Tessie D

I’m in the office by myself most days. I have a lot of time to think.

Everyone is nice. Mr. Olsen — the man who owns the dairy — is, I’d guess, in his sixties. He is tall with lots of grey hair and a big pot belly. He wears overalls everyday with a plaid, long sleeve shirt underneath. He wears brown boots and tucks his pants legs into them so that he doesn’t track manure or dirt in the office on his pants legs. He keeps his face shaved clean, which I like because then I can see his broad, wide smile. I’ve never heard him yell or say an unkind thing about anyone here. When the dairy hands get behind in the milking because someone has called in sick after spending too much time at the bar the night before, Mr. Olsen doesn’t get mad or throw things. He just climbs in the pin with the cows and starts working them toward the corral.

He sons must’ve been so lucky to have him as their dad.

Mrs. Olsen lives up at the house on the other side of the field. She comes down every day to bring Mr. Olsen his lunch and check in on me, but she doesn’t hover or stay too long. She’s petite and thin and is always wearing these colorful button blouses with matching cropped pants.

My Grandmother Valerie used to dress like that. Mrs. Olsen is younger than my grandmother was but she reminds me so much of Grandmother. They both have, well in Grandmother’s case, had, this steadfast devotion to their husbands.

Grandmother Valerie was Momma’s step mother who died a few years before Grandaddy. She was tiny — couldn’t be more than 5 feet tall and 90 pounds soaking wet — and I thought she was the most statuesque, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She cooked Grandaddy Bud breakfast every morning, made a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup for lunch, and a hot dinner every night. She used to buy Annie and me these “God books” — or that’s what we called them. They were illustrated picture books of the first part of the Bible. She’d get them from the drug store and bring them to us whenever she and Grandaddy would drive down to visit. I read the books every night before bed — Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Moses in the basket, Samson and Delilah, Rebecca. I loved them so much and I wish I knew what happened to those books. (I wonder if Momma’d put them in the attic of the barn and they burned up in the fire?) Grandmother Valerie would crochet these beautiful blankets and doilies. So many that Momma used to have an entire linen closet full of Grandmother’s blankets. I always begged Grandmother to teach me how and she’s say that she’d teach me when I was twelve. One year for Easter when I was nine, Annie and I got crochet needles and yarn in our Easter baskets. Grandmother Valerie taught us a few stitches before she got too sick. She was gone by summer.

I don’t remember much from those months when she died except that her daughter put in Grandmother’s obituary that she was survived by “three grandsons, one granddaughter, and two step-granddaughters.”