My paternal grandmother passed away yesterday. She was nearly 90-years-old and had lived a full and scandalous life. She was the beauty queen of her day and a paragon of Southern Belle fashion, but cursed like a sailor when provoked and had no use for the usual social conventions. She gave birth as a single mother in a time when women were not supposed to do so, and so she arranged something rather unheard of for the time -- an "open adoption" where my father lived with his aunt, while his mother and later stepfather openly visited him and ensured he was financially provided for. When I became a single mother myself with my first child and chose to keep him and raise him on my own, she was very supportive and told me
"I'm glad you have the choice to do what you want." When my grandfather (my dad's stepfather) questioned her openly showing off pictures of her first great-grandchild, given the scandalous circumstances behind his birth (apparently Grandpa had forgotten at that point that he had himself once married a woman of ill repute) it is reported to me that she kindly told him to "fuck off". I think that's one reason he loved her so much and stayed married to her for 60 years -- she never put up with his crap.
I recall her complaining more than once about the useless frivolty of funerals, sending flowers, etc, and when my grandfather passed on a few years ago she just said
"Well, there's no use in crying. He was old and he's in a better place now!" She thought the living should focus on the living. And so I'm not really upset or in mourning, but I will always remember her fondly and miss having her in this world. And yes, this would be the grandmother whose
bodice ripper collection lead me down the road to ruin and is to be credited/blamed for my own brand of steamy erotic romance. When I was ten, my mother caught me peeking at one of my grandmother's numerous romances stacked throughout the house and flipped out. Then, I overheard my mother comment to someone that her mother-in-law read "filth", and so naturally I was compelled to keep sneaking peeks. When my grandmother saw that I was a bored bookworm like her, and that I was indeed eager to read anything I could get my hands on, she went to a friend whose daughter had just left home and procured her entire Nancy Drew collection for me to read whenever I came to visit. Nancy Drew was all well and good, but I still kept sneaking peeks at any of those torrid romances when opportunity allowed. (Like the ones Grandma kept in the bathroom...I wonder sometimes if she planted them there for me on purpose...) Mind you, she read the torrid ones published throughout the 70's and very early 80's, the ones that have since been deemed very politically incorrect. Love them or hate them, the roots of modern romance lie in the likes of Rosemary Rogers'
Sweet Savage Love, and I personally am happy to see a new wave of authors -- many who also credit/blame their grandmothers' romance collections -- who are bringing that brand of romance back.
Though I did let my grandmother know my own version of torrid romance was perhaps a little too hardcore by even her standards, she was very proud I had been published and joked to others that her granddaughter wrote "trashy books". Yesterday, the first thing my daughter asked after I told her that my grandmother had passed on was
"Do you think we can have any of her old bodice rippers?" And so the legacy continues. RIP, Grandma. I've always been told I look like you and act like you, and well your great-granddaughter is much the same only even more independent, confident, and determined not to put up with any bullshit. And...it's your fault I write smut, and I will always thank you and love you for it. :)
