Grandma Henke

Isn’t it funny how a long, lost memory pops into your mind when you least expect it?    Today, for instance, I was thinking I needed to take some toothpaste out to the motor home so, naturally, the small dresser that used to belong to Great Grandma Rose flashed into my mind.  (Strange memory link … I know!)    The next thing I know I am remembering the day when I was probably six or so years old and opened one of the drawers to discover Grandma’s false teeth!

Great Grandma Rose was tiny, old, and wrinkled when I knew her.   I thought her to be well over a hundred, which, of course, she wasn’t.   I couldn’t have been very old myself, perhaps five when I remember going with my father to see her in her tiny little apartment in Salt Lake City.    She had a crackly, quiet voice and she smelled like roses.    The last time I saw her she was laying in the middle of her big, soft bed … a miniature old lady with a night cap on her head.    By the side of her bed was a little  golden bird cage with a mechanical bird sitting perkily on a little swinging branch.  She would wind it up for me so I could listen to it sing.    She always told me that when she died I could have her bird … but when Dad went to get it, it was gone.     I can still recall my hot tears of disappointment over my loss.

Instead, I was given her small wooden dressing table with a three way folding mirror, a far greater treasure in the long run but a disappointment, nonetheless, compared to  the little music box I’d been promised.    Inside the drawer of my dressing table was a carved, wooden box that looked to me like a casket.   Inside that box was the skeletal remains of an old china doll that has since been restored and sits beautifully in my sister’s curio cabinet.     But the real treasure, in my six year old mind, was the set of false teeth I found in the back of the drawer!     What a treasure!    I could hardly wait for Show & Tell!    Unfortunately, Mother was less than thrilled and I was denied ownership of the dentures.