I recently had to write a paper for class that consisted of an interview amongst a married person. And there's so many posts of breaking-up and heartbreak that I wanted to share something positive. This is an interview of my grandmother. I thought this came out pretty cool, and I hope you guys like it, too.
On the topic of conducting an interview amongst a family member who has been married for a extended period, I chose to interview my grandmother. She is now seventy-five years old and has been married for a substantial amount of years, fifty-six to be exact. She has been the so-called glue that keeps the family together. Also, my grandmother has always been someone who has been easy for me to relate to, and learn from. My grandparents have always upheld the cooperation that I think it takes to model a union that I have inspired to look up to and develop role models after when I look into the later years of my own life. But also, to adapt their model of relationship to the way times-have-changed. And my grandparents are the only couple in my family that I consider happily married. Personally, I had hoped to find out if there were any common themes or factors that led to why my grandparents have been successful in maintaining a happy, content, and working relationship .
Before conducting the interview, I tried to organize my thought and questions around generalized ideas that would lead to much bigger concepts. Some simple questions included ideas of what my grandmother's school and work experience was like? how she met my grandfather? experience with moving to different houses and apartments while married? how did technology fit into the relationship as years went by and technology developed? and what was life like after my grandmother's father died? These questions were geared to branch out in different ways and give some overlapping information as to how her relationship with my grandfather grew as the years went on, and bring up more questions. This way of organizing my thoughts, reminded me of grandmother's personality in a way that is simple, yet complex.
My grandmother had never ventured or was interested in getting her driver's license. And she grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. And she was content and familiar to not having a car, herself, because her parents never owned a car and did not have the means to. That kind of technology was not familiar, and foreign to my grandmother when she was a little girl. She relied on other people like my grandfather, once they had met, to drive her somewhere she needed to be or wanted to be, if it was far away from the home. In that sense, her traveling experience and things that may be related to that is limited, or simple. That area, I personally related to individualistic characteristics of experiencing-what-the-world-has-to-offer. However, the qualities that my grandmother is known for, is relevant to a dualistic quality of having-common-courtesy-for-others that involved raising children, babysitting grandchildren and great-grandchildren, taking care of her own mother, and lots of tasks that have involved a self sacrifice of some kind, even if it was just her time.
Then, I started asking about school and why my grandmother never wanted to get her driver's license - to see if there was a relation. This time period was around the mid 1940's, when my grandmother was around the age of fifteen to seventeen. The reason, however, for never getting her license did not have anything to do with relying on other people to drive her around, but more relevant to the fact that when she was young there was no such thing as driver's education classes to teach someone how to drive and leaning to drive on her own seemed scary to my grandmother. In addition to school was already tough, in a sense that she had to do a lot of work around the house that she lived in with her parents and had little time to concentrate on school.
At around the age of sixteen, my grandmother had dropped out of school to start working to help out her family because as she said "times were tough, you did what'cha had to do to get by. . . we didn't have all the options and opportunities of today's kids. . ." To my grandmother, dropping out of school did not happen because it was a social norm in a way that was the-popular-thing-to-do, but rather because it was necessary to - to get through day-to-day life as a family unit, between her and her parents. That kind of understanding as a teenage girl, growing up, showed me how my grandmother understood she was part of a public family that worked hard to support each other. This was a case where the parent supported the child and the child helped to support the parents out of necessity.
Now, going into more detail about my grandmother's work experience, she would like to say "it wasn't pretty. . ." She had found a job that was convenient for her to walk to in her town of Fall River. However, her job consisted of working in a place where she had to sew the cuff's and neck's onto shirts and she admitted she wasn't very good at it, and wasn't going to bring her of money. After about a year and a half of working for the sewing company she had quit. Although, when working for the sewing company, she had spent her days off at the local park. And this local park happened to be the park where my grandfather had play softball for a team called "The King and His Court". My grandfather happened to be the pitcher for a team that had only five players. It was a baseball team that used trickery to out-maneuver other teams that used a whole team of players. My grandmother enjoyed watching the games that my grandfather played in and after a few games my grandfather had introduced himself to my grandmother, curious as to it who was always watching him. And my grandmother had a crush on my grandfather and as my grandmother says "it all started from there."
When my grandparents started dating my grandmother was just about to turn seventeen and I had asked about what her parents' were like, and what was their view on my grandmother dating? My grandmother had talked about a few topics about how her parents were in relation to her growing up. Her curfew was ten o'clock because she had to get up an go to work the next morning, it was more of a self imposed curfew. It wasn't something that had to do with anything similar to peer group's or friend staying out late, because the didn't stay out late, "you either had to wake up to go to school or work, that's how it was," is what my grandmother had to say about her curfew and things of that nature. however, at seventeen, my grandfather wasn't allowed over my grandmother's house; that rule of her parent's didn't change until my grandmother happen to turn nineteen years old.
