My future daughter-in-law’s grandmother passed away last weekend, and it has me thinking of my own two grandmothers, both gone now but whose memories are alive in my heart. My two grandmothers shared many wonderful qualities, and yet in ways they were at opposite ends of the spectrum.
My father’s mother, Aliene, was the zany grandma. Maybe that came from being an ER and surgical nurse. Apparently, when I was small, she used to call me Cabeaner because of a noise I made—so for as long as I can remember, we always called her Cabeaner. My grandfather, who used to sing nonsensical phrases to himself, we called Fring-Ding. Weird family, huh? They lived in upstate New York on a gravel road, and I loved to go there and go down to the creek to catch tadpoles. Getting down to the creek was a bear, going down a steep hill through thick foliage that had a lot of sharp prickers. “Daddy, carry me!” was how I managed it. I could look out the kitchen window and see quail in the farmer’s field, and there were birds, possums, and cats galore to keep track of too. A male cardinal would get a bit of suet from the feeder in his beak and then come and tap on the window in greeting, as if to say thank you. My grandmother smoked, and when I was 5, I asked her to teach me to smoke. She gave me my own cigarette, lit it, then showed me how to inhale deeply. It’s the first time I remember being really angry and holding a grudge, once I got done coughing and sputtering. It was a lesson well learned, that’s for sure! She knitted like a fiend, and did the crossword puzzle daily. She always bought those little individual boxes of cereal when I came to visit. I thought they had them all the time and that they were really lucky! She nearly died suddenly from a brain aneurysm when I was in 8th grade. The first time I saw her after the surgery, her hair was in a short crew cut, and she was weak and softspoken, and I cried with sadness for how she had changed, and relief that she had survived. After years of various complaints without a diagnosis of any particular illness, and inability to knit, do the crossword, drive, or do much of anything, she tried to take her own life in 1987. For 24 hours it seemed certain she would not survive. Then the drugs wore off and she was shouting “let me out of here!” It was a blessing in disguise—she got treatment for her depression and went back to being her old zany self, back to knitting and the crossword. She was widowed in 1997, and for a time it seemed that might do her in. But she adapted and lived 3 more years with her cat, BoJangles. She passed away at age 83 from an abdominal aneurysm, and her family saw to it that her wish for no medical intervention was carried out. I will always remember her dramatization when my sister and I were in the bathtub of Catherine Deneuve in the Camay soap commercial, “Camay, the beauuuuuty cleasah!”
My grandmother Adeline was the daughter of immigrants from Greece and Turkey—Asia Minor they called it then. She was bilingual, a nurse, and she and my grandfather, also the child of immigrants, would sometimes speak Greek at the dinner table, which really ticked my mom off. I didn’t get to know my grandmother very well until we moved in with them a year after my parents divorce, when I was 10. My grandmother and I became fast and devoted friends. I took an interest in cooking, and she taught me to brown butter for linguine, and she grew tomatoes by the bucketful, zucchini, and Swiss chard in her garden. She took me to the women’s auxiliary events at the Greek Orthodox Church, where all the Greek ladies took me under their wing as we baked all kinds of cookies and pastries to sell at the annual Greek Festival, and served coffee and cookies after church in the fellowship hall. I would sit next to her during the 2&1/2 hour service, which was mostly in Greek, and ask “what’s he saying?” during the sermon. She would whisper “I don’t know, my mind wanders”. We used to go on covert missions, helping the Greek lady whose daughter was bedridden with multiple sclerosis, against the wishes of my grandfather. One of her favorite sayings, when we complained about anything, was “it’s not the worst thing.” You know, she never told us what the worst thing was! When my sister or I were sick, she would stay home with us so that my mom could go to work. We ate dinner there several times a week, our plates under her watchful eye. “Karen, more cucumber salad? I made it just for you”. About the time my dad’s mother had the brain aneurysm, Grandma Adeline got breast cancer. At that time it was not common practice to give chemo or radiation after surgery for early stage cancer, so she had neither. A few short years later she had metastases all over the place. She had chemo periodically over the next few years, and we knew she thought she would survive when she bought new clothes in colors other than brown, which my mom said was her favorite color. I think she could still do a harder day’s work than I could, even after she had cancer. She would sometimes wash clothes in the old ringer washer, which she kept even when she got a modern washer and dryer. I guess it was a form of reminiscence, or maybe penance, for her. She lost her battle with cancer just 3 months before I graduated from college in 1988. I have missed her terribly, especially when I go through difficult times, and yet am always thankful to this day for having had her in my life.
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