My granny: A force of nature, sha

Florence Gertrude Gauthreaux Hebert

Exactly 101 years ago this month, Florence Gertrude Gauthreaux came into the world. I imagine she immediately let out a gusty yell, protested the choice of midwife and asked for something to read. But I'm just guessing.

Some of Granny's children

Florence - she also answered to Gertrude - was my grandmother. I called her Granny. The neighborhood kids called her Mrs. Hebert. My cousin used to call her Mrs. Hebert as well because that's what the neighborhood kids called her. You can't argue with second-grade logic.

My grandmother, who died in 2008 at age 95, was a pistol. She lost her mother at a young age. She and her sisters were divvied up, and Granny landed into a Dickensian/Cinderella childhood with her godparents. She wasn't bitter about her lot in life. She was thankful. She got regular meals and an education because her mother died of appendicitis after having four children in four years. The regular meals because her godfather was a better provider than her sickly father was (He died young). The education because her godparents lived next door to the parish truant officer. Life just tends to work out.

Granny as I remember her

Granny got a few years of education in a one room schoolhouse and used it to her advantage. By that, I don't mean that she applied herself, put herself through law school and became president of the United States. What I mean is that she read. Voraciously. She read the classics. She read romance novels. She read children's stories. She read newspapers. She read tabloids. She derived a tremendous amount of pleasure from reading. Her children and grandchildren also love to read.

Granny with Mom, Uncle Raymond, Aunt Marilyn, Uncle Albert and Nanny

I would imagine that reading was a necessary escape for my grandmother. She spent the first few years of her marriage living with her in-laws. When she and my grandfather got their own place, it was a 3-room shack without running water. They raised six kids there. I think they slept in shifts. Before she died, Granny told a lot of stories. One involved being a young mother with a young child (my Uncle Albert). My grandfather did odd jobs to put food on the table. He fished, picked moss and hunted. When work was scarce, they didn't eat. One of those starvation times came when Uncle Albert was a baby. My grandmother didn't remember her own empty stomach but her thankfulness that Uncle Albert still was breast feeding so he didn't go hungry.

Granny had four children: Albert, Herbert, Olive and Raymond, and then she took a break. A long break. She was in her 40s when my Aunt Marilyn and my mom were born. She always said she had my mom to keep Aunt Marilyn company. It's a good thing she did. One day, my grandmother snuck out of the house to gossip with a neighbor. My grandfather decided to sneak across the bayou to the store. How they managed to sneak past each other in a 3-room shack is a mystery for the ages.

My mother during the bayou years

My Aunt Marilyn was 4 and my mom was 2 at the time. They wanted to swim in the bayou. Being good girls, they knew the rules. They weren't supposed to go swimming without supervision because my Granny knew someone whose kids drowned (supposedly the kids were in a boat with their father. The kids ended up in the water. The father couldn't decide which one to save so both boys drowned. Sophie's Choice on the Bayou). My aunt and my mom decided one would swim while the other watched from shore; then they'd switch places.

My grandfather was rowing home when he spotted two small children playing by themselves in the bayou. "What idiot let his two small children play unsupervised?" he muttered. Then he got closer to the tiny figures. "Oh, I guess I'm the idiot," he said. My husband loves that story.

Granny in her late 50s/early 60s

Granny became a widow when my mom was 17. She mourned my grandfather and never remarried. She left the 3-room shack for a home with a screened-in porch in Gibson, where she had the misfortune to live across the street from a man who liked to wander out to his driveway every morning in his boxers to get the newspaper. Actually, it was his misfortune. One morning, the man stumbled out his front door in an early-morning, bleary-eyed haze. Granny popped open the front door of her porch and hollered: "I know what you're doing. You're trying to turn me on by coming outside in your drawers. Well it's not working." The man died of mortification right on the spot. No, I'm just kidding. He settled for canceling his newspaper subscription and moving to another country.

Granny never drove. The fact that she didn't have a car puzzled me as a young child. One day, I asked where her husband was. She said he was at work (he was dead). This satisfied me because, naturally, the car was with him at work. If Granny couldn't find a ride, she took the bus. She climbed onto the bus to go to New Orleans when the pope visited. She climbed onto the bus to visit us when we moved to Bossier City. The bus didn't stop in Gibson except when Granny was onboard. Somehow, she convinced Greyhound to not only swing by and pick her up but to also drop her off on the return trip.

Aunt Peggy and Granny

Getting in touch with Granny was tough despite the clunky, dial phone that rested on her kitchen counter for decades. She insisted on an unlisted phone number. I didn't know this until I went to her funeral. A sweet lady came up to me and explained that Granny called her from time to time, but she couldn't call her. Granny wouldn't give out the phone number. The sweet lady was Granny's cousin. Even family didn't always rate.

Please don't misunderstand me. Granny was a pistol, but she could be very kind. She was an excellent seamstress (a skill my Aunt Marilyn and my cousin Helen inherited), and she shared her talent. Every newborn in Gibson got a baby quilt from Granny. She adored her grandchildren. The back of her couch was lined with high school graduation photos. We grew up longing for our own photos to join the collection. Subtly, Granny instilled in us the desire to graduate from high school - and most of us did. Granny always made me feel special. She used to pull me aside and confide that I was her favorite among the 16 grandchildren. Then she'd give me a small gift and make me promise not to tell the other grandchildren because Granny was on a fixed income and couldn't afford to buy something for everyone. Years later, at Granny's funeral, my cousin tearfully related that the death was very hard on her because - and she shouldn't be telling me this - Granny always told her that she was the favorite and gave her a stuffed toy at Easter.

Granny gave me this teddy bear one year

Eventually, after she turned 90, it became clear that Granny couldn't continue to live at home alone. There was the problem with the bills. She decided she had paid enough to the electric/telephone/water companies during her lifetime, and she wasn't paying anymore. She had a point. There was the problem with her memory. She started accusing people of stealing absolutely absurd things like butter, and there was no reasoning with her. "Granny, why would so-and-so steal your butter?" "Well, to eat with bread, I guess." Then there was the problem with the house itself. It was in bad shape, and she didn't want to let in anyone to fix it.

5 generations. Granny loved babies. This is my Nanny's family.

Finally, my mother and Aunt Marilyn showed up one day and invited her to lunch. Granny loved lunch, especially when it involved a buffet at a Chinese restaurant. They took her to lunch ... at the nursing home. She cried. I saw those tears running down her cheeks and started sniffling. My mother shot me a look and told me not to start. The nursing home was a good thing. Granny made friends, got her nails painted, played Bingo, attended Mass and did crafts.

Granny at my wedding. She was in her 90s.

Granny lived a long life. Every year, she phoned the doctor's office and went in for a physical. She was plump, as grandmothers should be (although she always insisted she was a size 8). But she kept active. She'd pair sneakers with knee-highs and a house dress and walk every day. Around and around the block. She was fiercely independent.

I was at work when my cousin Kim called about Granny's stroke. We thought this was it. But it wasn't. I drove to Thibodaux every weekend for weeks. My mother drove from Shreveport every weekend. We wanted her to die with all of us at her side. So, naturally, she slipped away in the middle of the night while we were asleep. Even in the end, Granny did it her way.