Respecting and caring for our elders

Due to unstable home circumstances, I took refuge at my maternal grandmother’s house at various times in my life. But when I was a little girl, I was terrified of my “Grandmaw.” She was a very large woman who spoke broken English and met the stereotype of the Eastern European rural immigrant. Why was I terrified of Grandmaw? For starters, I hardly knew her — only from long-distance phone calls my mom placed to her on the weekends, and from summer vacations to Pennsylvania when we visited my mother’s side of the family. Mom was one of seven siblings raised in a small mining town in coal-company housing, folks referred to as “The Patch.”