A Contrast of Grandmothers

A Contrast of Grandmothers

Both my grandmothers were good, strong women. While they didn’t question the  conventional role of women in their era, and in some ways lived up to it splendidly, neither was conventional.

My Indian grandmother, my Mum’s mother, was Florence May Holmes, née Pereira. (Anglo-Indian really, with a strand of Portuguese.) I called her Nana. She was warm, soft, spontaneous, full of laughter and song, with a tender heart for other people’s troubles. She enjoyed a joke and a beer, and had three children by different fathers, only the last of whom she married — Francis Sidney Holmes, my dear Grandpa, my Mum’s stepfather, the only grandfather I knew. 

Nana loved animals, and was always trailed by several dogs. She had cats too, but dogs were her favourites. I remember her generous lap where I felt safe, loved. I remember her singing to me of ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.’ I remember her letting down her long hair at night from its daytime coil, brushing it 100 times. She was the great love of my early life. She died when I was four. 

The other, Australian of English descent, was Alice Robinson, born Selina Alice Noar, always known as Alice – or Grandma. My Dad was her second son, and the second of her seven children by her husband, John Thomas (Jack) Robinson, the only love of her long life. He was an alcoholic; she, not surprisingly, was a fervent member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. 

Grandma disliked dogs — dirty things that should be kept outside. She didn’t care for cats either. And she wasn’t a hugger. I don’t have the warm, tactile memories of her that I do of my Nana. 

She lived interstate, so I saw her much less often than Nana. But she wrote many fond letters to Lovely Lambkin, her special name for me –  the only one of her many grandchildren to receive one. 

She sent me books for presents. (So did Grandpa Holmes.) She was the great reader from whom her children inherited the love of books. In my teens we became friends.

Always primly dressed, she too had long hair in a bun, which she brushed out at night, 100 times.

To be continued............ 


The 369-word prose prompts at Poets and Storytellers United seem to have started something! I found myself writing about my grandparents as if this could be the start of a memoir. Anyway it's only the beginning of what I want to say about them, so I'll see where it takes me.  I'm sharing it with Writers' Pantry #13.