“A stainless steel colander? Don’t you think that’s asking too much?

So said Grandma Andrews. She had a way of letting me know how she felt.

Our conversation revolved around the requests in my bridal registry shortly after my engagement. For starters, JL Hudson was the only store that offered a registry for soon-to-be couples. Secondly, it was a high end department store. They didn’t sell junk.                                        © jb katke

My husbands’ grandmother claimed I didn’t ask enough on my registry. Some grandmas you just can’t please.

This time every year I think of my grandma. Her birthday was on Valentine’s Day. I think of her whenever I use my colander too.

Grandma Andrews was a practical lady. She lived through the Depression and knew how to make do. She had a plastic colander from the early days of plastic. Hers got a little too close to the heat from the stove and bore a melted souvenir from the experience. But it still worked.

Her home was always meticulous. She even washed her walls. I recall she had a coal furnace when I was very little, and over the long Michigan winters it would leave a residue on the walls. Hence, spring cleaning.

After I was married she asked me, “Do you get on your hands and knees when washing the floor?”

“No Grandma I don’t.”

I considered myself more modern than that. There are mops that make that unnecessary. But I learned getting down on hands and knees does a better job. Likewise when I clean the woodwork. Grandma would be proud. However I do wait to make the effort worthwhile.

I wish I had gotten to know grandma better, I think I could have learned much from her. She wasn’t the talkative sort and I never questioned her past. Too bad for me. You can understand why people are the way they are if you have a sense of what they experienced.

I do know she loved baseball. And she had what I call a British sense of humor. During the Christmas season a popular song, Jingle Bells, came out sung by a clucking chicken. Grandma said it was a fowl song. Her favorite was The Little Drummer Boy.

All this is a distant memory now, my colander is going on fifty years old.  Grandma would probably flip if she knew my kitchen now sports a second smaller colander. Yep, it’s stainless steel too.