Happy Birthday, Granny Jack

 

Hey, y'all, 

Today is my grandmother Jackie's 90th birthday.  I know it's considered impolite to divulge a woman's age, but I feel like once you hit 90 and still look like this, it could mostly be considered bragging: 

From my earliest memory, I've thought of Granny Jack as fun. When I had run my mother to the brink of exhaustion and tested her last nerve, Peg Peg would call Granny Jack, and - with the same plea used by southern mamas since the dawn of time - say "COME GET THIS YOUNG'UN." Nothing could have been better news to me, because it meant I was going to play with Granny Jack in her backyard, chasing each other with water guns, or we were going to cook something together, or I was going to do an art project with the laundry basket of supplies she kept in the bottom of the closet, just for me. 

She introduced me to Waylon.  She called me "Shug." She let me dangle my toes in the water when she took a bath.

It was the late 70s / early 80s, and Jackie was glamorous as all get-out, with her big sunglasses and cool haircut. She was prettier than the women on "Dallas," which I was not officially allowed to watch. She spoiled me with endless school supplies and bought me a new bathing suit every Valentine's Day. Now, I'm grown and live in Montana and the idea of even looking at a bathing suit in February is ludicrous, but that's the kind of thing you can do in Alabama. 

Resilient and determined, she'd raised these four wildly different personalities on her own, which I'm sure was a herculean feat (I only have two children and I'm still sometimes tempted to hide in my own closet).  This would have been fine, except my aunt and uncles went on to have their own children, which meant I was no longer the only grandchild. This was and remains unacceptable and I'm not even going to add pictures of my cousins here because I'd prefer to think of myself as First and Foremost. 

When I was in college, Granny Jack would let me call her for advice on my English papers. I'd visit her on holidays and she'd never send me back to school without a dozen yeast rolls, a cooler of fried chicken and whatever I wanted from her supply closet...it was all the love and support and carbohydrates and free toothpaste a freshman could ask for. I was living in an apartment with four other drama majors, making ends meet by working as a waitress and cleaning my professor's house, but sometimes I still didn't know how I was going to make the rent. Out of nowhere - like a miracle - I'd get a check in the mail from Granny Jack with enough to keep me going, and then some. I never asked. I never had to. She'd include little love notes reminding me that Merle Haggard had promised everything would be fine "If we make it through December..."  Strong women who can quote both Jesus and Merle are a dying breed. 

I spent the summer after I graduated from UVa living with Granny Jack; we'd order take-out and watch old movies together. I've learned a lot of life lessons over the years in the company of Granny Jack, and one I learned that summer was: Maybe don't watch "Body Heat" with your grandmother.

We grandchildren grew up and started getting married, and produced a whole new generation of great-grandchildren for Granny Jack to love, and it turned out she hadn't lost a bit of the fun-loving spirit that had made me first fall in love with her when I was a toddler. 

I was looking at the picture below of myself as a baby, surrounded by the previous three generations, and realized Granny Jack would have been 45 when it was taken. I'm currently 44. I can only hope that my children and future grandchildren will love and respect me as much as we all love her, with the lifetime of memories that entails. 

They say that every woman eventually turns into her mother. But maybe if you work hard and you're really lucky, with the Lord and Merle looking down, you also someday become your grandmother. 

Happy birthday, Granny Jack.

Thank you for everything. 

I love you. 

-Brooke