Memories of My Grandparents

Australia, Memories


We had Grannie and Pa on Mum’s side and Grandma and Da on Dad’s side.

My memories of visits to both sets of grandparents have faded.  We didn’t go often,

usually only for extended family gatherings around the holidays.

Grannie was very stern in appearance.  Like many people in the 40’s and 50’s

she seemed to be about twenty years older than her chronological age.

Both she and Grandma dressed very demurely, with dresses or skirts, stockings

(and probably corsets)  I never saw either of them in pants.  This was unheard of in their society.

Grannie was a very proper English lady, transplanted to a more relaxed (read “less

refined”) Australia, on the insistence of her husband and his brother, who had

encouraged them to migrate from Liverpool, England.  She raised Mum to be polite, 

unassuming, quietly spoken  and perhaps rather diffident.  In other words, a proper English lady.  On the other hand my Grandma was first generation Australian and by nature and

upbringing much more assertive and outspoken (read “unrefined,” according to Grannie.)

The story my mother told was that the first words Grannie heard Grandma say were uttered 

in annoyance to one of the children before Grandma was aware of Grannie coming through 

the garden gate:

“Get in here, ya little devil, or I’ll smack ya bum!”

The relationship between the two went downhill from there.  Grandma always felt that 

Grannie was judging her and finding her wanting (as indeed Grannie probably was!)

Grandma held onto the belief encouraged from early childhood, that she was a musical prodigy.  She had played the piano all her life and as a young woman had held musical performances in England.  In spite of that she always had an inferiority complex when it came to her English relatives and that made her even more outspoken and brash.  Her husband, my Da, adored her and cossetted her through her many illnesses, both real and imagined.  She seemed to us 

kids to be a bit of a prima donna.

While Grannie would never dream about talking about the trials of pregnancy and the 

pains of childbirth, Grandma frequently tried guilt trips, reminding her children of the 

sickness they had caused her by being born.  Her facial expressions frequently

reflected her annoyance and ill health.

On the other hand, Grannie seemed to quietly put up with a lack of attention and

caring from her husband, a minister absorbed in his work and the adulation of his

female congregation.  She always looked calmly aloof, in control of her emotions,

dedicated to her role of providing meals and household comforts to Pa.