Memories of a grandmother in poem

The grandmother I never knew, published in the University of Maine digital commons:

Ode to a Grandmother I Never Knew by Peggy L. DuBlois

She is a hard-working person
With a clean apron 

Wiping her hands on a towel 

Tied to her apron string.

She has the uncanny ability 

To press laundry 

While the dough is rising

And telling one daughter 

That her braid is too loose 

Another daughter 

That her sweater needs mending.

She can spot a fallen hem

From a block away 

Throw open a window 

And call that daughter home 

Before the neighbors see her “like that.”

She buys bananas from the back of the truck 

That pulls up at the corner 

And notes the exact price in her ledger— 

Black, with precise handwriting 

Mastered in third grade 

Under the watchful eye of her own mother.

She plays cribbage every night 

With a husband I will never know 

Who works at the train yard 

And at the college, 

Bringing home insignificant funds 

That get recorded in the ledger 

Along with the income of the children 

Who live at home and pool 

Their resources during the depression.

She quilts a blanket
From old shirts, torn by a nail
Ripped by her hands
Stored in a rag basket 

Cut into squares
Pieced together with tiny stitches
Transformed into a blanket
That will travel across country by train
In a hope chest that I will find in an attic
Two generations later just when
Motion sickness has dropped me
Into a life I don’t recognize

I wrap myself in its embrace
And hear the whispers of Ma Mémère— Tu es fort comme moi, ma belle fille—

The grandmother I never knew.