Posted on 12/27/2002 5:30:35 PM PST by tarawa
The Grand Rapids Press
Tom Rademacher
A grandson's gift of perfume 30 years ago brings family holiday happiness
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
By Tom Rademacher The Grand Rapids Press
It was nearly 30 Christmases ago 14-year-old Mike Landman gave his aging grandmother a bottle of perfume.
But only long after her death did he learn how much it meant, after the discovery of a memoir his grandmother penned that recounts his simple gesture as nothing less than benediction.
Alice Harkins slipped the journal-type entry beneath liner paper in her dresser drawer in 1973. But her daughter, Marian Szudera of Marne, only found the yellowing sheets of notebook paper a few weeks ago, while sorting through her mother's things following Alice's death this past January.
Alice lived to be 101, but in all these years never shared with anyone how a bottle of Emeraude moved her so on that particular Christmas.
Marian wept to read what her mother wrote, then shared it with her nephew.
"It took me two or three times to get through it," says Mike, now 43 and owner of Landman Insulation Inc. "I was in tears to read it."
"The Night My Young Grandson Gave Me Perfume"
He is 14 years old. His parents are going out, and the children are to spend the evening with me. Earlier, he had called and asked what kind of perfume I liked. I had thoughtlessly said, 'Oh, Mikey, I have plenty of perfume around here.' But when they came, he handed me a Christmas package. I lay it aside until after I have given them their supper.
Now we sit down and I open my present. A beautiful box, all in green, my favorite color, containing one box of powder and a bottle of Emeraude perfume.
I have been sick. I am old, alone and my strength is leaving. My thoughts have been getting my affairs in shape for the end."
And then he brings me perfume."
Alice then goes on to chronicle how her grandchildren that evening brought in her newspaper, fed her dogs, helped clear the table, then assisted her in making a date nut roll.
"And all the while I keep thinking, 'He feels me worthy of perfume. He bought it with his own money. He doesn't just think of me as old.'"
She goes on to write that after tucking in her grandchildren, she cannot sleep, so she rises around 4 a.m. She misses her husband, Glen, who died a year earlier. And she mourns a grandson claimed by the Vietnam War, who is buried next to her husband.
She finally goes to the Bible. It opens at random to the Book of Mark, Chapter 14. She is stunned when her eyes fall on the third verse, the story of a woman who is anointing the head of Jesus.
With perfume.
Eventually, Alice sleeps. But before nodding off, she decides she must focus not on regrets and loss, but the life she was destined to live.
"For it takes a long time," she concludes, "to use up a large bottle of perfume."
Alice Harkins was given to writing from time to time, "But none of us knew she'd written this," Marian says.
What they did know is Alice still could perform somersaults at age 80. Each season, she canned 600 jars of vegetables culled from the home garden she kept in Standale.
She also was blessed with a sense of humor. When asked what it was like to be 89, she said, "Well, I don't have much peer pressure."
Yet for all she was, all she accomplished both alone and alongside Glen, it's a handwritten note tucked in a drawer that her descendants may remember her by in especially poignant ways.
Christmas, she reminded them -- reminds us all -- isn't about spending a lot of money or keeping count of presents given and received. It's a Bible at your bedside and a family close at hand, including a grandson of 14 who baled hay to earn a little spending money.
With it, he bought a lonely woman bottled hope, and gave it in the name of love. The sweet scent of it lingers still.
Tom Rademacher's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. A version also airs during the morning and evening newscasts each Sunday on TV-8. E-mail him at trademacher@grpress.com.
I think I will have lunch with my 90+ Grandma tomorrow - she loves for me to take her out for burgers and fries.
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