Nana

When I think of my grandmother, I remember a stern person, with little aptitude for taking care of children.

How ironic, then, when she was saddled with me when mother had to go back to work after my father’s death.

Yet she is lovely in her wedding picture and shows no trace of the person I will remember as I grow up.

She raised three children—and lost a fourth to a miscarriage—and then, when she was probably expecting rest, she had a lively young girl to take care of.

Did they not have daycare back then, or was my family simply insistent on presenting a self-sufficient unit?

But I still ponder over her ways with children. As an adult, I talked to my Aunt Bernice, my mother’s sister, who told me that when she was young my grandmother told her that she had caused the miscarriage by falling and hurting her head. The sight of blood, the story goes, caused the premature labor. I am aghast at laying this guilt on a child. But my aunt, always wanting to uphold the rightness of our family, tells me that it was simply a factual explanation, not an indictment. Having children of my own now, I cannot take this in.

My grandmother believed, as many people did then, that girls must be lady-like. I was never allowed to own a toy gun, although I was obsessed by the sense of family on the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show. One of my happiest memories is my aunt buying me a coloring book about them: I felt as if I could really live as part of their family for a while.

I don’t ever remember my grandmother playing with me or reading to me. Given her baking ability, I might have expected to be taught simple baking. One day, however, when I was being exceptionally ornery—running through the house and making noise--she pretended to telephone the police to come and get me. I don’t believe I really thought they would, but I wasn’t entirely confident either. Yet when I rambled up and down our street aimlessly, she would tell me to stop looking like the Lost Soul, one of Jackie Gleason’s characters.

Her mantra was “keep yourself to yourself” which has made it difficult for me to ask for help or favors. Somehow a refusal feels like a personal rejection.

Her sister-in-law, my Aunt Lala—I could not say Olga—was a kind, dimpled, affectionate person. When we visited—not very often—she would always make up a box of miscellaneous items to keep me entertained. I don’t think my grandmother liked her very much. First, I don’t think she thought her worthy of her brother, my Uncle Chris, her husband. Uncle Chris always complained about Lala’s coldness. But he was unrelentingly critical. When Lala took their sons to a free clinic for vaccinations—money was always tight in my family—he exploded at her for acting as though they were paupers. I’ve sometimes wondered if my great aunt was gay at a time when such things were not thought of. But I rather think that being married to my uncle would be enough to drive warmth from any woman.

I also think my grandmother was jealous of Lala because she and my grandfather got on so well. On his walks he occasionally stopped by her house for coffee. In fact, I can see them as the perfect unassuming couple.

My grandmother’s isolationist attitude applied to others as well. Our neighbor, Martha Kash, occasionally used to come in the evening to visit and recount the neighborhood gossip until quite late. I remember my grandmother always sighed and complained under her breath when Martha rang the bell and, in retrospect, I can sympathize with hosts whose guests overstay their visit. But in my circumscribed life her visits were wonderful, showing a world beyond my suffocating family.

In her Germanic way, my grandmother believed that eating was the cure for all ills. Once, when I was home from school sick, she served me split pea soup for lunch. I said I could not eat it and she forced me to. No sooner had I finished than it all came back up on the dining room floor. I remember how vindicated and proud I felt. Even my body received no respect from the adults around me.

But along with her sternness there was a desperate longing for the trappings of a loving family. When we left to go anywhere, we all had to give her a dutiful good-bye kiss.

I sometimes think my childhood was blighted by my mother’s intimidation by her mother. When she went to the theater with a friend, I was expected to put myself to bed. We lived in the top floor of my grandparents’ brownstone, and when it was 9:00 I was supposed to go to bed. I was terrified of the dark—I’ve only gotten over this fear since having children of my own--and, as I went through each room turning off the lights on the way to my bedroom, I could practically feel the monsters following me. There was a walk-in closet in the dining room in particular that harbored nameless horrors. Once I got into bed, I worried about my mother’s getting home safely and each time I heard the subway rumble to our station, I listened for my mother’s footsteps coming down the street. When she did not arrive, I would start to pace the floor in a paroxysm of fear. The next day my mother would scold me for “fooling around” and keeping my grandparents awake. Surely there were babysitters back then, but my grandmother disapproved of my mother trying to have a life apart from the family, so I was expected to be the adult.

There is a story I’ve heard dozens of times of my grandmother going out and leaving me in the care of my mother and aunt. (Notice the inverted mother-babysitter parallel). I tried to climb up the side of my highchair, fell, and developed a big goose bump on my head. My mother and aunt looked at each other and said “What will mama [my grandmother] say when she returns?” They rushed me to the drug store where Tony, the pharmacist, played local triage doctor, advising people if their complaints were serious enough to see a doctor. He said I was fine and “at least she’ll never do that again.” Needless to say, the first thing I did when we got home was to try to climb the highchair again.

There is so much more I could say. But there must have been some bit of kindness and love there. I remember one time she and my grandfather had a tiff over something and he left the house for his walk without kissing her good-bye. She cried until he returned.

        

         Sometimes I think she was forced to be the practical one of the two, that without her toughness my grandfather would have fallen on hard times, been taken advantage of by others. When they went to look at the house they wound up buying, they were told the owner was sick and they could not therefore go beyond the first floor for fear of disturbing him. When they finally purchased the house, it turned out that the second and third floors were in dire shape and they had to be renovated before they were habitable. I wonder if living with a saint can lead one to overcompensate on the practical level.

When my grandfather died, Nana lost all desire to live. She took to her bed and within several months died from a heart attack, a literally broken heart.

I wish I had known this woman better, known her when she was young.