I thought my grandmother (my mother’s mother) was the wisest person on earth. She seemed to know everything: the names of the trees, the herbs to use for poultices or making teas that could cure fever and sore throat and nausea and cramps, and the names of the heavenly constellations. She knew the best way to catch a catfish or set the broken leg of a goose. She could make a designer dress with lining, lace, and covered buttons, but she could also saw sheets of dry walling into manageable pieces, nail them to the studs, strip the seams, plaster the unfinished wall, and then paint it when the plaster was dry.
She taught me to never tell a lie, believe a braggart, trust a man who would kick his dog, or to argue with a fool. Because of her and her daughter (my mother), I learned a that a job is never finished until it is done, that garden tools should not be put away until they are hosed off and oiled, and that you weren’t done fishing until the worms were stripped from the hook and the line was rolled tightly and secured. She taught me to notice weeds and tears and silence. She showed me how to pay attention to the color of the clouds, the way leaves turn silver-side-up before a storm, and the sound of the wind when it gets still before a tornado.
She was suspicious of people who always had to affix blame or who needed to take credit. She paid her tithe, mowed her own lawn, and took the tulip and iris bulbs with her when she moved. She had her own definition of “clean”, and it was way beyond not being able to see dirt.
Her faith seemed to be tied to her faithfulness; she seldom asked God for special favors until she’d done what she knew to do. She believed a person best showed love by doing the right thing, putting oneself out for someone else, and not being indulgent to make up for the guilt of not doing what you should have done in the first place.
I loved her stories because they were real, not made up. My favorites were the stories about how she sewed the muslin cover to slip over the bones of a wagon that she and Johnny then hooked up to a team of horses to go from Missouri to Wyoming to lay claim to a homestead. Along the way, she told me, they would stop at night and join other covered wagons to build a fire, cook their supper, and share reports about the safety and dangers of the trail over which they had just come.
When Margaret Effie and Johnny got to Wyoming, they built a sod house to protect the family from the elements and began the backbreaking job of coaxing a farm out of the thick thatch of the prairie. Maybe this life-experience and the many more about which she told me, shaped the grandmother I knew. She was not a warm, fuzzy person. I don’t remember her hugging me a lot or very often telling me she loved me. I was in awe of her. But the skills and personal disciplines she modeled every day of her life helped to shape the way I come at life to this day. For her, God was never the “great sugar-daddy in the sky’’ or the genie in the jug. He was the One with whom she was yoked in the great work of life, tilling fields, sowing seeds, expecting—then being good stewards of—the harvest. He was the one who helped her find her needle, the neighbor who helped her locate the “pearl of great price,” or the friend who searched with her all day, if need be, to find the lost coin.
Because of her I know that God is my co-worker, my wise advisor, my strength when the task is beyond me, and the healer of broken bones, broken tools, and broken hearts. Because of her, Margaret Effie Boster, I know that whatever I can bring to the task is enough, because God my co-worker, is more than enough.
