Saint Reta

Saint Reta

I am just going to come right out and say it; I have grandparent envy. I am bonkers envious of those who have, or, grew up with, a true grandparental presence. The way I see it, grandparents are the unconditional love machines of families. The firm roots of the tree, the fonts of knowledge and wisdom, a symbol of maturity and stability, and those whose sole purpose is to spoil a kid rotten and smother them with unqualified affection. If I were to start dating someone right now whose grandparents were still kicking, I’d make fast friends with them, hang off their every word, admire every grey hair on their wonderful heads.

Father Mine’s parents both passed before I was even thought of, before I was a twinkle in my Mama’s eye. His mother died of complications from childbirth, a fact that has always made me a little sad since he was only a small boy. She wasn’t around long enough to scold him for teaching the Nuns how to roll cigarettes in the school stairwell only to be sent home. Permanently.

I had the honour of eulogizing Father Mine a few years back. In the wake of his passing, a story was shared that all but ripped my heart out. Grandma Myers, Clara, went off to the hospital to have a baby, my Auntie Clara, presumably named after her mother, born with Down Syndrome, an affinity for the banjo, the song ‘You Are My Sunshine’, and the biggest heart known to man. Before Grandma Myers left for hospital, she sat, with her very pregnant belly between them, and leaned forward, eye to eye with a nine-year-old Father Mine. She held his scrappy, not yet nicotine stained hands in hers and told him not to be afraid, and if he was good while she was gone, he could have a new bike like he’d been asking for. Father Mine never did get his bike. Grandma Myers never came back home. He carried that loss with him his whole life. And, when I said it aloud at his celebration of life, there was a crack in my voice, imagining him, in that tiny vignette, trusting his mother’s promise’ one I hope she made good on when they met again in Heaven.

I have it on good authority that Father Mine’s Poppa, Granddad Myers, drank a lot and was often quite a grumpy puss. Consider it, a businessman, running the local corner store and gas station, suddenly saddled with seven kids after his wife died. His eldest daughter assumed a maternal role in the household, but it was no easy feat trying to wrangle four haywire boys and two girls with special needs. Auntie Eva, born before Auntie Clara, fell sick after an operation which left her unable to care for herself. Granddad Myers refused to send them off for care, insisting they stay home and maintain their place in his family. Somehow, with all of that going on, he found the time and tenacity to get himself elected as County Councilor. On one hand, you’ve got a man turning a blind eye to his ledgers for folks who couldn’t quite pay for wares dispensed and going to bat for the community’s best interests, to the guy who frequently had too much of the hooch and spent his nights passed out cold while his crafty sons wriggled the car keys from the breast pocket of his overcoat, still covering his heaving chest. Lord knows the devilishness they got up to. I heard one story where he hopped in his jalopy to deliver a bag of groceries to a regular customer and the babooze, as Auntie Clara came to call liquor, overtook him and he drove off the main road, still dirt then, landing deep into the woods. According to my sources, it took several men and a horse to dislodge the heap of metal from the thicket of trees.

I did not have the pleasure of meeting him. He died in 1969. I was born in 1973.

I was afraid of my Mother’s father, Cam. We called him Grandpup. He didn’t darken our door all that much. I have vague memories of him visiting when I was super young. He’d have a woman on one arm and a small dog under the other. I’d run and hide in the outer basement whenever he showed up. I can’t say why I was fearful, perhaps because he was a stranger to me? I have asked several times why he was absent, why he wasn’t more present. The only thing I can decipher from the reluctant tidbits from my Mother is when her parents split up, she went to live with her Mother and her brother, my Uncle Bill, went to live with their father. I still can’t determine the dynamics. My Mother’s lips on the subject are pinched up tighter than a drawstring purse.

At one point in my late twenties, I started a very amateur quest to fill in my family tree. Even though Grandpup kept his distance, for whatever the reason, I still wanted to know more about him. I confess, I didn’t find much more other than the fact that he was in a nursing home and that he’d love to hear from me. Wide-eyed and optimistic, I put pen to paper and sent him a heartfelt note. The reply I received back was sweet and in the neatest handwriting. It turned out, by the time I reached out, he was no longer able to hold a pen himself. One of the nurses dictated his message back to me. He died shortly after our correspondence began. I attended the funeral with my Mother and Rock Star Brother. It hurt my heart in all kinds of ways I didn’t understand. I was standing there, at his casket, saying goodbye to a stranger, one I desperately wished I’d had the chance to know. I wish he had wanted to know me too.

Three out of four, and no dice.

