Grandmothers

Some grandmothers are called Granny.
Some are called Nanna or Grandma.
In Hawaii grandmothers are called TuTu.

I called my grandmother Ma.

Her real name was Freddie...a funny name for a grandmother.
She had twinkly eyes and a bubbly laugh,
a soft snuggly lap and a voice with a song in it.
She wore her gray hair pulled back in a bun
and she smelled like roses and violets, mostly.


She had an upholstered rocking chair beside her fireplace
and a blue padded porch swing in the patio
where she told me stories I could see in my head
about birds and rabbits and toads…
The things that lived in her garden, mostly.

I visit her still, though she has been gone a long time
and I am a grandmother myself now.

She is here inside me.

Where is yours?

Germaine Kresser Dietsch

« Back to Index