Grim Ma Millhoan---Excerpt from 'Ohio Story'.

                                           Grim-Ma Millhoan

   Grim-ma Millhoan was a different story. I never tried to imitate her as I would Gramps. She was never Grandma or Grandmother; she had a tenacious and grim bearing to her and was always just Grim-ma.

   Grim-ma Millhoan loved to grow flowers. A flower garden in those days was an unnecessary luxury. To most sensible folks at the time, a flower garden seemed impractical to plant and tend when the land could be used to grow vegetables. Flowers were decorative, pleasant on the eye, but in the end, useless. Every year Grim-ma would plant and a small plot next to the garage, near the front of the house, mostly Snapdragons and Tiger Lillys, and it became no small source of pride to her. Perhaps, she fancied her flowers were her one selfish extravagance. 

  One spring morning Grim-ma started her daily routine with her flowers carefully pruning the starts, and weeding with a hoe, when a sudden movement caught her eye.  Gripping the hoe tightly she took another step and caught sight of the intruder in her garden. It was a huge garter snake with yellow and dark green stripes just beginning to uncoil fast and was on the move.

  In that moment, another person would have recognized the garter snake as a harmless indigenous creature common in Ohio, and let it slither off. Another person might have just screamed and backed away allowing it to pass. But this was Grim-ma. And this was HER garden.

  With a low growl Grim-ma tore after the monster, hoe in hand, and a heated battle began. She swung her hoe with mighty sweeps as if it was a Highland Claymore and mercilessly slashed her way down the rows of the flower garden, but the snake somehow made it to the street and was soon gone. Grim-ma stopped to catch her breath, and she slowly turned around and saw the wreckage of her beautiful garden. In that moment, she realized she had both won and lost the battle. I had watched the skirmish from beginning to end, saw her slowly bow her head for a long moment, and then walk back to the farmhouse.  Grim-ma was not one to take any setback lightly. The next year she had an even larger garden and honed a razor sharp edge on the blade of her hoe.