In 1949, at nineteen years old, my grandparents also decided to get married. My grandfather had been working for a few years for a delivery company and had owned his own car, and it had felt as the right thing to do in my grandmother's position; "there was dating and then you get married." In her position, she felt as if she was entering the early adulthood stage of her life. In her words it all seemed so simple, "if you liked someone and you dated for a while, eventually you get married, usually on a holiday or a Sunday." That quote from my grandmother had explained one of the mysteries I had always wondered since I was a little kid - why did my grandparents get married on thanksgiving?" But, when my grandparents had became married, my grandmother had stopped working altogether, because someone had to maintain the upkeep on their home and my grandfather made enough so my grandmother could stay home to do so. In a way, they became a breadwinner/home-maker model of family which was different from the time when they were dating when my grandmother was working. I also asked if she had felt as if she had been underpaid in her work experience, but the decision was not based on anything of that nature, she felt as if her abilities would be more useful around the house while my grandfather worked.
A year after my grandparents got married, was the time when my grandmother became pregnant with her first child, my mother. This was also the year (1954) when my grandmother's father died. This led to a situation where my great-grandmother moved into my grandmother's apartment while she was pregnant. And in asking how my grandmother felt about not having the experience of living completely on her own after being married, she explained that it was actually quite relieving to have her mother living with her while my mother was born so shortly after being married. This transition in the entire change in their living arrangement turned my grandparents union from a conjugal family to an extended family. But also there was a significant amount of time that my grandmother, and her mother, spent together in "learning how to be a parent" when my mother was a baby. This was because of the fact that my grandfather had worked long days, driving trucks and delivering goods for a living.
The connection that was created between my grandmother and her mother was a kind of women-centered kinship. This kinship grew with frequent visits from other family members who happened to be aunts and other relatives to see the "new baby in the family" and give advice as to how their parenting situation was. My grandmother also stated that when she was in school there was no classes about parenting or anything that held similar value and her parents did not sit her down and explain "the birds and the bee's" speech, so a lot of what she had learned was by trial and error process and the constant advice of her mother, and frequent advice of other relatives helped her greatly.
Saturdays and Sundays were also the days of the week that my grandfather did not work and had spent time taking the family to places of interest, to spend time together. And over the course of the next three years, my grandmother's family grew in size, she had two more children, one girl and one boy (my aunt and uncle). By the time the 1960s had arrived, my grandmother had found her direction in life as a full-time mom while my grandfather worked full-time. As my grandmother described it "life came at us pretty fast it seemed, situations like becoming pregnant just happened. We didn't plan it, we just made the best of it. . . "
My grandmother had a good understanding that "things could be worse" as she says and often looked for the more optimistic viewpoint in life. Throughout the 1960s, things seemed familiar and routine, for the most part, with parenting and technology. There was a lot of hand washing clothes, dishes, and things like that done by my grandmother. It wasn't until the 1970s when my grandmother had invested in things like a color television and microwave. Before that, bottles for the kids had to be warmed up on the stove. Also, in 1970 my grandmother had another child, my uncle.
The time after my uncle was born was a time where my grandfather grew into more of a role of a hands-on father, as my grandmother referenced. My grandfather had more free time from work and they had cooperated more during this phase of their relationship. All the while, my great-grandmother is still living with my grandparents. And as "technology seemed to come out with better inventions as the years went on" that's when my grandmother started to really gain free time for herself. Her three older children were becoming very independent as teenagers growing into early adults, and also helped out with taking care of the youngest child. My grandmother also moved from Fall River, Massachusetts to East Providence, Rhode Island in the mid 1970s. In Fall River, my grandmother lived in a small neighborhood which was made up of mostly white, blue collar individuals and now in East Providence is when my grandmother explained that she now encountered more emphasis on characteristics like race, not because of herself, but her daughters' had started to experience dating and questions of "what-if scenarios" came across my grandmother's mind from time to time. She had often wondered how to deal with the situation when and if it arises. Her children had acquired their own license's and cars' and a taste for their own freedom and had become more exposed to cultural difference than my grandmother had been because of "the freedom of being out on the road."
During the late 1980s, my grandmother's mother had passed away, and my aunt soon moved in with my grandparents. Soon after my aunt had moved in, my parents also divorced and my mother also moved back in with my grandparents. And as my grandparents age they have helped out with housework and other things that is now hard for my grandparents to do. However, throughout all the transitioning in the changes with the individuals living with my grandparents while they've been married, my grandmother stated that she had "learned to count her blessing" and that has helped her with understanding, communicating, and cooperating with my grandfather to have a healthy relationship that has lasted fifty six years, and still counting.
