THE AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE
Lucky, lucky load of hay. Make a wish and turn away. My grandmother taught me that. I can remember wishing for good health and a long life for myself and my family. I wonder what makes hay lucky? Whether grass or alfalfa or rye, it is a common plant–undistinguished except by its far-flown existence. My grandmother lived to be 101. Perhaps there is something to that rhyme.
The scent of my grandmother still lingers in an old quilt, a salvaged hat, and it recreates for me her voice, her radiant face. She is sitting with me at the table drinking coffee and eating toast, liberally spread with homemade wild plum jelly–from our own trees. My husband walks through to look for something in another room. He returns and exits again. “Janet, who is that man?” she queries. “That’s my husband, Gram.” “Oh, that’s right,” she responds knowingly. We are sitting on the porch swing, looking out across the vast expanse of corn before us. “Would you like to live on a farm?” “This is a farm, Gram,” I reply. “Is that right?” At 98 she is slowing down. It is too difficult to remember any more and her mind seems to drift back to other days and other people who for some reason are clearer in her mind’s eye than I. But she always comes to visit when I ask. We go for lunch. She orders enchiladas, her favorite, although she calls them ahn-chiladas. I wonder that she would not know better having been raised in Santa Fe and Raton, New Mexico. She sits with me in the garden as I struggle with the insidious grass that wants to choke out my tender plants. In the 95 degree heat of summer a blessed breeze stirs the leaves and cools my blistered back. “I think I’ll go in now. That’s a chilly breeze,” she shivers. She can still set and clear the table and help with the cooking. And she loves the animals, giving Beau no end of the attention he craves. But she does not always remember that the question she asks is the question she asked 10 minutes ago, no does she remember the answer. Nor does she always know to whom I am married or what the children’s names are, and she sometimes assigns names to them from her own past. And I wonder if there will come a time when she will not remember who I am. I wonder if it is that our minds become so cluttered with what we have collected over time that we simply stop retaining the new and retreat into the old and familiar.
Of course, in time, that dreaded day comes. From her hospital bed she converses with us about things we know nothing of, and calls us names of people I know only from stories. “How are you feeling, Gram? Are you comfortable?” I am trying to put a pillow behind her head to make her more comfortable in the wheelchair in which she is sitting. “I’m dying,” a moment of lucidity, a statement of exasperation, as if I must be told what I do not want to believe. She is 101. I only want her to get well so I can tell her that I have completed my PhD. She could not come to the ceremony because she was too ill and now she does not respond when I tell her. She rambles on, “. . .need to go poppie,” and my mother and I take her to the bathroom against the nurse’s wishes. She is tied to the chair at the waist to prevent her from getting up alone and falling. Removing the restraint, maneuvering to the bathroom, wrestling with clothes and then returning is a slow and tedious process. The nurses do not wish to be bothered. Easier to change a diaper later. But my grandmother is a well-groomed woman. “Grandma, do you know us, do you know me?” She talks to someone we cannot see. Then, suddenly she look me in the eye and I radiance illuminates her dear face. She looks as if the years and wrinkles have been washed away. The warmth of her smile comforts me still. “You always were my best girl.”
I recall that she was named Miss American Beauty Rose, the prettiest girl in school in Raton in 1903. She was the star basketball player on the girls’ basketball team, and a flapper who drank bootleg gin and celebrated independence day putting cherry bombs on the neighbors’ window sills and chasing friends down the street with Roman candles. She tells me how her Uncle Jack took her and her chums for their first ride in a car in 1907. In 1917 she married Matteo Manna, an Italian coronet virtuoso who had immigrated to the U.S. to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For their honeymoon, they sailed to Italy. Matteo spent 21 days in the arms of seasickness and lost 2 pant sizes. Gram has a wonderful trip, ate at the captain’s table and never missed an event. An Italian friend who accompanied them was so ill that he never returned to the United States. She and grandpa did return, but grandpa was never to see his homeland again. My mother reminds me that at the age of 82, gram flew to Europe to tour with my mother and father and my father’s mother.
