Danish Butter Cookies, Cigarettes, And Resentment

As a kid I never saw my paternal grandparents as much as my maternal grandparents. My mom’s mom I saw the most because my mom was really close to her mom. We’d spend many summer days at my grandma’s house on the lake. We’d fish, take the pontoon out, go get lunch at the Streamliner or the Moose Lodge, and pretty much just hang out. Well my mom and grandma would do what they do while, if I wasn’t fishing or playing in the dirty water, would be inside watching cable. Cable was a luxury we didn’t have at home so I’d bone up on my MTV, Cinemax, and Cartoon Network.

We saw my mom’s dad less, but still more than my grandma and grandpa Hubner.

Grandma and Grandpa Hubner were cat people. They’d had cats since my dad was a teen, and just because their youngest grandson had an extreme allergy to felines didn’t mean they’d get rid of their precious Siamese Cookie. So our visits were limited to the occasional Sunday afternoon drop in, or the less occasional meet up at Ox Box Park in Goshen for a bucket of KFC and Midwest adventuring. The time I could always count on to see them was at Thanksgiving.

Unlike my mom’s side of the family, the Hubners were a small crew. Besides my grandparents and our family(my parents, older brother, and I), it was just my dad’s older brother Chuck, his wife Effie and their son Christopher George. Since my uncle lived in Saudi Arabia working for Litton most of the 80s while his wife and son lived in Athens, Greece, the holidays were just grandma and grandpa Hubner and us. Despite them choosing their cat over me, I still enjoyed seeing them.

I was 12 when my Grandpa Hubner died, so my memories of him are blurry at best. He was quiet, always smiled, and I never saw him in anything less than a suit and tie. Maybe the suit without the tie when he was kicking back. He was so laid back that he’d sit on the couch in the living room and just let our miniature schnauzer chew the bottom hem of his pant leg to shreds. He’d just sit there and laugh while my grandma said “Don’t let that dog chew on your pants Hub!”

In the summer when they’d come over they would usually stop at a drug store before arriving and grab something for my brother and I. A bag of fireworks, or one of those airplanes in a bag that were made from bamboo or balsa wood you’d put together in two seconds. They’d fly 7 feet into the air and nosedive into the yard.

I wish I could remember more of him. I bet my brother remembers him better as he’s 6 years older than me, so he would have been 18 when grandpa died. I see my dad now at 77 and I do see my grandpa in him. My dad is doing quite a bit better than Hub was at 77, thankfully.

My grandma Hubner was wild card. She put on a happy face, but was filled with little passive-aggressive comments at the holidays. There was always the feeling that my mom just wasn’t good enough for my dad. Grandma always seemed to want more than what she had. My grandpa went from job to job most of my dad’s childhood. Not that he was lazy. He just wanted to be his own boss. He was a CPA, he ran a Chevy dealership for a short time, had his own building trades company(pre-Lowes and Menards), and then finally settled into parts manager at a car dealership. That was his last job. Oh, and he was also a featherweight boxer in Chicago in the 30s.

Yet despite all his hard work it was never really good enough. So my grandma’s frustrations at not being as rich as her mom’s family came out in little jabs at everyone else. Thanksgiving was a time to be thankful for when grandma and grandpa would leave.

There was one thing that I got from my grandma Hubner, and it was a love for Danish Butter Cookies. The little tin with the tiny paper holders with cookies in them. Ones shaped like pretzels and circles, some with sugar on them or plain. There was something kind of elegant about those cookies that appealed to me. I think at first it was just that it seemed “fancy”. “Ooh, cookies in a fancy tin!”. I was a weird kid, but damn if I didn’t love the flavor of those cookies. And they came in their own metal container so they could be pilfered through after round two of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing.

To my knowledge we have no Danish heritage(mostly German, with a touch of Swede and Irish for good measure.) But despite that my grandma found the cookies delightful. I’d sit at the kitchen table on Thanksgiving and share cookies with her – me with a glass of pop and her with either a whiskey and soda or a cup of coffee – cigarette smoke rising like a cancerous ghost from the ashtray(this was one of the few times during the year that smoking was allowed in the house.) That was the time of the day when it didn’t seem as if everyone was a target in grandma’s eyes and she’d actually talk to me. “How was school?” “What books are you reading?” “Are you reading any books?” “Did you get books at the book fair this year?”

My grandma was an avid reader. When she was young she drove a book bus and delivered books to kids at their homes. Later on, after my grandpa died she got a job at the Nappanee Public Library. She loved that job and seemed the happiest the short time she worked there. She eventually had to quit because her eyesight got too bad. Her final decade on this earth consisted of talk radio, resentment towards her daughter-in-laws, and complaining about her sons to her neighbor Mary, a fellow bitter old woman.

There were some other nice moments with my grandma Hubner. When I got older and could drive I’d stop in to her house and visit when I was in town. We’d sit on the porch and drink Cokes and she’d talk about growing up and spending time with her Uncle Amos in southern Illinois. He was a dentist and Captain in the Navy and they were well to do. I think her aspirations of the good life came from spending time with that part of the family. I liked hearing her talk about those days as she became more alive, you know? She could tell a great story when she wasn’t bitter that she wasn’t living at the level she thought she should be. I would even spend time in the house and the cat wouldn’t bother me. I think by that point Cookie was like 17-years old and no longer made dander, so my allergies weren’t bothered.

Last week I was at the store and saw a tin of Danish butter cookies. I instantly had a flash of memory; cookies in front of me with Coke in a glass with ice, my grandma sipping on a glass of Canadian Club(the smell of that booze wafting from her glass to my nose), and a ring of smoke hanging in the air from her More 100. Without thinking I grabbed that tin and bought it, along with the week’s groceries. I ate a handful of those cookies after dinner, not with Coke but a glass of chocolate milk, and they were delightful. I ate one in grandma’s memory and put them away. Not a hint of resentment or disappointment. Just some reminiscing and a touch of melancholy.