My grandmother shared this story with me when I told her about my nice project.
It involves her mother, my great-grandmother, who died when I was three.
First, you have to understand that my great-grandmother has become a mythic figure in my family. She was the woman who made my mom go out and get a job while she offered t watch me because she didn't want my mother to be dependent on any man's income. She worked at a factory as soon as she was old enough to, and when she retired, they had to drag her out of the place like Norma Rae.
She was known to speak her mind and speak it loudly.
On top of all that, everyone says I was her favorite.
"I'm surprised she didn't build you a shrine,' my mother likes to say, 'Mothers love their kids. Grandmothers adore their grandkids. But your great-grandmother acted like you came down from a golden beam of light. It was something to see."
Every story involving my great-grandmother and her mixture of toughness and kindness is usually heavily exaggerated, but this is the one story where everyone seems to agree on the details.
One day my great-grandmother went into the food store where she normally shopped and noticed the shopgirl at the register on the verge of tears.
There was a line out the door. Everyone had some sort of problem. People were yelling and carrying on, and nobody seemed to care that this girl was about to suffer a nervous breakdown.
My grandmother was with my great-grandmother that day, and according to her--
"Your great-grandmother screamed 'EVERYBODY SHUT UP!' at the top of her lungs. Everyone in the neighborhood knew her, so you better believe they did. Then they all got out of her way so she could walk up to the register and talk to the shopgirl. She took her aside, they talked, and then the shopgirl walked right out of the store."
One of the men asked--"Where's she going?"
And my great-grandmother responded--"None of your business. Now what's your problem."
My great-grandmother, who had never worked in a store in her life, proceeded to spend the next hour working the register and dealing with the customers.
"When Mr. Williams, the owner, came out and saw your great-grandmother there, I thought he was going to explode. Before he could say anything, she said--'You work that girl too hard. She's got a lot going on at home and she gets no help here.'--Then she went right on checking people out. This was before credit cards and things like that so it wasn't exactly brain surgery. Mr. Williams went right back into his office and shut the door. That was that."
It turned out the shopgirl was a new mother and her husband had taken off. When she told my great-grandmother this, she told her to go home, eat, and get some rest. Then she went home and relayed the story to my great-grandfather when he asked where she had been when she was just supposed to be running to the store. My grandmother eavesdropped from her room and heard the whole thing.
"Your great-grandfather was used to her doing that sort of thing, and if he had a problem with it, she usually just slapped him upside the head and started cooking dinner."
My grandmother told me this story for a reason.
"Your great-grandmother believed that when someone's hungry, you feed them. When someone's in trouble, you help them. When someone's overwhelmed, you send them home and you work the cash register. She never once said 'It's not my problem.' She believed you help others and it'll come back around to you. When she died, she was eighty-seven, and the funeral was so packed people thought a celebrity had passed away. Being nice wasn't something she did once in awhile, it was her life. It was who she was."
Hopefully some of that trickled down to me.
Either way, it's a pretty damn good story.
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