My Mimi

Mimi was already old when I was born. Seventy-five. In 1967, that was really old. My memories of Mimi are fuzzy, mostly, like a pleasant dream of a familiar place. Some memories are sharp, though, and I can reach out and touch them as if they were yesterday...

As a little girl, I had two grandmas. My mom’s mom was a “regular” grandmother who cooked green beans on the stove all day and made fried chicken and potato soup. My other grandma, my dad’s mother, was exotic. She was from France and had an accent and always wore her hair in a bun. This grandma made delicious lemon pound cake with powdered sugar sprinkled on the top (how I wish I had the recipe) and had Jordan almonds in a drawer. She could knit and sew and speak several languages. In my memories, she wears a pale cotton dress and a soft grey sweater and sensible shoes.

Mimi’s house didn’t have many toys. I remember a few marbles, some dominoes, and crayons in the secretary, but not much else. That was never a problem, though, because she had a piano with a wonderful bench carved like an elephant. She never seemed to mind if we “played” it while we were there. I imagine she had a great love of music and didn’t mind if her granddaughters tried their fingers at the keyboard.

Mimi’s kitchen was a wonder to me. It was so different from our kitchen at home. The sink was all porcelain, and there were two really big sinks and a really cool built in drain on the side. I thought the breakfast room was really neat, especially because the refrigerator was in there and not in the main kitchen. But the thing I remember most about Mimi’s kitchen was sitting in that breakfast room at the little table eating graham crackers and milk. They were a staple at her house. Mimi always had graham crackers.

Once, when I was about eight years old, she came to stay with us, but I don’t remember why. I sat next to her on the couch one afternoon and helped her organize my mom’s sewing box. My own mother didn’t sew anything except buttons and the occasional hem, and her box of threads and pins was a rat’s nest of colors tangled together. Mimi and I untangled those threads and carefully wound them around playing cards that had been cut into small strips. The pins we collected into a small, round candy tin. The needles we placed into a square of felt we found in the bottom of the box. When we were finished, all the spools of thread were neatly organized by color in rows and the pins and needles were safely secured in their place in one of the trays. I was so proud of that sewing box! I can remember reorganizing the box several times after Mimi left, but it was never as nice as when we did it together.

Mimi gave me a book, Je Lis, Tu Lis, when she was staying with us. She would sit with me and teach me the correct pronunciation of colors and numbers. I can hear her voice saying, “Bleu, gris, marron…” I would try to produce those same sounds, but with my Kentucky accent, I doubt if I even came close!


Mimi was the reason I decided to study French in high school. Unfortunately, by the time I was a teenager, she was no longer well enough to converse with me. The winter of my freshman year, I learned a French Christmas carol. We went as a family to visit Mimi in the nursing home one December Sunday, and I sang it to her. I swear she smiled and tried to sing along as I sang, “Il est nee, le divine enfant…”

I always felt like I was cheated when it came to Mimi because by the time I was old enough to ask her questions about her life in France and have her teach me what she knew, she was too sick. I wish now she could have taught me how to knit or crochet or how to make lemon pound cake. I would have asked her what it was like to leave her home and journey to America. I would have loved to have conversed with her in French and heard stories of her childhood in Reims.

In my mind, I see her, standing in the doorway of 1909 Dorothy Avenue in her soft grey sweater, her hair in a bun, waving and smiling as we drive away. How I wish I had more…