave them to us. Then, one day he’s eating lunch and looking out the window and two boys run into the yard and pluck the two apples off the tree. Just those two apples, none of the other apples. Off they go.

He’s outraged, gently cursing the thievery and laughing at the absurdity.

The crabapple tree is a hallmark of their home. He grafted a larger tree to it, creating the beast that produced masses of tiny, tart, red crabapples every year. After the first frost they’d pick the bright apples by the bucketful. Gramma would wash them in the kitchen sink, pull off the stems and leaves, and make crabapple jelly to enjoy all year and share widely.

Sometimes I wonder if this generation that survived WWII and the Great Depression is one of the last generations to collectively acknowledge the ebbing and flowing of the natural world around them. My grandparents were aware of every plant in their yard as well as what was happening in the forests and mountains around us and found it noteworthy enough to share those details. They had an intuitive understanding of when to pick Saskatoon berries and when the sap was flowing so Grampa could easily remove the bark from a willow tree and make whistles for us.

Today, noticing the first robin in the spring may be water cooler talk for people with awkward social skills, but there was a time when talking about the first prairie crocuses or the geese flying south in their classic V formation had significance and meant a change was coming. Even though I’m not as observant as they were, I’m grateful for the lessons and love.