Mary Ross' grandmother

My Grandmother--Helen Laurene Baldwin Rose (1918-2013)


For this activity, I zoomed with my mom, Helen Diane DeShazo Rose, since we are apart during social distancing. Mom chose four short stories to recount about her mother, Helen Laurene Rose. (My middle name is Helen after grandma and mom.)  I loved listening to mom talk. She would laugh as she remembered the telling of these stories from her mother. It was also special to reminisce in May, as Grandma Rose was born May 14th and it's a time when we remember all mothers.


Little Girl Stories


Let's start with the library. Well, you know that mother loved to read and she loved books. She claims that she fell in love with the library when she was six years old.  There was a hole in the hedge behind her house. She climbed through that hole and there was the library. When she went in, the librarian said she could come in if she washed her hands and was always very good.  Mother loved going back to the library. She loved telling that story too.


The next story was in the early 1920’s in Mokane, Missouri.  Her mother was doing some cooking inside the house. Mother was sitting out on the rail of the hogpen waiting for the train to go by. When the train went by, she was so busy counting the train cars, that she fell off into the hogpen. She said it was one of the worst baths she’d had in her whole life. She recollects that she had almost all her skin scrubbed off.


A Little Older…

She had made a friend in school and her name was Oralou. Actually, we took mother to visit Oralou the last time we took mother out to visit Missouri. They were lifelong friends. For some reason they had climbed on this rooftop. And when it was time to get off, they were sliding down and their underwear got hung on the nails. Needless to say, the underwear was not the same...In that day and age, to mess up your underwear was about the worst thing you could do. She was so embarrassed!


The Play

When mother was in school they were doing some kind of play. And the teacher had her be the little brown leaf. Mother was very disappointed because she didn’t want to be the brown leaf. But the teacher said, “Well, Laurene, you have such beautiful brown hair, I thought you would make a perfect brown leaf.” After that mother was happy.

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