the habit of being

My maternal great-grandmother, Laura (formerly Lottie) Lee Kemp (nee Bishop) is 88 years old, I think. She lives alone, in Augusta, GA, with a mean old black cat named Andy, which I gave to her when I was a child and he was a kitten, when I still thought he was Annie. She has a yard full of ceramic animals, and about a 7th grade education. She never shuts up. From the time you walk in the door until the time you leave, she will talk your ear off, glaringly incorrect grammar and all. She especially loves to talk about three things: her neighbor-across-the-street, her impending death, and how much things cost originally vs. how much she actually paid for them.

Grandmother Kemp always brings up Betty Across-the-Street as if none of us had ever heard of this woman before in our lives. The most important thing to know about Betty Across-the-Street is that she has money. There were two Mercedes parked outside when her relatives came to visit. She’s clearly poured thousands into her back yard, which belongs in the Gardens of Georgia registry. Her little dog has a pink nose and probably cost a pretty penny.

The second most important thing about Betty Across-the-Street is that she is so much better than we are, in every possible way. No matter how much time my mother puts into finding the perfect gift, the one Grandmother Kemp won’t possibly reject and send back home with us, we just can’t beat Betty Across-the-Street.

One Christmas, my mother came over with the most beautiful flower arrangement ever, one she’d went way overboard on in a fancy boutique, tall white lilies.

Grandmother’s reply was “Oh, Sharon. You should have spent that money on your family.”

Before my mother even had time to explain that her grandmother is part of her family, she was being dragged into livingroom to “just look at the poinsettia Betty give to me.”

To be sure, the poinsettia wasn’t anywhere near as nice, but it retained the prime livingroom spot, while the lilies were left to wilt on the kitchen table.

“Betty is so good to me. I’m so thankful. Just don’t know what I would do without her.” is Grandmother’s refrain, while we sink further and further into the couch cushions and our guilt.

The conversation perks up again when Grandmother starts in on When She’s Gone. She won’t be around forever, you know. She’ll be blind in a year. Fortunately, she can’t stick to this morbid topic for long without coming to the fun part: presents!

My great-grandmother has been asking her relatives what they would like to inherit from her for about 30 years, since she’s been certain she’d be blind in a year and dead in two for that entire period. My mom distinctly remembers asking for lipsticks and pop-bead necklaces when she was a girl. Down to the tiniest knick-knack, almost everything in the house has someone’s name taped to the bottom. There’s also a master list in the bedroom. She recently apologized to my mother for breaking her own vase. She thinks of her things as already belonging to other people, and feels guilty if anything happens to them.

On my last trip to Augusta, we made the usual rounds through the house, listening to who will be inheriting what and inspecting our property-to-be. Not only does Grandmother Kemp have an impeccable memory for exactly what items each relative will be remembering her by when she’s gone, but she also remembers exactly where every piece came from and, if she got it new, exactly how much she paid. She was telling us all the details on a certain glass owl, when, almost involuntarily, I blurted out “Who’s getting the dogwood plates?”

Grandmother Kemp has five sets of dishes, four of which I don’t believe have ever been used. By far, the prettiest of these are the ones with the dogwood flower pattern, so it came as a great shock to find out that no one had claimed them. We’d always assumed a much more important family member would be receiving them, or maybe even Betty Across-the-Street. While Grandmother Kemp was apologizing about only have five of the eight dogwood cups and saucers, my little brother picked out a paperweight shaped like a frog.

The frog came from The Store, which to the rest of my family means anything from Wal-Mart to McDonald’s, but to Grandmother Kemp means Friedman’s Jewelers, where she worked for 40 years as the only female watchmaker in a profession almost entirely dominated by men. One of the benefits of working at Friedman’s was that she got a significant discount on everything they sold. In her final few years before retirement, she could even get items at cost. As a girl, my mother walked around The Store in much the same way that we walk around Grandmother’s house now. The fun at Friendman’s was looking at the real price tag for something and then having Grandmother tell you how much she could get it for.

Grandmother Kemp’s thriftiness extends far beyond The Store, however. She was raised on a farm, and after she reached the city, she struggled for years when her husband left her. She raised three young boys alone, at a time when women very seldom worked at all. They rented out rooms, she sewed all their clothes, and they just barely got by. Since then, she’s always saved her money diligently, and she’s never paid full price for anything in her entire life. Often, she’ll wait until something has been marked down two or three times before making a purchase, and takes much pride in repeating the entire price history of any given item to any family member who will listen.

What this meant to me, as a young girl, was that I had to try on (and pretend to like) piles of the cheapest and most hideous clothing you can imagine. Grandmother Kemp never understood that only the absolute worst is marked down from $68 all the way to $9.99, and those sales girls who assured her that “all the kids are wearing it” were not to be trusted. Trying on all that stuff for her was absolute torture. It was even worse than the time when I was 12 and she told my mother she’d pay for me to go to the “diet doctor” to lose weight (only to decide within a couple years that I actually had anorexia AND anemia).

By the time I was a teenager, my mother had pretty much succeeded in getting Grandmother to understand that I’m “particular” about my clothes. Now I just get a scratchy pink nightgown and three pairs of extremely large underwear every Christmas. That’s still better than the fifty cent slippers my mother has recieved for over twenty years running.

It all evens out though, because even though I’m now on the list for the coveted dogwood plates, my mother is inheriting the coolest thing Grandmother Kemp owns: her “loops,” the little double magnifying glass she attached to her eyeglasses to see all the little gizmos inside those old watches.

Grandmother Kemp didn’t even have to pay for them, and probably would’ve just thrown them away if Mom hadn’t asked.