Grandma Gearey

When I was young my grandma moved "out west" with my uncle, aunt and their 4 children. I use the expression "out west" as everyone did back then. I had no idea where this place was, but it sounded romantic and dramatic. I imagined Little House on The Prairie and the old Westerns I had seen on television.


They actually moved to Calgary, I learned when I was older, but as a 10 year old, all I knew was "out west" and so, after they moved away, when grandma wrote to ask me what I might like for my birthday, I asked for a tumbleweed. I was secretly envious of my cousins, who had the opportunity to go "out west" and live with cowboys, and I thought a tumbleweed might bring me a sense of that adventure.


The first package that arrived from grandma came with a letter apologizing for not sending me a tumbleweed, as she had not come across one yet. I was shocked and saddened to learn that grandma was living in a normal looking city, not a town with wooden homes and boardwalks and a mercantile like the Olsen's.


Grandma sent me lots of packages over the years. Sweaters she knit, despite her arthritic fingers, lovely ceramic horses and unique stuffed animals (a few of which my daughters now have as I could not part with them). Grandma always sent me a silver dollar from the Stampede every year without fail. I never did get that tumbleweed but each package from "out west" came with a small gift and a letter and a whole lotta love.