Finally, we come to my Mother’s mother, Reta, or Nan, as we came to know and … er … love her. At some point in my youthful existence, I believed her to be elegantly refined, even glamourous. Smelling of soft talc and White Shoulders perfume. She was a tiny woman with a kind smile, not a hair out of place. In fact, not a trinket on her dresser was out of place; an OCD my Biggest Little Sister inherited. Nan lived with Uncle Bill in Fall River for a lot of years. I loved when we’d drive out to visit. She’d greet us with a smirk and chewy finger sandwiches. I remember being infatuated with a spinning wheel in my Aunt Laverne’s kitchen and/or entry way and feeling bashful because I thought my cousins Brenda and Sherry were so beautiful. I was in awe of them.  Aunt Lavern too. She was a teacher and with my affinity for writing, even as a runt, I wanted to be as poised and as sophisticated as she. In those days, I loved checking the mail around Easter and my birthday. There’d always be a card from the Fall River address with ‘Love, Nan’ scratched inside and a crisp five-dollar bill, prefaced with a phone call later in the day where she’d say, “I know it’s not much. Don’t waste it on candy!” As if!

The older I got, the surlier she seemed. Sometimes she’d come and stay with us in Cow Bay. At first, it was fun having her around. My Mother would putter while Nan knitted. But, come bath time, she’d take the reins and I dreaded it. I’d pour my pudgy self into the tub, try and hide as much of my porky self as possible with Avon Bubble Bath. I was self-conscious for a bazillion reasons as a fat kid. I also had hard white buds of psoriasis on my elbows. Then, I had no clue what it was, but I was enormously embarrassed by it I would always hide it with longer sleeves. I had to succumb to more than my fair share of Pillsbury pokes, I didn’t need anyone pointing out additional imperfections. Nan, who didn’t have a clue what the psoriasis was either, would plunk her skinny rump on the side of the tub, take up the pumice stone and scrub at the bumps until they were raw and almost bleeding. Let’s review, put it into perspective for a moment, shall we? Pumice is formed when hot lava mixes with water and hardens, forming a porous and abrasive stone perfect for sloughing away dry skin. To be clear, I did not have dry skin. But psoriasis. When one uses a pumice stone, one is meant to soak the calloused skin in warm water, wet the stone, and gently rub in circles until the dead skin falls away. How not to use a pumice stone? Dunk a deranged looking elbow into sudsy water, grab the stone dry, and scrub side to side. Picture Cinderella, mad as a hatter at her evil stepsisters, scrubbing away at a filthy floor. That was Nan, the pumice stone, and my elbows, “Child, you are scurvy! You need to keep yourself clean!” Folks, the trauma is real. I’ll have you know that the points of my adult elbows tingled and burned while writing this.

This is redonkulously embarrassing but when I was a kid, I had a poop problem. I can’t tell you why or when it started, but, when the urge struck, I held it. Refused to go.  I remember once Father Mine took me and my Way Cooler Big Sister to visit Aunt Helen’s ceramic shop. When they were ready to leave home, I was contemplating a number two. They rushed me and I did not want to miss seeing my Aunt Helen or ceramics, so I held it. Good and tight. And, when the feeling subsided a little, I rushed out and jumped in the car with them. It was a mistake. My tummy ached and roared the whole visit. We were there forever. And, the whole time we were, I was consumed by thoughts of not having to poop. Finally, we piled back into the car to go home. I was anxious, the desire to push was great. I stood up in the back of the car, leaning up against the middle of the front seat, my bum cheeks squeezed as if my life depended on it. Father Mine sped up. He hit a bump. I wasn’t prepared. And then it happened, I soiled myself. It felt like a whole head of cauliflower in my summer shorts. The stench was immediate. I bawled my eyes out. Father Mine reprimanded me for holding it. It was a scene. It took me forever to recover.

A similar incident happened with Nan. I was stretched out on the living-room floor watching TV with the family dog, a poodle terrier, Boots. I was engrossed in whatever was on. I, at the same time, really need to poop. Nan must have been eyeing me, sitting on the chesterfield, knitting. I remember it like it was yesterday. I stifled a grunt, squeezed my bum at the same time my legs were crossed. It was like Fort Knox up in there, nothing was coming out any time soon. That is, until Nan, took her slender slippered foot, nudged me hard on the arse and told me to get the hell to the bathroom and use it. She startled me. I let go. More cauliflower. She sent me to bed with no supper. My Mother couldn’t even save me.