“The Schombergs built the first house on Colorado Boulevard,” she murmurs, reminding us all again of events now far away. Each time I bring my grandmother to visit, she points out the imposing blond brick mansion which sits across from the Museum of Natural History and shares that historical fact with me. In the next block my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Al lived in a white stucco two-story. I remember how as a child I occasionally stayed there, how the neighbors had a lamb and let me feed it. The museum was so small then, just the granite gray building which is now the core of a huge complex that now contains it.
As long as I have known her, my grandma didn’t drive. When my brother and I stayed with her, we walked–sometimes to Mrs. Sumner’s to by a coconut cake with lemon filling; sometimes to Miller’s Supermarket to do grocery shopping; but always down the parkway, where we could climb up the pine trees until she called us down again.
I remember how grandma always fed the birds. I remember a feeder trough outside the living room window. Sometimes we helped break breadcrumbs. We saw mostly finches and sparrows, but we always watched for canaries. Grandma could whistle as beautifully as any bird.
In grandma’s kitchen we were introduced to such wondrous delicacies as olive and cheese and egg salad sandwiches, kakanah club grilled cheese sandwiches and pound cake with nutmeg sauce. (Mix two cups sugar, one cup water, one tablespoon butter in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Cook over low heat for 5 minutes stirring constantly. Add nutmeg to taste and serve warm over pound cake.) The breakfast nook, bounded on two sides by windows, was our private world where we raced to see who could eat more French toast while grandma’s hands flew at the stove to keep up with us.
At night grandma would lie down between us until we fell asleep. She told us tales of her youth–of the grandfather she dearly loved; of her father who worked for the railroad and brought her cantaloupe; of her first automobile ride with Uncle Jack in a rented car in 1907; or cherry bombs on windowsills, and accidentally dropping a bottle of bootleg wine right in front of a police officer!
Grandma always rested in the afternoon, “but I never sleep,” she declared; never worked outside the home; always loved a highball but never drank alone; always ate deviled crab at Bauer’s Restaurant in Denver–and apple pie with cinnamon ice cream; quit smoking cold turkey the day my grandfather died (she was seventy something at the time); always understood and never criticized; always had the time to listen and to help; filled our mouths with dainties, our ears with song, our minds with wonder, our hearts with joy, and our lives with love.
THE AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE
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Posted: March 26, 2026 by J Flaugher
THE AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE
Lucky, lucky load of hay. Make a wish and turn away. My grandmother taught me that. I can remember wishing for good health and a long life for myself and my family. I wonder what makes hay lucky? Whether grass or alfalfa or rye, it is a common plant–undistinguished except by its far-flown existence. My grandmother lived to be 101. Perhaps there is something to that rhyme.
The scent of my grandmother still lingers in an old quilt, a salvaged hat, and it recreates for me her voice, her radiant face. She is sitting with me at the table drinking coffee and eating toast, liberally spread with homemade wild plum jelly–from our own trees. My husband walks through to look for something in another room. He returns and exits again. “Janet, who is that man?” she queries. “That’s my husband, Gram.” “Oh, that’s right,” she responds knowingly. We are sitting on the porch swing, looking out across the vast expanse of corn before us. “Would you like to live on a farm?” “This is a farm, Gram,” I reply. “Is that right?” At 98 she is slowing down. It is too difficult to remember any more and her mind seems to drift back to other days and other people who for some reason are clearer in her mind’s eye than I. But she always comes to visit when I ask. We go for lunch. She orders enchiladas, her favorite, although she calls them ahn-chiladas. I wonder that she would not know better having been raised in Santa Fe and Raton, New Mexico. She sits with me in the garden as I struggle with the insidious grass that wants to choke out my tender plants. In the 95 degree heat of summer a blessed breeze stirs the leaves and cools my blistered back. “I think I’ll go in now. That’s a chilly breeze,” she shivers. She can still set and clear the table and help with the cooking. And she loves the animals, giving Beau no end of the attention he craves. But she does not always remember that the question she asks is the question she asked 10 minutes ago, no does she remember the answer. Nor does she always know to whom I am married or what the children’s names are, and she sometimes assigns names to them from her own past. And I wonder if there will come a time when she will not remember who I am. I wonder if it is that our minds become so cluttered with what we have collected over time that we simply stop retaining the new and retreat into the old and familiar.
