Just Gram

She was always just Gram, white-

haired, Wing-stout and sturdy

shoes on her feet, apron-clad

and freshly floured from molasses

cookies baked, soft and warm,

dusted, filling, then, an old cookie

jar on the kitchen’s side-board,

easily opened and pawed

by eager grandchildren, thirty

hands and thirty cookies,

and one for herself, her own brood

of six, paired and mated,

parents now themselves, families gathering

for a Sunday holiday of cousins, aunts, and uncles

here at the farm where she lived;

but an old black-and-white photo, recently found,

a photo framed in a cardboard folder tucked

away with forgotten mementos, faded pictures

of unknown faces looking out from another time,

an old black-and-white photo portrays a young woman

with her beau, her husband, my grandfather,

a lucky man for this woman at his side

those fifty-eight years, ‘till death did they part,

this dark haired girl, beautiful, in this picture found,

looking so much younger, so different, at seventeen

than any memory of mine from holidays spent at the farm,

two hands pawing the old cookie jar,

easily opened, filled with molasses cookies,

freshly baked and dusted, apron-clad, 

soft and warm, loved, just Gram.

                          

Doris Lucy Hardy Wing (Jan 20, 1900 - 16 Apr 1987)