About my Grandmother, Mary Hannah Green Olson By Janice Rose Olson Flanagan 9/17/2016 For as long as I can remember, Grandma and Grandpa Olson lived in a small apartment near downtown Idaho Falls. I only remember being with Grandma Olson a few times out of that apartment. As she aged, her diabetes took its toll, and she became housebound. I do remember one shopping trip that ended in a pineapple milkshake at the counter at Woolworths and a couple of visits to our house on special occasions. By the time that Grandma died, just before Easter when I was twelve or thirteen, my memories of her were clustered up a steep flight of stairs in a layout that included a small kitchen with a stovepipe and small refrigerator that held her insulin and syringes. I knew that Grandpa administered her life-saving shots daily. My favorite place in the kitchen was the breadbox, for therein was a stash of Pecan Sandies and maybe some root-beer fizzies. I remember the floor as metal, but in places covered with vinyl. The bathroom was just big enough for the old claw-foot tub, and the bedroom held a closet full of Grandma’s old treasures—gifts given through the years but saved for something special and still in their original wrappings at her death. Old-fashioned pictures on the wall were of a beautiful young woman who (I was shocked to find out) had become this dear grandmother, so old and ill upon her bed. I do not think I had ever seen inside the bedroom until we visited in the last weeks of her life, when she could no longer sit in her beloved living-room chair. The “living room” truly was where Grandma and Grandpa lived. Across the hall was a small storage for coal delivery, and we grandchildren were often charged with filling the bucket and bringing heat to the pot-bellied stove. I remember eating dinner at Grandma’s only once. She served tomato aspic, and I was happy never to relive THAT experience! A massive upright piano dominated one wall. I never heard Grandma play, but she loved to hear us children play, even those very beginning pieces. It was on that piano that I first heard my dad play and learned that he was able to play “by ear.” Grandma requested that I play “Oh, My Father” at her funeral. If I did it, I think I cried through it. I am not sure I was able to honor her request. The only music I heard Grandma play was on her phonograph—old Hawaiian music, which she loved. She also loved her TV, especially Lawrence Welk and Ed Sullivan. On Sunday afternoons when we visited, she might pull out her table-top pinball game or old photograph albums. I loved the old photos, except for one sad picture of Grandma’s last baby, lying in a casket. She had been stillborn. Grandma Olson taught me to embroider. She was a master with a needle and thread! She patiently spent many days with me at her side, teaching me the stiches as I made pillow cases and dish towels. I remember cousins sitting in, but I am not sure they responded to needle work the same way I did. I still love to embroider and never do needle projects without thinking of my Grandmother Olson. I remember a “discussion” on the spelling of our Olson name. Even within the immediate family, some brothers spelled the name with an “e.” I never was sure if the “e” was the one retained from the Swedish Oleson or Olesen. While Grandpa Olson was always away at work or sitting by the fire behind his newspaper (that’s my childhood memory, anyway), Grandma was always at home. She and Grandpa had an odd relationship, I thought. Grandpa served in the church for many years while Grandma stayed in that upstairs apartment. I know Grandma had some issues with some church doctrines--like polygamy. Sometimes when I look in the mirror with my hair severely pulled back I see Grandma Olson staring back. I know she loved me, though her hair was not the only part of her that was severe. I know she loved my mother and relied on her care more than her own children sometimes. She had “knick-knacks” around her house, and I still have one of her little “knick-knack” tables in the corner of my family room. My knick-knacks are memories of sewing, photographs, music, puzzles, cookies, coal buckets, newspapers, and a very sad heart that Sunday we got there just as they were carrying her body down the apartment stairs. I know very little about Mary Hannah Green except what I experienced at her knee, and by then she was a grandma with swollen legs and feet and graying hair pulled into a net. She had lived a whole life as a child, a teen, and a bride. She had birthed seven children and buried one. I am sad that I do not know that young girl because I am sure all those years before me made her who she was to me.