She never called it Earth Day or said she was saving the Earth. She was just a product of growing up during the Great Depression.
My Grandma was incredible. Being lucky enough to have her for 37 years of my life I learned a lot of lessons. Even at 102 when she wasn’t quite sure who I was anymore she was teaching me… teaching me to be nice to everyone… one day I might forget who people are and I want to be sure I am nice to the people that love me most.
As most grandkids do I LOVED spending time with my grandparents when I was a kid. Most often when we were with them we were just piddling around the house. Just shadowing them as they went about their day. And knowing the kid I was I am sure I was talking their ears off. They never referred to me by my nickname that most everyone called me “motor mouth” or “Jabber Jaws” but I can assure you it wasn’t because I didn’t talk their ears off.
And I know without a doubt I asked loads of questions.
Grandma did some things differently. She hung her laundry to dry on the line when her dryer in the house worked perfectly fine. I wondered why she added the extra work load to her day when she didn’t have to… but she just did it that way because she could. Maybe she always knew we loved to run between the clothes when they were flapping in the wind or maybe she just didn’t see a point in using the electricity.
She would reuse old cloth scraps on random things. When I knew she could go buy more… I had been with her when she bought more. And yet she might reuse that old shirt in her next quilt.
She was a lover of all things flowers! She seemed to always be taking a part of this plant and starting a new one in this old butter dish that she had or an old pan. Of course these plants didn’t make it to her prized front porch that was always ready for it’s Better Homes & Gardens photo shoot. She would make it a beautiful art of reusing this old thing to make this new thing better.
I remember going to her house once and she had pans and pans of apples in her car. I couldn’t quite understand why someone would put apples in their car. But she told me, she was drying them so that she could freeze them for apple pies in the winter. (She was well aware that the stores still sold apples in the winter.)
My Grandma didn’t just buy new scissors when the old ones were dull as I do today. She would sharpen them. Old things weren’t tossed just because they were old. Broken things were fixed as many times as they could be. And when they couldn’t be fixed anymore there was every attempt to give them new life as something else. (also of note…. at age 90 I caught my Grandma using scissors to cut some of her grass near her flower bed because her boys had thought she was too old to have a weed eater anymore and there was some stray grass that needed cut.)
My Grandma was never a hoarder… her house was spic and span. Not one speck of dust could be found on her furniture… she would give everything in her house a swish with the feather duster daily. But she was so careful to not throw away things she could use again. She didn’t just go and buy the newest thing because there was a better option. I remember her using her manual can opener instead of the electric one because she couldn’t seem to let go of her “old-fashioned” way since it still worked just fine.
She had so many flowers and plants in her yard you just knew the air had to be cleaner there.
She may not have ever given Earth day a second thought because her entire life was about reducing her waste and reusing everything she could.
Grandma was absolute “Goals” in many areas of life… and I gotta tell you… I feel like the Earth was smiling at the way she lived her life.
So often I try and summon my inner Reenie and figure out how to reuse things in my house. And I have a long way to go if I am going to keep up with the amazing legacy she left.
So, on Earth Day I am giving lots of thought into changes I need to make every day… not just today.