On the topic of conducting an interview amongst a family member who has been married for a extended period, I chose to interview my grandmother. She is now seventy-five years old and has been married for a substantial amount of years, fifty-six to be exact. She has been the so-called glue that keeps the family together. Also, my grandmother has always been someone who has been easy for me to relate to, and learn from. My grandparents have always upheld the cooperation that I think it takes to model a union that I have inspired to look up to and develop role models after when I look into the later years of my own life. But also, to adapt their model of relationship to the way times-have-changed. And my grandparents are the only couple in my family that I consider happily married. Personally, I had hoped to find out if there were any common themes or factors that led to why my grandparents have been successful in maintaining a happy, content, and working relationship .
Before conducting the interview, I tried to organize my thought and questions around generalized ideas that would lead to much bigger concepts. Some simple questions included ideas of what my grandmother's school and work experience was like? how she met my grandfather? experience with moving to different houses and apartments while married? how did technology fit into the relationship as years went by and technology developed? and what was life like after my grandmother's father died? These questions were geared to branch out in different ways and give some overlapping information as to how her relationship with my grandfather grew as the years went on, and bring up more questions. This way of organizing my thoughts, reminded me of grandmother's personality in a way that is simple, yet complex.
My grandmother had never ventured or was interested in getting her driver's license. And she grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. And she was content and familiar to not having a car, herself, because her parents never owned a car and did not have the means to. That kind of technology was not familiar, and foreign to my grandmother when she was a little girl. She relied on other people like my grandfather, once they had met, to drive her somewhere she needed to be or wanted to be, if it was far away from the home. In that sense, her traveling experience and things that may be related to that is limited, or simple. That area, I personally related to individualistic characteristics of experiencing-what-the-world-has-to-offer. However, the qualities that my grandmother is known for, is relevant to a dualistic quality of having-common-courtesy-for-others that involved raising children, babysitting grandchildren and great-grandchildren, taking care of her own mother, and lots of tasks that have involved a self sacrifice of some kind, even if it was just her time.
Then, I started asking about school and why my grandmother never wanted to get her driver's license - to see if there was a relation. This time period was around the mid 1940's, when my grandmother was around the age of fifteen to seventeen. The reason, however, for never getting her license did not have anything to do with relying on other people to drive her around, but more relevant to the fact that when she was young there was no such thing as driver's education classes to teach someone how to drive and leaning to drive on her own seemed scary to my grandmother. In addition to school was already tough, in a sense that she had to do a lot of work around the house that she lived in with her parents and had little time to concentrate on school.
At around the age of sixteen, my grandmother had dropped out of school to start working to help out her family because as she said "times were tough, you did what'cha had to do to get by. . . we didn't have all the options and opportunities of today's kids. . ." To my grandmother, dropping out of school did not happen because it was a social norm in a way that was the-popular-thing-to-do, but rather because it was necessary to - to get through day-to-day life as a family unit, between her and her parents. That kind of understanding as a teenage girl, growing up, showed me how my grandmother understood she was part of a public family that worked hard to support each other. This was a case where the parent supported the child and the child helped to support the parents out of necessity.
Now, going into more detail about my grandmother's work experience, she would like to say "it wasn't pretty. . ." She had found a job that was convenient for her to walk to in her town of Fall River. However, her job consisted of working in a place where she had to sew the cuff's and neck's onto shirts and she admitted she wasn't very good at it, and wasn't going to bring her of money. After about a year and a half of working for the sewing company she had quit. Although, when working for the sewing company, she had spent her days off at the local park. And this local park happened to be the park where my grandfather had play softball for a team called "The King and His Court". My grandfather happened to be the pitcher for a team that had only five players. It was a baseball team that used trickery to out-maneuver other teams that used a whole team of players. My grandmother enjoyed watching the games that my grandfather played in and after a few games my grandfather had introduced himself to my grandmother, curious as to it who was always watching him. And my grandmother had a crush on my grandfather and as my grandmother says "it all started from there."
When my grandparents started dating my grandmother was just about to turn seventeen and I had asked about what her parents' were like, and what was their view on my grandmother dating? My grandmother had talked about a few topics about how her parents were in relation to her growing up. Her curfew was ten o'clock because she had to get up an go to work the next morning, it was more of a self imposed curfew. It wasn't something that had to do with anything similar to peer group's or friend staying out late, because the didn't stay out late, "you either had to wake up to go to school or work, that's how it was," is what my grandmother had to say about her curfew and things of that nature. however, at seventeen, my grandfather wasn't allowed over my grandmother's house; that rule of her parent's didn't change until my grandmother happen to turn nineteen years old.
