Wednesday, April 8, 2015

One Life





In the afternoons I’d come home from Washington-Lee High School and find her sitting on a hard-backed chair in the living room.
She wouldn’t be watching TV or reading - just sitting. She would sometimes be there for thirty minutes or more, perhaps looking out the window, but often just sitting in the silent room.  Growing up, I’d never seen anyone do that before. In my family of college professors, lawyers, and doctors, we were readers. Sure, we all watched a healthy share of television, but if anyone had a free moment he’d have a book or magazine in his hand.


 I was sixteen so it never occurred to me to wonder what she was thinking about.


Nana was my step-grandmother. A few years after my parents’ divorce my father had remarried. I sometimes ask myself if he only married Dot, a woman he knew from work, so that he could have custody of my sister and me, making it possible for us to leave our alcoholic mother, but that’s another story.

Along with Dot came her daughter, who was the same age as my older sister, and Dot's mother, whom we all called Nana. She was a small, quiet woman in flowered housedresses with wizened, arthritic hands and when she’d return from a trip to the beauty parlor with Dot, her thin white hair would have a fresh tint of blue to it.

She was basically the housekeeper. Both Dot and my father worked for the government and Nana would be the one at home cleaning and cooking. She was devoted to her afternoon TV “stories”, she carefully laid out used paper towels on the kitchen counter to dry and use again, and while her cooking was very basic compared to the coq au vin and lamb curry I’d grown up on, she made a spectacular Manhattan chowder. Her favorite saying (which later was almost my future husband’s undoing on his first visit) was, “Eat up and give the house a good name.”

Nana stayed in the background, never interfering in any family issues. I was a teenager, so she was just part of the scenery for me; it never entered my head that she might have once had her own dreams or regrets.

The other morning I woke up thinking about her for some reason. I thought about how, long before I knew her, Nana had left Long Island in the 1950s and moved with her husband (who died not long after) to Arlington, Virginia to care for her infant granddaughter while her own newly-divorced daughter went to work to support everyone. She’d left the home she’d known her whole life, for a place where she knew no one, and she’d left it to live in someone else’s household for the next twenty-five years.  


As we grow older, of course we don’t relish the fact that the distance behind us is so much greater than the one ahead. Yet one consolation is the catalogue of accomplishments and experiences that filled those earlier years.

I’m struck by the poignancy of a life like Nana’s - one that could have encompassed so much more. Or maybe I’m completely wrong and her solitary afternoon moments were deeper than I realized. As Marcus Aurelius said:

                             Our life is what our thoughts make it.
 

14 comments:

  1. There is an old relative in many lives. How good you remember her from time to time. I had a great grandmother who was espoused, I am sure, to care for the house and the children, when my great grandmother died in the 1918 flu epidemic. Her widowed sister came with that great grandmother.Their tiny, waxen figures went on for year.

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  2. What a beautiful, insightful post. When I think back to my grandparents and great grandparent I truly bemoan the fact that I should have asked more questions and listened more closely.

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    1. I feel the same way about asking questions, Dolores. I never even asked questions of my parents. Now I am searching on ancestry trying to find the answers. I am also finding answers in old letters. Now with the internet age those old letters won't be there. We need to share our stories now.

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  3. Everyone's life is filled with interesting stories, challenges and experiences. I wish we all could write a book about ourselves for the ancestors to come.

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  4. I have the same memories of not only my grandparents but my parents. I have questions and I know that had secrets but I was too busy to ask until it was too late. A wonderful post, Marty.

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  5. She was planning and praying for a wonderful life for all while enjoying the moments from the past.

    Sometimes we all need to set and reassess treasures in our life.

    Wonderful story.

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  6. She might have really enjoyed those quiet moments! I can see sitting still and looking out the window, watching the birds, and finding it a restorative experience.

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  7. My sister does that, too. She just sits and looks, doesn't listen to music or read. I also enjoy moments of just sitting, but I don't do it often. This is a very nice portrait of your Nana, and I enjoyed thinking about her life. Thank you for writing it so well and sharing it with me. :-)

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    1. Thanks, DJan.
      I think the ironic thing is that we don't can't realize the questions we should have asked until we reach a certain point of wisdom ourselves - and of course by then it's too late.

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  8. There was an old relative in my life also. I never really knew who she was until I was much older. Like your Nana, I remember her cooking and working and her old aprons. This was in my mother's older sister's home. I enjoy reading everything you write.

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  9. She was probably daydreaming, I do that sometimes...I have been known to sit quietly but either I am really tired or daydreaming! It sounds like your Nana was a caregiver...the best of people care for others:)

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  10. I've known people who could just sit too. I used to find it a little un-nerving. I'd rather read a book too. my mum would never stand for anyone just sitting either. She'd call that wasted time and teach you to knit or send you to clean your room.
    Now that I'm older, I still have a book handy, but sometimes I find myself just sitting.

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  11. What a beautiful, thought-provoking post! Love the quote, too.

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