Why I love My Grandmother Hastings

Mildred Wyland-Hastings, a woman way
ahead of her time.

Today is my grandmother's birthday. She left this dimension when she was 82, so she'd be well over 110 now, so I want you to know I am not mourning her as much as bringing honor to a woman who discovered very late in life who she was and my, how happy that made her. When my grandfather died, I think Mildred was in her 60s. When my father, her son, moved his family to El Paso, Texas in 1965, we moved in order to be near her. And so for the next couple of decades, I was able to get to know this sensational woman.

Her father, was a country doctor in Iowa. He was someone who literally went to his patient's homes. Milly and my father and aunt lived with her parents during big parts of the Great Depression. Since my father was in the Air Force, we lived for six short months in Bellevue, Nebraska, just miles from the border of Iowa where our roots lie deep in beautiful cornfields and green pastures.

Once reunited with my grandfather, Mildred and Albert retired in El Paso for its incredible weather. My father and mother loved it, too. Milly went on to live on her meager Social Security check, and I didn't realize it as a teenager, but she learned to make due with very little, yet, she had the broadest smile, and it is etched in my mind still today. I'd pick her up in my orange Volkswagen and off we'd go, her listening to my views on how important Women's Liberation was. And that's what I love most about my grandmother. She let me talk. I had so much to say and during the 70s couldn't find many women in my community to listen. But she did. "Absotutely!" she'd say over my latest rant. "Absotutely!"

Inside the grocery store where I'd take her once every few weeks, she'd carefully look over the produce, and select what she could, gather up the meats she needed, and then we'd go to the gardening section and she'd "pinch" a leaf or two, slide them in her pocketbook, take them home and root them into green glory. And she'd have us over for Sunday dinner twice a month, and now I know how much of her budget she spent on us. The meal was extensive and delicious and when we took a nap, my parents in her bedroom, and we kids spread out on her couch or in front of the sliding door of her small apartment, she'd sit and read National Geographic.

She read all the time. Now I understand, living alone, myself. She'd read for hours. Today I have some of her books and I read her notes made in the margins. Near the end of her life, my grandmother embraced Science of Mind. And what I mean by this is she grasped the idea that we create our reality with our thoughts. Louise L. Hay, founder of Hay House could have been best friends with Milly.

My grandmother died from Pancreatic cancer. She loved sweets (so do I). When we cleaned her apartment after her death, I found Twix bars stashed in the corners of her kitchen, and I had to grin. What fun she must have had knoshing on them as she read her books.

She blossomed in the end. She'd wear brightly colored scarves and pins, but it was her smile, her clucking happiness that I remember the most.

Happy Birthday, Mildred. Thank you for listening to me. I am listening to you now.

Te amo.