Jul 30 2005
Nana’s birthday
It’s my grandmother’s birthday today. My American grandmother, I always say (my other grandmother was English). But we called her Nana. Everyone in town called her The Lady. She never left the house without her shoes and handbag matching. When she died, we found a box, carefully tied with a ribbon, holding the clothing she wanted to be buried in, from the dress right down to the underwear (including a girdle!) and stockings and shoes.
That’s the kind of woman she was.
She was born 104 years ago on a farm in New York State. Her father didn’t want her to go to high school; he said it was as much use to educate a girl as a female cat. Nana didn’t listen to him. She ran away to her Aunt Louella’s house in town – Aunt Louella had shocked the town some years before by getting married in a fuchsia wedding dress – and got a job in a candy store. The store owner wisely allowed the help to eat as much candy as they wanted, since they got good and sick of it quickly and never depleted the stock.
Nana bobbed her hair, as scandalous at the time as Aunt Louella’s wedding dress had been. She not only went to high school, she went to teacher’s college. Her marks were all in the 80’s and 90’s, and she was so proud of her final exam results that she kept them and showed them to me, when she was an old lady and I was a young girl.
She became a teacher and taught in the town high school. She married my grandfather, who became the high school principal. They were devoted to each other for more than half a century. When my grandmother died, my grandfather followed her within a few months. Pneumonia, they said. But it was a broken heart.