The Book of Ruth
- April Dawn Shinske
- May 23
- 12 min read
I woke up this morning randomly filled with thoughts of my Irish-American grandmother - my father's mom. She died on Easter Sunday of 1996 - parallelling Jesus in some way would have been a preference, so the day her daily-masser heart chose to give out was no surprise. But the point being, it's been a while - a long while - since she left the Earth. I didn't dream of her last night, like I sometimes do. But in that weird space most of us experience after waking - that period when we're not yet fully alert but no longer asleep either - I couldn't stop thinking of her, and this blog began to write itself.
Fundamentally, my blog has become mainly about honoring those who have in some way been my teachers and sharing what I've learned over the course of a "so far" lifetime. It's fair to say few people have taught me more - good and bad - than Ruth McCarthy Klemm. She taught me the value of hard work, the importance of some stoicism in getting things done, how to cook, how to garden, how to be of service, the joy of being creative, and most of all how to be accepting of someone who loves you in a different way than you may need - but who loves you just the same.
My grandmother left me puzzled and bewildered when I was a younger child. First she made it quite clear to me that she much preferred my cousin, Billy. "I like boys better," she'd say to me - without apology or explanation. As an eight-year-old, that doesn't feel great. I knew from the word go that I was somehow second place in her heart, not because of anything I'd done but because of who she was. Yet, she had an incredible (and admittedly odd) way of conveying intense love and pride to me despite that.
My father - her oldest child - had so much wisdom about her. She adored him, and while she was more than happy to point out any of his very human flaws, she was also the first person to overlook his shortcomings and unabashedly, teasingly love her first born. "Your father's a good-looking man, for someone with such big ears." She'd look him right in the eye when she blurted out such wonderments, her own spirited eyes twinkling at him in a way that said, "I love you, sonny boy." But in a manner that also somehow knocked him down a (probably unhealthy) peg, too. She and her sister, Helen, more than once said "SPS" in front of me: "Self Praise Stinks." They believed when you did things right, you did them quietly, humbly. They would have loathed Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead... But Gutsy Girls Do (my earliest career-awakening read). Yet, my grandmother was one of the gutsiest people I've ever known.
Did I just tangent from sharing Dad's advice here? Yes. Irish meandering storytelling privilege - in this piece, I'll embrace that genetic disposition - though Ruth would have barked, "Get to the point." I came to my father once, crying, and said, "Grandma doesn't love me. She won't hug me." He said, "Your grandmother is what she'd call a 'cold fish.' She doesn't show you she loves you by hugging, she shows you she loves you by doing. Like when she teaches you how to do something. If you want to hug her, you have to do what I do. Just go up to her when she's not busy and take a hug. Just hug her. She'll appreciate it. Trust me, my mother loves you."
He knew her very well. But she was a little different with me. I tried his method once. She looked at me and said, "What do you want? What are you DOING?!" so I quickly gave up on that cuddle aspect of our relationship - my maternal grandmother was a hugger, so everything evened out. Ruth did hug and kiss me here and there, but such affection was far from her main goal.
As I got older, I gleaned more about why she wasn't always demonstrative. She'd been considered an "old maid" - she'd stayed close to home to take care of her ailing parents, got married later in life as a result, and had put away many of her own dreams. She was a wonderful artist - but she didn't have time for such frivolity. She had turned off many of her personal wants and needs, even some of her emotions, to plow through what had to be done when it had to be done. I imagine having 4 kids beginning at age 37 (considered ancient in the 1940s child-bearing era) also would create a diminishment of one's own needs. So, too much affection could open a part of her I believe she aimed to protect. Plus, God forbid she spoil anyone.
Somehow, I learned to understand that my second place, not-so-affectionate spot in her life was a place I could reside in comfortably with zero pressure. She taught me that there can be value in not being number one in a situation. You have room to grow yourself. You can observe from a distance minus the spotlight. You can still be a central part of the show from backstage. Some of what she imbued in me probably made me a very good ghost writer. And, I'm OK with all of that. More than ok, she taught me to grow where planted.
Most of all, second place made me value the time I did have with her all the more. We only lived about 15 minutes apart, so I was with her quite a bit. I have a near photographic memory (sometimes!) and there are flashes embedded of so many moments. The dressing room of Kids R Us where she got on her knees to decide if the value pants my mom was chucking into the room for me to try on were things that could be hemmed.