Of course, in time, that dreaded day comes. From her hospital bed she converses with us about things we know nothing of, and calls us names of people I know only from stories. “How are you feeling, Gram? Are you comfortable?” I am trying to put a pillow behind her head to make her more comfortable in the wheelchair in which she is sitting. “I’m dying,” a moment of lucidity, a statement of exasperation, as if I must be told what I do not want to believe. She is 101. I only want her to get well so I can tell her that I have completed my PhD. She could not come to the ceremony because she was too ill and now she does not respond when I tell her. She rambles on, “. . .need to go poppie,” and my mother and I take her to the bathroom against the nurse’s wishes. She is tied to the chair at the waist to prevent her from getting up alone and falling. Removing the restraint, maneuvering to the bathroom, wrestling with clothes and then returning is a slow and tedious process. The nurses do not wish to be bothered. Easier to change a diaper later. But my grandmother is a well-groomed woman. “Grandma, do you know us, do you know me?” She talks to someone we cannot see. Then, suddenly she look me in the eye and I radiance illuminates her dear face. She looks as if the years and wrinkles have been washed away. The warmth of her smile comforts me still. “You always were my best girl.”
I recall that she was named Miss American Beauty Rose, the prettiest girl in school in Raton in 1903. She was the star basketball player on the girls’ basketball team, and a flapper who drank bootleg gin and celebrated independence day putting cherry bombs on the neighbors’ window sills and chasing friends down the street with Roman candles. She tells me how her Uncle Jack took her and her chums for their first ride in a car in 1907. In 1917 she married Matteo Manna, an Italian coronet virtuoso who had immigrated to the U.S. to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For their honeymoon, they sailed to Italy. Matteo spent 21 days in the arms of seasickness and lost 2 pant sizes. Gram has a wonderful trip, ate at the captain’s table and never missed an event. An Italian friend who accompanied them was so ill that he never returned to the United States. She and grandpa did return, but grandpa was never to see his homeland again. My mother reminds me that at the age of 82, gram flew to Europe to tour with my mother and father and my father’s mother.
“The Schombergs built the first house on Colorado Boulevard,” she murmurs, reminding us all again of events now far away. Each time I bring my grandmother to visit, she points out the imposing blond brick mansion which sits across from the Museum of Natural History and shares that historical fact with me. In the next block my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Al lived in a white stucco two-story. I remember how as a child I occasionally stayed there, how the neighbors had a lamb and let me feed it. The museum was so small then, just the granite gray building which is now the core of a huge complex that now contains it.
As long as I have known her, my grandma didn’t drive. When my brother and I stayed with her, we walked–sometimes to Mrs. Sumner’s to by a coconut cake with lemon filling; sometimes to Miller’s Supermarket to do grocery shopping; but always down the parkway, where we could climb up the pine trees until she called us down again.
I remember how grandma always fed the birds. I remember a feeder trough outside the living room window. Sometimes we helped break breadcrumbs. We saw mostly finches and sparrows, but we always watched for canaries. Grandma could whistle as beautifully as any bird.
In grandma’s kitchen we were introduced to such wondrous delicacies as olive and cheese and egg salad sandwiches, kakanah club grilled cheese sandwiches and pound cake with nutmeg sauce. (Mix two cups sugar, one cup water, one tablespoon butter in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Cook over low heat for 5 minutes stirring constantly. Add nutmeg to taste and serve warm over pound cake.) The breakfast nook, bounded on two sides by windows, was our private world where we raced to see who could eat more French toast while grandma’s hands flew at the stove to keep up with us.
At night grandma would lie down between us until we fell asleep. She told us tales of her youth–of the grandfather she dearly loved; of her father who worked for the railroad and brought her cantaloupe; of her first automobile ride with Uncle Jack in a rented car in 1907; or cherry bombs on windowsills, and accidentally dropping a bottle of bootleg wine right in front of a police officer!
Grandma always rested in the afternoon, “but I never sleep,” she declared; never worked outside the home; always loved a highball but never drank alone; always ate deviled crab at Bauer’s Restaurant in Denver–and apple pie with cinnamon ice cream; quit smoking cold turkey the day my grandfather died (she was seventy something at the time); always understood and never criticized; always had the time to listen and to help; filled our mouths with dainties, our ears with song, our minds with wonder, our hearts with joy, and our lives with love.
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