Fond memories of my grandparents linger with me till today. I was lucky to have known them on both sides.
The longest living was Mom's adoptive father, Oupa R, handsome but a difficult man in his younger days. I never saw that side of him, as he always treated me gently and kindly, and was very protective of me. He loved playing pranks. We used to go to neighbours down the road to watch scary movies like Dracula, and Frankenstein with Mom's youngest brother, who was like a brother. Oupa covered himself in a sheet and hid behind a hedge, jumped out into the pathway, scaring the living daylights out of us! He loved teasing us about that night.
I never met Mom's biological father, but it did not worry me, although I always wondered what he was like. That was a big family secret that I only learned of when I was an adult. Oupa R became a changed man as he got older; more tolerant and always smiling and cracking jokes. He started writing letters to me when he moved upcountry to stay with his brother after my Ouma passed on, and told me how he missed me and my family. I still have those letters, safely packed away in boxes that still have to be sorted.
My Ouma E was a beautiful woman, on the inside and the outside. She passed her love of baking on to me, as she did to my Mom as well. I could not even reach the tabletop, so I stood on the chair to 'help' with baking, using Ouma's 'decipe book.' I will never forget the day I walked into their house and saw milktarts all over the house. She had baked 48 tarts for the church fete! That was my Ouma E, a gentle woman with a love for people, always wanting to help others, even though she had little in the way of material things. Ouma E sadly died in her early sixties, way too soon, as she still had so much to give to the world! Her youngest sister visited us many years after her death, and looked at me in wonder, saying she felt happy because it was as if she was looking at her sister again.
I don't have as many memories of my grandparents on my father's side, as they both passed on when I was very young. I do remember visiting my Ouma G, who was bedridden. She always had hard-boiled sweets in her dressing table drawer that I could help myself to. Oupa H was one of the kindest men I knew. He used to drive a small car and would tackle the very steep and treacherous mountain pass to come and visit us when we moved to a forestry station.
The only time I saw him upset was when I wore trousers for the first time. He quietly took me to the kitchen and told me that I must not let 'them' make me wear pants!
I was heartbroken when Oupa H passed away on my tenth birthday.
These have been precious memories of my grandparents that took me back to days long gone, but that are forever etched in my mind!
Thought I would share some useless information my curious mind went in search of as I sat down to write. I always wondered where the 'grand' in grandparents comes from. Well, I'm sure for many of us, they were very grand in the sense that they always spoilt and made a fuss of us. But the prefix to parents comes from an Anglo-French word, graund, meaning a generation older, and was changed to grandparents!
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