Life’s Game of Seesaw

As promised in a previous post, here is the second of two family narratives I’m sharing. (See the first one here.) I composed this years ago while taking an opportunity to reflect on motherhood. Grandma lived through so much challenge, and she knew what was most important–God, family, service, love. In these things she found her joy.

I didn’t get the opportunity as an adult to know Grandma Smith; she died when I was in my first semester of college. I have no memories of heart-to-hearts, no meaning-of-life discussions. What I remember are the songs. One she learned from her mom went like this:

“School was just over
No books to annoy.
Rich girl and poor lad were they.
With laughter they soon built a seesaw.
Up and down they went bounding with glee.
We’ve all done the same,
Played the same childish game.
Life’s seesaw we all play you see.
First we’re up and then we’re down
Everyone young, old, and heartsore.
High or low,
Fast or slow,
Play at life’s game of seesaw.”

Grandma lived her fair share of life’s ups and downs. Her father died when she was 5 months old, after eight years of poor health from a fall he’d suffered on the job. As the youngest of 10 children, growing up without a father, Grandma knew want. But she also knew love. She said of her mother, “Mama was always there—I felt so secure knowing of her love and concern for me.”  She described her mom as I’d describe her—happy, well-liked, clean, organized, a hard worker, frugal, fiercely dedicated to God and family. They didn’t have much, Grandma and her mom, but they loved each other dearly and that made all the difference.

I imagine that meeting and marrying Grant Smith was just about one of the highest highs Grandma got on her seesaw ride. The way she talked, the sun rose and set because of Grandpa. He did a stint in the Army, she gave birth to four boys, and being together was wonderful. In 1952, those boys were 7, 5, 3, and 1, and Grant rolled up his sleeves to build his family a modest cinder block home. He finished up just as he felt the flu coming on. Only, it wasn’t the flu. After four months of hospitalization and living in an iron lung, polio claimed the life of the young father, leaving Grandma alone to raise my three uncles and their baby brother, my dad. Only two weeks later—two weeks—her best friend, her mother, passed away. 

When you’re a kid, you don’t think to ask your grandma about her life or the lessons she’s learned along the way. Instead, you eat toast made of her homemade bread, sit on the counter as official helper while she makes snickerdoodles, and cuddle up in bed with her as she sings to you of school kids and seesaws, of little purple pansies in the garden, of doggies in the window. You wave to her when she’s in the audience at your grade-school play, and give her a hug after you’re baptized. You trust her when she tells you the fish will bite because they love the Velveeta cheese you’re using as bait, and you drag around the blanket that she made you pretty much everywhere ’til it’s worn to bits. All I knew in those days was that Grandma loved us…me and my brothers, the motley crew of cousins, Mom and Dad, aunts and uncles. It’s only now, now when I tightly hug my nieces and nephews, work diligent 8-to-5 days to make a living, laugh on outings with my mom, and experience lonely nights—now her songs tell me there was so much more for me to learn from Grandma. I think of her in my ups and downs. I realize that she was right; the young, the old, the heartsore…we’re all of us on the seesaw. I just hope to be as graceful as she was, grateful for the chance I have to ride.