Grandma Jenny, circa 1945

Grandma Jenny
Originally uploaded by Ekrobi.

This is my great-great-grandmother, Louisa Jane Simmons Firesheets Brandon, down in Estelle, North Carolina. Isn't she cool?

"Grandma Jenny" is the one who raised my Grandma Smith after her father died and her mother had to go off and work in another town to support her 15 children and stepchildren. My grandmother was number 14.

According to my grandmother, Grandma Jenny wasn't a very warm person and never showed much affection to her brood of grandchildren. "She had a lot of English in her; her parents were English," my grandma explains.

Grandma Jenny always wore her hair tied up in a bun on top of her head. My Mom remembered her collecting hair from her hairbrush, spinning it into a cord with her thumb and forefinger, and using it to fasten her bun. Mom also remembered that Grandma Jenny was never without an apron. Her aprons didn't have a neck strap, but were rather pinned to her dress at each corner. Grandma Smith remembers her wearing gingham or chambray aprons, or dressier ones with ruffles.

I told my grandmother last week that I'd been out to buy a bike helmet. "Oh good, you don't want to crack your simlin," she said. She told me that this was something Grandma Jenny always said: "Be careful or you'll break your simlin." Simlin is another word for gourd, apparently. With a quick google search I discovered that it's also spelled "cymling" or "cymbling." Interesting!