Riding in the backseat of her car while my dad drove in the summertime. She and I both had legs covered in mosquito bites. I complained. And she started to itch her legs through her nylons. Laughing, she said to me "Don't talk about them, you're making me itch. Say a prayer and forget about them, they'll stop." Ignore the things that irk you, they'll have less power. Lesson learned. Her playing wiffle ball age 80-something with us kids and saying we couldn't "bomb" her to tag her out, but she sure was allowed to steal bases. Life isn't fair!
Moments. So many tiny valuable moments. When she was much older and my grandfather was hospitalized with the first signs of the kidney failure that would put him on dialysis and end his life within about two years, my dad, her and I were the ones who initially went to the emergency room after an urgent call about Poppa's bloodwork. I was petrified. I'd never spent any time in a hospital setting. The sounds, smells, noises. When my dad had me walk with her to the cafeteria to give her a break - not that she needed one really - we had to walk down a long, glass-windowed corridor. I blurted out, "I'm so scared." Not something I'd normally share in her direction, but the words spilled forth. She kept right on walking and said, "Why would you ever be scared? What's the worst thing that can happen here? You could die. And then, you'd be with God. So there is never anything to be afraid of." Sympathetic? Sorta. A mindset that has carried me through many a scary moment? Oh yeah.
She cared for my then blind grandfather on at-home dialysis, thanks in large part to my aunt rearranging her own life to stay with them. But my grandmother stayed involved, she didn't retire from being his wife. Her matter-of-fact nature took hold, and she was a profile in how to love someone when they are sick. What I observed in those years, and quite a few prayers, enabled me to care for my dying in-laws and others in the course of my life during some terrible moments. Pray and keep going, get the necessary job done: Grandma all the way.
More happily, there are glorious days and afternoons I remember. The handful of times I got to spend hours with her. Once, I was sick and my mom had to go to work. By then, I was in high school, my grandfather was gone, and my parents probably figured it would be good for Gram to have company for a day even if that company was her teenage granddaughter laying on a couch half dead between frequent bathroom runs.
Today, most people wouldn't expose an older person to a lousy stomach virus. Back then? My grandmother - well into her 80s - was wholly unafraid. She simply defrosted a massive container of her homemade chicken soup - stored in a repurposed Polly-O Ricotta "Tupperware," and did everything in her power to get me better. Funny that so many of my memories of her were of her kneeling and at work - especially given how many hours she clocked in a lifetime of church. But, I can still see her from my vantage point, prone on that prototypical seventies brown and orange floral couch. She was across the room, at 86 or so kneeling tying up newspapers with unfussy twine. She no longer could just stand right up from that position. But before I could even mutter "do you need a hand?" she'd Macgyvered a method to get off the floor and on with putting out the garbage. She wasn't the sort of person who sought or waited for help - she just got things DONE - no complaints.
When I was much younger, I was dropped off for one whole glorious day while my parents ran errands. My grandmother immediately threw me into the garden to weed in the sun. At first, I was none too thrilled - but I also knew the one thing you were never going to do at her house was sit on your butt all day in front of the TV (though we did love a good Days of our Lives episode viewing). I muttered and grumbled in her big circular rock garden, annoyed that I had to yank all manner of offensive plant from amid her colorful Snapdragons. She had a Dutch door overlooking the yard through which she'd yell gentle orders. "That's enough of that now, come back inside." She showed me a recipe she'd cut out of a magazine "This looks different, doesn't it, kid?" The meatloaf had a ribbon of herbs stuffed inside of it in a perfect curly Q. "What do you think, should we try and make it?" Back outside we went, this time to the vegetable garden, for herbs and tomatoes and all manner of good things. My dad's theory on her bore out: she taught me everything in the course of making that one recipe. Things about when and what to measure and what to eyeball. How to substitute in a recipe for things you might not have on hand. What mattered and what didn't in a kitchen - and maybe, by extension, in life.
She sent me in to set the dining room table. As a typical kid, I started haphazardly throwing the silverware near to where it should be. "What are you DOING?" she asked, horrified. "What will it matter, it's just family coming?" I said. "YOU'LL know how you did it, and so will God," she insisted. "Do it right." She adjusted one place setting to show me exactly how and went back to the kitchen. I straightened out the whole table. My lifelong healthy perfectionism and focus on detail, sparked and affirmed that afternoon.
