13th January

Woke up very early to skype, then off to the gym, only to realise once I was there, that I still had my woolly warm boots on, and the gym  personnel frown on running barefoot on the treadmill, so I just did all my weights etc, looking like a twit in my boots, and then came home feeling rather disgruntled and ran  2.8 km through the cold morning air, until it became coolly welcome on my hot cheeks and arms. 

It is the birthday of my little granny, my mother's mother, the bird-boned grandmother who struggled to walk, who my father would pick up gently like a baby and carry up the stairs when it was time for her to go to bed.  Granny Gracie.  She would have been 116 today.  She lived until she was 81 and died just a few months before her fifth great-grandchild was born, my Emma.  While I was pregnant I really longed for her to hold on so that she would be able to to meet my baby, but her later adult life had been immersed in pain and so I was glad that her suffering was over. 

My grandmother is something both natural and man-made, so I will only talk of her tonight.

She was born in Brampton in Cumberland, which was the place where Bonny Prince Charlie once had his headquarters, right in the Northwest of England.

She always believed that her name was Dorothea Grace, but late in life she received her birth certificate and it stated that she was Nina Grace, which came as a great shock to her, as no one had ever called her Nina! She was known as Gracie her whole life, and my littlest granddaughter bears her name next to her first name.

Gracie and her mother, Nora.

She was an interesting girl, climbing trees, playing the violin, attending Art School, and when the war came along, becoming one of the first members of the Women's Royal Air Force, working at Suttons Farm airfield, where she would sneak in her little brother Ronald who was obsessed with the planes.  He proudly kept a photograph of himself next to a Handley Page bomber, the photographic opportunity which Gracie had organised, for the rest of his life. 

Grace Hewitson at Suttons Farm Airfield

But all that changed after she met my grandfather, Gerald Webster, a South African pilot who had fought in Egypt during the war. 

Gerald and Gracie

They were married and she moved to South Africa with him, which was very brave, but life there was very different and not what she had expected, and two girls arrived in quick succession, my mother Joan and her little sister Nora, and Gracie was somewhat overwhelmed, returning again and again to England and her family, and then traipsing back to South Africa a few months later.  She was a sickly adult, and from her fifties suffered from terrible osteoporosis which left her unable to walk after several falls and breakages. 

Gracie looking apprehensive, her future laid out before her, unknown.

She was very dear to me, and once when I leaped out of the car to help her out of the passenger seat, I inadvertently slammed my door on her hand, where she had put it to hold on while she slowly tried to swing her feet out so that she could balance herself to be able to stand up with the aid of her walking stick and me.  I was horrified and opened the door again as fast as I could, but all her fingers were squashed on that little hand, and such pain in her face.  She tried to cover it up for my sake but I could see how much agony I had caused and felt awful, still feel awful, watched the hand turn black and blue over days, the fingers discoloured and useless.

She loved reading and listening to boxing matches on the radio, (of all things!) and giggling, and music of all kinds.  My mother would visit her at least 5 times a week when she was bedridden in a nursing home and I would often accompany her, all the years I was in High School.   She was generally pretty cheerful even though she was often in pain, and never "lost her marbles".  She adored my dad, that big strong man of the huge hands.  And he loved her too, she kind of took the place of his mother whom he had left in England when he came to live in South Africa just as Gracie had left her own family in England years before. 

When Gracie was dying, she asked for Jack, my dad, and when he went to her bedside she gave him a beatific smile, saying, "Come to my arms, you bundle of charms," which was the funny thing he would say to her when he used to pick her up, years before when she lived with us, and carry her to her room, because she couldn't manage the stairs.  It was part of the lyrics from a 1940's song they both knew.   Those were her last words before she died.

One of Gracie's nudes from her Art School days, part of the portfolio she left me when she died.

She is part of my line, the oldest from my bloodline whom I remember well, and now I am a grandmother myself, and all these lines draw the family tree, branches growing, names appearing and re-appearing, traits passed down, the colour of the eyes, the sweep of hair, the way a foot plants itself on the ground to stand the body upright.