spynotes ::
  January 09, 2006
Birthday

Today is my grandmother�s birthday. She�s 81 years old. She was born in San Francisco, California on January 9, 1925, 5 years after American women gained the right to vote. Her mother divorced her father when she was small, so she and her brother grew up with her single mother, my Granny. During the Depression, when times were hard, Granny couldn�t afford to support her kids, so my Grandma and my great uncle were sent to different families to live. They used to walk miles and miles to meet. My granny didn�t even call my grandma on her birthday. Eventually the family was reunited. My grandmother graduated from High School where, she says, Carol Channing was a senior when she was a freshman.

My grandma fell in love with a handsome soldier during the Second World War. They married a little too quickly before he shipped out to Europe and was pregnant before he left. They divorced while my mother was still a baby and my grandma and mom moved in with my granny, who had opened a dry cleaning and tailor shop on Haight Street in San Francisco. They all lived behind the store. My great grandmother was a beautiful seamstress. She made most of my mother�s clothes. When I was little she used to make me a dress every Christmas with a doll to match. She outfitted all my dolls with glamorous wardrobes, even beading jeweled necklaces for them. I adored her, although she wasn�t really interested in me. She preferred boys to girls, but she did like to sew little things. My granny was a very difficult woman.

While living with my granny and raising my mother, my grandmother went to Berkeley and graduated with a degree in accounting. It was at Berkeley that she met the man I knew as my grandfather. He had been a pilot in the war and was in school on a G.I. bill. They married when my mother was four and eventually had two more children, my aunts M. and S. My grandfather got a new job and the family of five moved to a small town in Michigan, where they all experienced culture shock.

Their house in Michigan was the one place that remained a constant in my itinerant childhood. It was a Cape Cod style house painted a deep red � something I thought was a little extravagant and very beautiful, as every house I�d ever lived in had been white with black shutters. There was an enormous blue spruce in the front yard that had once been the family Christmas tree. They planted it in the yard after the holiday was over and it soon shadowed the house. The backyard was a riot of flowers. My grandmother was a fantastic gardener. She also grew vegetables. At certain times of year, zucchini was on the menu at every meal.

When we stayed with my grandparents, my brother and I would share the room that had been my aunts�. It was a long room with pine paneling that spanned the dormer windows. The roof was angled on one side so that only a child could stand up. In between the dormers, there was a deep tunnel of a closet with doors on each end. My brother and I used to climb in and play in the dark, insulation scented space. It was full of fascinating objects � old Barbie dolls, boxes of musty books, trophies for indeterminate sports, and piles and piles of doll clothes made by my granny for my mother�s favorite doll Mary, who through some tragic accident long ago had become an amputee. It was a space full of history and possibility.

My grandmother has not had an easy life. My grandfather was an alcoholic. My aunt S. was diagnosed as psychotic and cut herself off from the family years ago. I can�t imagine what that must be like for a parent. My grandmother�s had her own demons to battle too, but as a child I never knew it. All I knew were the warm and cozy spaces, a kitchen covered in wallpaper with pictures of coffee pots and carriages on it, my grandmother always apologizing for her fantastic food, the �breezeway� an exotic type of room that I�ve never known to exist anywhere but my grandparents house (it was the unheated hall between the garage and the house carpeted in green artifical grass), the heating vents through which we could eavesdrop on the rest of the house, the duck decoys in my grandfather�s study, their collection of Asian furniture and curios acquired in San Francisco and also from my great Uncle who was a navy man and spent a lot of time in Korea, the smell of the old sofa in the living room, the endless games of cribbage with my grandfather, and oh, the presents we got there at Christmas. My brother and I were her only grandchildren (my cousin Sam wasn�t born until I was nearly out of college) and they spoiled us rotten.

When I was little, I always thought my grandmother was the most beautiful woman I�d ever seen. I always thought the glamorous picture of her from her high school graduation made her look just like a movie star. My grandfather was very dashing too. There was a photo of him in his leather jacket and flight helmet, scarf blowing in the breeze of the plane�s propellers. She kept them both in the cedar chest in my aunts� room.

When I called my grandma to wish her happy birthday this morning, she sounded happier than I�ve heard her sound in a long time. It was a beautiful day, she said, and my parents were coming to take her out to lunch and to walk in some gardens. Since she moved near my parents from California, where she and my grandfather retired and where she�s remained since his death more than ten years ago, she has become more and more the person I remember from childhood � this is a sharp turn of events from the decline she�d taken after my grandfather�s death. Although her memory is starting to fade, mine is not yet. I hope that AJ will have the chance to get to know her. I have not done her justice here. She is a remarkable woman. I hope she had a very happy birthday and I hope she has many more.

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If anyone is still reading after that much-longer-than-expected entry, I would like to point out that TranceJen has declared it National Delurking Week. Far be it from me to argue with her. You are hereby commissioned to delurk -- leave notes, comments, guestbook entries, email messages � for the blogs you read. Just say hi, neighbor! I've even made it easy for you by adding a new comments feature!

If you�re not sure what to say, here�s a suggestion: tell me what is your favorite word and why. And then go pass on the delurking good cheer to someone else.


(image courtesy of trancejen)


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