Granny says "Wash Your Hands"

Granny is my maternal grandmother, Christine Heisler Repschleger. Some of my very best memories from my childhood include time with her. I can bring back the feeling of being in her home by how it smelled - chocolate chip cookies or cinnamon rolls in the oven, the cedar closet in her attic, Dial soap or bath powder in the bathroom, and the smell that drifted out when she opened the window seats in her dining room.

Granny was clean. I don't think of her as a clean-freak, but cleaning and being clean were definitely part of her core. I remember bathtime when I spent the night with Granny, and her teaching me about daily baths. I remember seeing her scrub chickens with a brush and soap before cooking. I remember Mother dismissing Granny's comments about an itchy scalp, saying that it was itchy because she scrubbed it so fiercely when she washed her long hair in the kitchen sink. I remember Mom telling me about chores when she was a child - weekly cleaning of the dining room chandelier and carrying mattresses outside for sunning on cots that were set up in the yard. I remember Granny telling me of a spat with her new mother-in-law on how to properly wash a hog's head before cooking - a spat that got so heated that it was the impetus for Granny and her new husband to move to their own little house. And I remember complaining to Mother about Granny's insistence that I wash my hands. When asked if I had a good time at Granny's, I said "All Granny says to me is wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands". Much to my embarrassment, Mother told Granny what I said; to my relief, she chuckled.

The "wash your hands occasion" was when my Aunt Helen was visiting. My cousins George and Jerry were probably there, but what was most important to me was that Aunt Helen's dachshund, Willie, was there - and in Granny's house! As a dog lover since my babyhood, having Willie to play with was too good for words. And "wash your hands" came every time I emerged from playtime with Willie. And playtime with Willie (poor Willie!) was my priority for every second!

In these last few months when we have been dealing with the Corona virus pandemic, with reminders from public health officials about the importance of hand washing, I have thought of the story about Willie and Granny's "wash your hands" message so often. I have also thought about the Spanish Influenza pandemic that she and Paw lived through - so much like we are experiencing today with a deadly sickness that has no cure and no vaccine so far.

I always thought of Granny's concern with cleanliness was because she was German. There's that stereotype about German women, isn't there? German women scrubbing the steps, sweeping the yard, and keeping everything tidy at all times. And like all stereotypes, there's always some truth there. Germans have a word for an obsession for cleanliness - putzfimmel! Granny definitely had a putzfimmel.

Now that I'm grown and can look back over Granny's life, I have a new appreciation of why she was so interested in cleanliness. She lost three of her siblings at young ages from infectious diseases that were probably poorly understood since germ theory was still competing with miasma theory as the cause of disease. I imagine for a time, approaches to infectious disease prevention included a mix of both theories - cleaning to combat germs, and clearing the air to combat miasma.

I can't imagine how it must have been for Granny as a girl and young woman, losing three siblings at young ages to infectious disease:

• Her baby sisters - twins Lydia and Johanna - were stricken with typhoid or typhus when they were babies. Lydia survived but Johanna succumbed to the disease in 1898 when she was only one year old. Who knows if it was typhus or typhoid? Apparently, these diseases were easily confused. According to Cedars-Sinai, "both diseases are infections, but they're caused by different types of bacteria that are spread in different ways. The kind of typhus we tend to see in the U.S. is spread by fleas that catch the disease from rats and possums. Typhoid fever is spread through food that's come into contact with fecal bacteria. For example, a food worker might use the restroom, not wash their hands and then contaminate the food they're handling, which infects the person eating it." Both deadly.

• Her big sister Rosa died in 1905 when she was only 18 from typhoid or typhus when she was in college at Baylor Women's College in Belton.

• Her brother Charles died in 1917 when he was only 33 of tuberculosis - or was it Spanish influenza? According to our county historian, Spanish influenza swept through Lavaca County in three waves, beginning in 1917, and killed one third of the county's population. Many death certificates did not indicate influenza as people were not sure what it was, and thus attributed death to more familiar causes.

Keeping bedding clean, regularly exposed to sunlight and fresh air. Washing hands and everything that is prepared for cooking. Keeping the environment as free from bugs as possible. These certainly would have become ingrained in me if I had seen my siblings stricken and wanted to be sure that my children did not suffer the same fate.

As I was raising my children, I was confident that there was an antibiotic or vaccine for anything, so no worries about exposure to this or that. I remember my daughter's experience with pneumonia when she was quite young, and feeling alarmed that her cough had a different sound than anything I had heard before. So we were off to the pediatrician in an instant where she received a shot of antibiotics. Voila! Her pneumonia symptoms disappeared by the next day. I remember being so thankful that we lived in a time where we did not need to be so worried about infectious diseases and did not need to be concerned about cleanliness routines that went beyond ordinary housecleaning and tidying up. I had a more casual attitude about hand washing and certainly did offer constant reminders like my Granny did to me. Whew. How naive. And how lucky we were.

Yes, the German traditions of cleanliness certainly were passed down to my Granny, who then did her best to pass them down to me. This current experience with COVID19 makes me appreciate her teaching as rooted in more than her own family story and in her love for me. So thankful.