When it was all through, the house smelled so good. Our meatloaf, her magical mashed potatoes on the side, veggies cooked in the delicious way only she could, we sat down to dinner with my returned parents and she offered a very typical Ruth "compliment", wryly smiling: "April made the meatloaf, so if it's no good, blame her." I remember my eyes welling with tears in that moment. As a kid, I thought she was trashing what I viewed as our perfectly beautiful day together. As an adult, I know she was bragging about me and that special day that she, too, in her own Ruth way, had secretly loved. That simple, homey day remains one of the most favorite days of my life: the memory of being tired and spent, eating scratch meatloaf with my family at Gram's warm table in the end.
We had many other days and many other moments - I realize looking at the length of this, I could write a "Book of Ruth" - she'd forbid me to call it that immediately.
But before I "put an end to it" as she'd say, I'm going to bathe in the wicked deliciousness that was her by sharing a few more moments. We once giggled our way through mishaps while dying Easter eggs for the whole family -- and she couldn't stop talking about it when everyone arrived for the party later. I was never so proud. She took me to the North American Lobster Company on Route 17 in Carlstadt, NJ - a tiny little restaurant on the side of a seafood market. There, she convinced me to try something different: escargot. She taught me to be curious and bold, to think differently. And boy did I love those snails, dripping, in garlic-butter white-wine sauce. And oh boy did I brag to every kid I could find after that "Snails are delicious. Don't be a baby! Try them!"
When she had her stroke toward the end of her life, my parents and I went to visit her in the rehab - my dear aunt, such a caregiver to both of her parents, already there. My grandmother had aphasia and couldn't speak, but I was astonished that when she saw me - second place my whole life - she brightened and madly tried to write something down. She could only make a concentric circle, and immediately became frustrated. But I looked at her and smiled. She was happy to see me, she told me so with those beautiful Irish eyes. As a parent now, I understand. Even in the middle of a storm, when a kid shows up - let alone a grandchild - even in the worst moments, love shows up too. In PT, they'd throw a giant ball at my grandmother. She'd look at them like they were insane and not catch it. She sort of couldn't, but I also believe she sorta didn't want to either. PT wasn't going to help really, she knew and she just wanted to go back home. My aunt made it happen, and my grandmother's way within those years taught me something more: stopping isn't always giving up.
Since her passing when I was a freshman in college, the woman who always made it clear I wasn't her favorite has remained one of mine. And she has given me an interesting gift: potent, rare dreams. Now, science and psychology could give you a long list of reasons why I dream of her - they'd claim none of those are mythical or spiritual, they are more about release. I'm not so sure. Right before I got married, during a period when I was filled with self-doubt at a mere 24, I had odd dreams of her nightly, to the point where I visited her unfussy grave in Franklin Lakes - a cemetery where most adornments aren't allowed (perfect, right?). I told her, "Stop all of this. I have enough going on. If you have something to tell me, tell me tonight. Otherwise leave me alone."
True to form, Ruth came through. That night, I had a dream that took me back to the meatloaf day. Same dining room. Same table. The place where my grandmother gathered us, fed, us, loved us - the spot where she'd break off an aloe plant to fix a burn, yell at you if you hadn't washed your hands before a meal, doze off at the head of the table and wake up with a start laughing. The room where I'd look at her hands and mine in childhood and be thrilled to see a genetic resemblance. The room that was, in many ways, our family center. In my dream, she carried a baby in her arms. She showed me the baby. And I asked, "Grandma, whose baby is that?" She looked at me, smiled, moving away the baby's blanket so I could see her better, and said, "It's your baby. Now go get married. Everything will be fine." I woke up feeling more certain than ever in my life.
I told my aunt, a nun and Gram's daughter, this story - thinking she'd mainly find it weird. Instead she smiled at me and said, "She was blessing you."
And so, Ruth has: she has blessed me not with memories of hugs, but with rich indelible lessons. She always will.
Addendum: In case anyone doubts Ruth's beyond-the-grave prowess, when I tried to snap a screenshot of her photo on my phone this morning, the PRAY app magically opened over top. I think she blessed the blog, too.
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