NANA

My maternal grandmother, Nana was always ancient. Her face was wrinkly and the skin on her arms hung like draperies, her hands were knurled and veiny, their age accentuated by bright red nail polish. I watched her hands a lot as a child. They were my focal point when she told me stories, when they held a cup and read the tealeaves, when she mixed fruitcake ingredients in a big bowl, and especially when she held playing cards. For it was at those times my world was a glorious land of gaming. Puzzles and games were her life blood and since she lived with us much of the year, we played a lot. She was my roommate during my early childhood in Ohio, spending countless hours with me while my Mother was busy with the triple whammy of three baby sisters. I used to rummage through Nana’s “special” drawer in her dresser when she was away, looking at the little woven grass slippers made by Indians, her Eastern Star ring and pins, and especially the little test-tube vials of powdered pigments from her china painting days. These were so intriguing to me, so like the chemicals in my brother’s chemistry set, but strangely out of place nestled here in a drawer with embroidered handkerchiefs. I felt sure that they had magical powers. By her bed was a little porcelain figurine and a tree. I don’t think the tree was alive, it was more like a sculpture tree, but it did have moss around it’s trunk and some kind of dried vegetable matter on it’s branches for the “leaves” –‘cause I touched it! We also had a neat nightlight in our room that automatically lit when you lifted it up. It was metal, in the shape of a candlestick, with a bulb where the flame would be. We both used it on nightly bathroom calls. The light wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the side hallway down to my brother’s room. This was bad since I imagined the giant Tarantula spider lurking there. (As a 2nd grader, I had gone to way too many horror films with my older brother.) I would hurry along tightly clutching the light and keeping my eyes averted from the terror of the shadows.
Nana would spend half the year with one daughter and the other half with the other. Much of the time in Ohio she was with us or visiting her siblings here and there. She divorced my grandfather Papa when my Mom was 14 years old, and was unwise with her settlement. Spitefully refusing to follow Papa’s advice on investing, she lost most of it and was forced to live with relatives for her remaining years, eagerly awaiting her social security check like a kid waiting for her allowance. When we moved to California and lived on Seahurst, she was a permanent morning fixture, perched on a barstool at the kitchen counter with coffee, cigarette and crossword. Up for hours and all coffeed up, she was way too cheerful and chatty for our groggy, not-ready-for-school selves. We tried to hide in our Cheerios and the morning comics to avoid conversations and her “so you’re off to schooly-ooly!” chatter.
(I have a mental picture of my daughters reading this and thinking “boy does this sound like MOM!” - Well it’s in my blood and probably in theirs too.)
I remember a period in the 60’s when Nana was all keen on winning herself a Pontiac Grand “Per-ee” as she put it. The newspaper was running a game with a word jumble that unscrambled to reveal the name of some obscure Island. Each week a new island’s name was decoded and dutifully mailed off to the PO Box. She did make the finals but alas, never won. She had a nice car, a Pink Plymouth sedan with clear plastic covering the seats. She used it to drive back and forth to my Aunt’s home in the valley for extended stays and often we kids would accompany her. In the summers Mom and my Aunt would trade children for awhile and everyone got a new take on family. It was especially nice for the twins and Chris and cousin Anne as they were close in age and often in tune with the same pastimes. It was also great for Tom and Sue, the two late arrivals of our families. There was an exotic quality to living at my aunts home, the dynamics were different, the pace, the smells of the house. This novelty was mixed with a burning desire to return to my own home, room, dog, etc. In the early days our house had a pool and theirs didn’t. With their location in the San Fernando Valley and its 100°+ temps, we suffered and did our best to distract ourselves with games and stories. They had different old stuff in their closets that they would bring out and tell us about, plus my uncle kept pigeons! This was good and bad. They cooed and pooped outside the window of the room I stayed in, but I could look out the window and watch my Uncle take them out and feed them. We had no birds at our home, dogs, horses, ducks, guppies, rabbits, mice, fish, lizards, and for a short time a goat, but no birds – Mom hated them and the poop was probably a contributing factor. Nana loved birds (her room at my aunt’s was happily beside the coop) and once bought one from the Newberry’s pet department at our local shopping center. It was supposed to be ‘for’ me and her story to Mom was that it was free in some sort of promotional giveaway. It was a little yellow and grey bird of unfamiliar species – nothing recognizable like the canaries and parakeets some of my friends had, just a little molting bird that sat in its cage and pooped and never made a peep. It met with an untimely death when Dad was paneling the pool house where Nana lived. The sudden sound of his electric drill gave it a heart attack and we found it keeled over later that afternoon. Few tears were shed at its funeral. The pool house was built to accommodate my Grandma as well as provide bathroom and dressing space for swimmers and a recreation room. It had a large room with a fireplace and room for a pool table (Dad’s joy) with a small bedroom and bath off to the side. When Nana still lived out there, we’d go out and visit her - watching her TV, drinking cokes, eating forbidden cookies and candy, it was cool. After she died (1966), one by one we moved out there, as a sort of rite of passage for whoever was the eldest child still living at home. Separate from the house and out of earshot of our parents, Nana’s old room retained its aura of decadence as if still under her mystical influence.