Passing the Torch from Old Hands to New

One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting outside my Granny's farmhouse and squishing a bag of orange and white liquid together to make "margarine". It didn't occur to me at the time that I was making an edible oil product for the family to use to slather on sandwiches and toast. To me, it felt like some miraculous operation to make something out of nothing.
I also loved sitting with my Grandpa Loyal and cleaning smelly old smelt that we had caught in the local crick. Or shelling peas on a sweltering July afternoon, and sucking up the tiny jewels with my extended tongue and feeling the burst as they popped in my mouth.
I loved my grandparents, and my Uncle Vern, with whom we lived until they left this Earth over a six year period, exactly two years apart. Vern was a 50ish man-child whose dad had died in the Great War and was adopted by my grandfather, a widower who lost his first wife and one twin in childbirth.
In the 20s and 30s, that was how blended families happened. A man died in the war, a woman died due to inadequate health care.
We were a multi-blended family, since my brothers and I became part of a larger nuclear unit after my own dad perished the result of a car accident and a bad case of PTSD following the Second World War. My dad returned home from his job as an Army mechanic where he spent some of his days scraping dead bodies, blood, and various appendages from assorted military vehicles.
My mother moved us in with her parents when I was a baby, so the blended nuclear family which included a gaggle of assorted other relatives from various lineages was all I knew for my entire childhood. Still, there was a hole in my family the size of a moon crater that nobody could fill not even my ancient and cherished Grandparents.
But having them was a blessing. I learned so much from Grandpa Loyal who was a mechanic by trade, barber and farmer by love and necessity. He taught me to shoot in our basement makeshift range, and he showed me the magic of mushroom sandwiches made from fungi he picked personally in some mysterious dark place he never let me see.
Granny wasn't a particularly warm individual. She was a crabby little lady, a cane walker. She used the cane both to support her arthritic knee, and to wage a never-ending battle with our evil cat, Pixie, who would lie in wait for her and pounce on her scrawny leg and gnaw on it like a chew toy. Nothing was funnier than watching Granny beating the cat with her cane only for Pixie to slither into the house and snuggle beside Grandpa taking his afternoon siesta on the couch.
Granny looked and acted just like Granny Clampett, the ornery matriarch in The Beverley Hillbillies. But she was really sweet under her hard shell, and used to leave chocolates in her dressers for me to find and secretly eat when nobody was looking.
I think about my grandparents now that I have been initiated into the Old Crone Society. They were only ten years older than me, but back then they seemed ancient, almost otherworldly with their dependence on tea, pills and daily swigs of brown liquor.  When I close my eyes, I can still see Granny with her long thin hair tied at the nape of her neck watching wrestling with Uncle Vern, and Grandpa sitting on the old tractor with an ever-present rolled-his-own dangling from his mouth.
For a time, they made my sad little world a little brighter, and for that I will always be grateful.
I imagine that my own granddaughters, Skylar and Kennedy, see me as something of an alien, too, even with my salon dyed hair job, ill fitting tops and yoga pants. But I know that they love me just as I am, silly, silly grandma who sings them songs of love and war, and possibility.
These songs are ones my Granny used to sing when she let me brush her waist long, fine hair.
Silver Threads Among the Gold, It's a Long Way to Tipperary.
How Much is that Doggy int the Window. 
She called me Suzy Q. I was special, but only when nobody else was looking.
It's my job now to pass on the knowledge of the Crone to these wonderful little girls. We have secrets, and songs, and special recipes.
Last weekend, I taught Kenney to make ice cream from scratch. She squealed with delight watching the red Cuisinart machine whirl and twirl, magically thickening the brew into a concoction of fresh fruit and cream. At the last minute, I handed her a bag of Smarties which she expertly poured in.
"We did it!" she trilled, as she helped me spoon the frozen mixture into small bowls and dot each one with fresh strawberries. Then she sat transfixed by the handmade dessert, watching it melt.
It was something we had made together, just as I mixed margarine with Granny.
Job well done -- the passing of the torch of ancient knowledge from old hands to new.