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29 May 2002 10:19 amIt may be difficult to write about someone you feel you don't know.
When I was a child, I didn't feel there was any need to get to know Great-Grandma Sylvia. "Getting to know" was for strangers; she was family. I can't remember a time when I didn't know who she was. There are pictures over there of us together from before my first coherent memory, but the mementos you see here are made of special occasions, and life and knowledge and the day-to-day bread of real memory are made of the plain times in between.
On the cusp of adulthood I've come to realize how little I really know Grandma. I can't predict what she'll do or what she'll say. I only know her favorite colors because Debby told us. I only know about her life because my Dad told me. I know her face thin and her eyes huge behind her glasses, and her long, flowered sun dresses, and seeing her sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, and the way she would smile for me when I gave her a kiss. I remember shawls and slippers and slow blinking, but I know that that is not her.
My Great-Grandmother is a quiet figure with a critical eye and a sharp tongue, but the person she is is the girl who played in the coal-scuttle, the mother who saved all my grandpa's report cards, the woman who kept elbow-length opera gloves and bags full of fine silk and cotton handkerchiefs, the young nurse who jumped into the river on a dare and got pneumonia. She posed flirtatiously for photographs, wore lipstick, had a little Pekinese, and wouldn't drink tea unless the water was boiling when you poured it over the tea. She wore tremendous sunglasses, wrist-length gloves and a wide-brimmed straw hat to visit New Orleans when I was a baby. She had monogrammed jewelry, and she fastened a shawl around her shoulders at the World's Fair with a brooch.
When I was beginning 8th grade, Great-Grandma stayed with us for a week while Grandpa and Debby were away. It was a hot and muggy September, and I got sick with a flu and had to miss a few days of school. I spent that time curled up in a sleeping bag on the couch, watching The Price is Right and The Young and the Restless and daytime talk shows in the darkened living room over Great-Grandma's shoulder. She was having a bad time, then; it must be difficult for her to be away from Grandpa, who's probably been almost perpetually the first thought in her mind since he was the little boy in the sepia sailor suit. We didn't talk, very much; but we were together. There's more difference than you'd think between watching television in silence alone, and watching it in silence with someone else. When I was better and went back to school, I was in the habit of running the last block home, and walking down the hall at once to say hello to her, and kiss her cheek. She left before the end of October, but the rest of the year, when I came home and unlocked the back door, it took me a moment to place the feeling that I had something to do: there was always the impulse to go down the hall looking for her, that faded only gradually.
If she doesn't know me now when I kiss her cheek, well, there was a time she kissed my cheek before I could talk, and she didn't care that I didn't know her then. I've never known the things about her that I'll learn about my parents, my aunts and uncles and friends, as I come to know them as an adult. But I'll never meet another person I can look at and know she called me "lambikins," and held me easily on one hip with her delicate hands, before I was old enough to remember her name.
May 26, 2002
When I was a child, I didn't feel there was any need to get to know Great-Grandma Sylvia. "Getting to know" was for strangers; she was family. I can't remember a time when I didn't know who she was. There are pictures over there of us together from before my first coherent memory, but the mementos you see here are made of special occasions, and life and knowledge and the day-to-day bread of real memory are made of the plain times in between.
On the cusp of adulthood I've come to realize how little I really know Grandma. I can't predict what she'll do or what she'll say. I only know her favorite colors because Debby told us. I only know about her life because my Dad told me. I know her face thin and her eyes huge behind her glasses, and her long, flowered sun dresses, and seeing her sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, and the way she would smile for me when I gave her a kiss. I remember shawls and slippers and slow blinking, but I know that that is not her.
My Great-Grandmother is a quiet figure with a critical eye and a sharp tongue, but the person she is is the girl who played in the coal-scuttle, the mother who saved all my grandpa's report cards, the woman who kept elbow-length opera gloves and bags full of fine silk and cotton handkerchiefs, the young nurse who jumped into the river on a dare and got pneumonia. She posed flirtatiously for photographs, wore lipstick, had a little Pekinese, and wouldn't drink tea unless the water was boiling when you poured it over the tea. She wore tremendous sunglasses, wrist-length gloves and a wide-brimmed straw hat to visit New Orleans when I was a baby. She had monogrammed jewelry, and she fastened a shawl around her shoulders at the World's Fair with a brooch.
When I was beginning 8th grade, Great-Grandma stayed with us for a week while Grandpa and Debby were away. It was a hot and muggy September, and I got sick with a flu and had to miss a few days of school. I spent that time curled up in a sleeping bag on the couch, watching The Price is Right and The Young and the Restless and daytime talk shows in the darkened living room over Great-Grandma's shoulder. She was having a bad time, then; it must be difficult for her to be away from Grandpa, who's probably been almost perpetually the first thought in her mind since he was the little boy in the sepia sailor suit. We didn't talk, very much; but we were together. There's more difference than you'd think between watching television in silence alone, and watching it in silence with someone else. When I was better and went back to school, I was in the habit of running the last block home, and walking down the hall at once to say hello to her, and kiss her cheek. She left before the end of October, but the rest of the year, when I came home and unlocked the back door, it took me a moment to place the feeling that I had something to do: there was always the impulse to go down the hall looking for her, that faded only gradually.
If she doesn't know me now when I kiss her cheek, well, there was a time she kissed my cheek before I could talk, and she didn't care that I didn't know her then. I've never known the things about her that I'll learn about my parents, my aunts and uncles and friends, as I come to know them as an adult. But I'll never meet another person I can look at and know she called me "lambikins," and held me easily on one hip with her delicate hands, before I was old enough to remember her name.
May 26, 2002
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