There is one incredibly important lesson I learned from her and that was tolerance of my fellow man. My Way Cooler Big Sister had a friend in Junior High, her name was Juanita. She was a smooth-skinned African Canadian and I was smitten. Her eyes were big and the darkest of browns, her afro impressive and kempt. She dressed like my Way Cooler Big Sister, jeans with a matching jacket, t-shirt, and runners. She sat for dinner this one evening while Nan was visiting. My Mother called everyone to the table. We all settled in for eats. Nan scanned the table and locked her eyes on our guest. She then threw her stare at my Mother and abruptly refused to eat at the table and spat, “I’ll take dinner in my room.” She said something else too that I can’t repeat here. My Way Cooler Big Sister and her beautiful friend left the table, plates still steaming, my Way Cooler Big Sister cursed toward the hallway Nan traveled down. The rest of us left ate in deafening silence.

I was oblivious at the time but in later years it was explained she left the table because Juanita wasn’t white. It devastated me. To admit my little ol’ Nan was so intolerant. I wish now I knew the reasons why. Where it came from. Her experiences. How the prejudice germinated in her. I wish I had asked her a million questions later in life, when I was mature and curious. I have never, in my whole life, considered the difference in the color of someone’s skin to mean anything less being human. In the case of Juanita, she was so strikingly beautiful, and she had this child-like laugh, I was obsessed with her awesomeness, not that she didn’t look like me, but with her person. Nan’s predisposition did not stick to my Mother and she did not pass it down to me. Quite the opposite. I am grateful for that. It’s a scary thing to witness. To admit.

Despite it all, I loved Nan. With all my heart.  I was eager to please her, which I discovered was no easy task. But, in her later years, when I was attending Junior High, she came to live with us. A meeker version of her curt self. Senior. Frail. She required constant oxygen and attention. She could never be left home alone. We had to make alterations to our house. She couldn’t climb stairs often or well. She’d come downstairs firs thing in the morning and go back up at bedtime. We built a bathroom for her in our back closet to accommodate her that still garners closet jokes, as in coming out of, to this day. She had a glider rocker that she positioned in the corner of our kitchen so she could be front and center of all the action, she was stoic but nosey. She’d sit, always with a coat sweater over her slight shoulders, gliding back and forth in quick juts on her rocker, watching, listening with her bleeping hearing aids, ready to dispense opinion.

My most favorite memory of that time is as follows. We had just finished dinner. Nan, was of course, rocking quickly to and fro in her chair. I was sitting at the kitchen table, still picking. My Mother and Way Cooler Big Sister were busy cleaning up the stove and piling dishes for washing. It was a calm, typical kitchen scene for us. My Mother, while chattering away, leaned into the bottom corner cupboard to put something away. Way Cooler Big Sister, unaware of just how close she was to her, knocked her wide hip into my Mother’s behind and shoved her head and shoulders square into the cupboard. She got stuck. Of course, we all stopped breathing for two point five seconds until my Mother yelped for help to get unstuck. My Way Cooler Big Sister, while pissing her pants laughing, yanked her out, like ripping off a band-aid. But my Nan, I had never seen her laugh so hard in my entire life. The woman who violently scraped my elbows off, who made me shit my pants, tainted a perfectly lovely meal with racism, was roaring with abandon. My Mother didn’t have time to be mad at my Way Cooler Big Sister because she was on her knees laughing at Nan laughing. I know it had to be a good feeling for her. Nan was tough on her while she was in her care. In Nan’s eyes, my Mother couldn’t do anything right. Like if Nan said, “Bring me home the sun”, my Mother would, and then Nan would lose her marbles and say, “I told you to bring me home the MOON! Do you ever listen?!” Nan’s requests were so specific, and my Mother be damned if she dared return home with what was entreated, to the letter. It made me sad for my Mother. She turned herself inside out for Nan. So, in that instant of authentic mirth, we were all just women, sharing a moment. A moment to be remembered forever.

My Nan was not a perfect person. She was deeply flawed and that’s okay. I remember her, in her last days, before she passed. She was so tired. I’d check on her, in her bedroom next to mine, on the days she couldn’t do the stairs. She’d sometimes take my hand in her soft palm, her knuckles bent from arthritis, “You’re a good girl. Stay that way.” It was a grave improvement from the time I came home for lunch with my friend the asthmatic and Nan said, “It’s too bad you aren’t pretty like she is.” As in, blonde and thin.

I didn’t make it to the hospital on the to visit before she passed away. It’s a tiny regret I carry with me on my life’s journey. Wherever she is now, I hope she knows I wasn’t lousy in the elbows and that I adored despite our ethical differences and personal hygiene practices.

Ain’t no saint, Reta. But I loved her just the same.

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It seems these little pieces of creative non-fiction are becoming something of a series. I can’t wait to see what idea comes next!

If you have Nannies and Grampies in your life, hug them for me.

In propinquity,

Nic