Most importantly; they were warm places, loving places, where you could go no matter what was happening and you could feel the embrace as you stepped through the door.
Even when the house was empty you would feel your grandmother because you could turn around, in any room, in the passage, in the yard and there was a memory attached. Grandma’s chair, pictures on the wall, her surprise cupboard, the drawer in which she kept brown paper for her fried bread, the chooks or the laundry with its copper and mangle.
It might sound Swahili to our younger readers but it was the very foundation of my life.
My grandmothers were geographically located in Adelaide – one was Grandma Mitcham and the other Grandma Goodwood. I adored them both and they influenced me more than I ever realised (although sometimes it took decades for the messages to sink in).
We were blessed, well I certainly was, to live next door to Grandma Mitcham until we moved to Geelong. But for much of my life I got to go back at least once a year to spend three or four weeks with them both in the Christmas holidays.
When I had their magic all to myself. Going out to feed the chooks each day – old wooden troughs held bran and grain and shell grit; doled out with ancient wooden scoops, worn to a smooth, burnished finish by years of use.
Or watching one use the copper, complete with wooden paddle to push things around, then being allowed to crank the mangle to squeeze water from the clothes before they reached the clothes line – two wires strung from the old apricot tree to a distant fence (don’t even start me on her apricot tarts).
But there was one constant through all of this, with both my grandmothers, that would become such a part of my life.
The apron.
Don’t laugh, I’m serious. It was the trademark of every grandma I think I ever knew.
Most importantly, it defined my grandmas.
I can hardly recall ever seeing either without one on.
And for Grandma Mitcham it was the original multitasker. From protecting her dresses (and she felt compelled to do that because she never forgot the Great Depression) to the following:
- Good for picking up hot things from the oven.2. Great for wiping hands – and the occasional grandchild's tears.3. She could fill it with apricots from the gnarled old tree in her backyard, and apples and lemons.4. Or wooden pegs for the clothesline.5. Or bits of kindling for the oven or the fireplace in the lounge.6. And eggs when her ancient hens got around to laying.7. Vegies from her garden patch.8. It was a duster or dryer as the occasion demanded.9. And when we dropped in she always seemed to be able to find a couple of wrapped lollies deep in its front pocket.
- After she had produced every ingredient for her famous handmade, homemade, pasties, one always slipped into her apron pocket for her to slip to me when no-one else was looking (it was years before I found out she repeated that sleight of hand for every grandchild).
My mother wore one as well, but not as much and not with as many vital responsibilities.
By the time I married my wife hardly ever wore one.
Our daughters have never even owned one.
The grandchildren have never heard of them.
Today, in this ridiculously sterile world, Canberra would probably legislate against them anyway out of fear for the multitude of possible germs adhered to the apron before it went into the copper at the end of the week.
Both grandmas have been gone 40 years now but I think about them often, so many things trigger so many good moments shared.
And I have gone past their old houses from time to time whenever I am back in Adelaide, and the magic is still there, you can feel it, your face lights up because of it.
Forget coronavirus, no-one I know ever caught anything from an apron – except love.
And it’s true. Without one my good old grandmas would not have been complete.
Certainly my memories would not have been so rich.
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