In 1949, at nineteen years old, my grandparents also decided to get married. My grandfather had been working for a few years for a delivery company and had owned his own car, and it had felt as the right thing to do in my grandmother's position; "there was dating and then you get married." In her position, she felt as if she was entering the early adulthood stage of her life. In her words it all seemed so simple, "if you liked someone and you dated for a while, eventually you get married, usually on a holiday or a Sunday." That quote from my grandmother had explained one of the mysteries I had always wondered since I was a little kid - why did my grandparents get married on thanksgiving?" But, when my grandparents had became married, my grandmother had stopped working altogether, because someone had to maintain the upkeep on their home and my grandfather made enough so my grandmother could stay home to do so. In a way, they became a breadwinner/home-maker model of family which was different from the time when they were dating when my grandmother was working. I also asked if she had felt as if she had been underpaid in her work experience, but the decision was not based on anything of that nature, she felt as if her abilities would be more useful around the house while my grandfather worked.
A year after my grandparents got married, was the time when my grandmother became pregnant with her first child, my mother. This was also the year (1954) when my grandmother's father died. This led to a situation where my great-grandmother moved into my grandmother's apartment while she was pregnant. And in asking how my grandmother felt about not having the experience of living completely on her own after being married, she explained that it was actually quite relieving to have her mother living with her while my mother was born so shortly after being married. This transition in the entire change in their living arrangement turned my grandparents union from a conjugal family to an extended family. But also there was a significant amount of time that my grandmother, and her mother, spent together in "learning how to be a parent" when my mother was a baby. This was because of the fact that my grandfather had worked long days, driving trucks and delivering goods for a living.
The connection that was created between my grandmother and her mother was a kind of women-centered kinship. This kinship grew with frequent visits from other family members who happened to be aunts and other relatives to see the "new baby in the family" and give advice as to how their parenting situation was. My grandmother also stated that when she was in school there was no classes about parenting or anything that held similar value and her parents did not sit her down and explain "the birds and the bee's" speech, so a lot of what she had learned was by trial and error process and the constant advice of her mother, and frequent advice of other relatives helped her greatly.
Saturdays and Sundays were also the days of the week that my grandfather did not work and had spent time taking the family to places of interest, to spend time together. And over the course of the next three years, my grandmother's family grew in size, she had two more children, one girl and one boy (my aunt and uncle). By the time the 1960s had arrived, my grandmother had found her direction in life as a full-time mom while my grandfather worked full-time. As my grandmother described it "life came at us pretty fast it seemed, situations like becoming pregnant just happened. We didn't plan it, we just made the best of it. . . "
My grandmother had a good understanding that "things could be worse" as she says and often looked for the more optimistic viewpoint in life. Throughout the 1960s, things seemed familiar and routine, for the most part, with parenting and technology. There was a lot of hand washing clothes, dishes, and things like that done by my grandmother. It wasn't until the 1970s when my grandmother had invested in things like a color television and microwave. Before that, bottles for the kids had to be warmed up on the stove. Also, in 1970 my grandmother had another child, my uncle.
The time after my uncle was born was a time where my grandfather grew into more of a role of a hands-on father, as my grandmother referenced. My grandfather had more free time from work and they had cooperated more during this phase of their relationship. All the while, my great-grandmother is still living with my grandparents. And as "technology seemed to come out with better inventions as the years went on" that's when my grandmother started to really gain free time for herself. Her three older children were becoming very independent as teenagers growing into early adults, and also helped out with taking care of the youngest child. My grandmother also moved from Fall River, Massachusetts to East Providence, Rhode Island in the mid 1970s. In Fall River, my grandmother lived in a small neighborhood which was made up of mostly white, blue collar individuals and now in East Providence is when my grandmother explained that she now encountered more emphasis on characteristics like race, not because of herself, but her daughters' had started to experience dating and questions of "what-if scenarios" came across my grandmother's mind from time to time. She had often wondered how to deal with the situation when and if it arises. Her children had acquired their own license's and cars' and a taste for their own freedom and had become more exposed to cultural difference than my grandmother had been because of "the freedom of being out on the road."
During the late 1980s, my grandmother's mother had passed away, and my aunt soon moved in with my grandparents. Soon after my aunt had moved in, my parents also divorced and my mother also moved back in with my grandparents. And as my grandparents age they have helped out with housework and other things that is now hard for my grandparents to do. However, throughout all the transitioning in the changes with the individuals living with my grandparents while they've been married, my grandmother stated that she had "learned to count her blessing" and that has helped her with understanding, communicating, and cooperating with my grandfather to have a healthy relationship that has lasted fifty six years, and still counting.
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You may have inspired me to do a similar thing but just for my own benefit. I have a really great relationship with my grandparents and I used to live with them for a few years and hate that I see them extremely rarely compared to usual. I used to love hearing my grandad's stories from his training in the army and my nan was just so fun to be with :(
You know it took twenty years for me to figure that out, and my own mother and aunt didn't even know. Thanks. And yeah, lol, my grandma is very traditionally "grandma-like" ha.
Great work! I loved the quote about getting married on a Sunday or a holiday, that just seems so...grandma-like.
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