Family Legends – Truth or Fiction?

My parents, for all their faults and imperfections, loved me.  This I know.  And they taught me many things.  I am the person I am today because of them.  And this is good.  I believe I am a good person.  Do I long to be a better person? – oh yes!  But I hope that everyone does. 

My experience with grandparents has been limited and stunted. I didn’t have much to compare to.  Although, I have to admit, I didn’t realize I didn’t have much to compare to until I was shown the opposite. 

My maternal grandmother was a drinker.  Every day, after a certain time, she would crack open a bottle of beer.  Time has dulled my memory of WHAT time it was; part of me thinks it’s the cliché 5:00, but I seem to remember it being earlier, perhaps 3.  Or Noon on holidays.  (A policy that I still personally follow to this day, not clearly acknowledging why, I cannot myself have a drink before noon – not even a mimosa at a bridal brunch, or a Bloody Mary at a vacation breakfast.).  Her drinking routine even family members recall fondly with jokes, how she loved her “Black Label” (one of her early beer brands of choice) or later, Budweiser.  Cheerfully recalling this memory, completely ignoring that, this woman very well could have had a problem.  A drinking problem.  By bed time she would be fairly smashed.  Not many people saw that part.  She lived alone, or with a certain daughter who wouldn’t dare speak ill of her, so no one knew that she was raving into the night, conversations with dead relatives or screaming at ghosts of her past to leave her children alone. 

And she loved me.  I was one of her favorites.  Apparently.  However, I did not know this.  She was close with all of her daughters, all in a different way.  At one part of my mother’s life she needed help with childcare.  And my grandmother was willing to help.  So I became closer with her simply because she and I spent every day together after school.  I would take the bus to her house, and we would spend the afternoon watching soaps on TV.  From 1-4.  Everyday.  All My Children.  One Life to Live. General Hospital.  In that order.  Some days she would make a snack for herself, saltine peanut butter sandwiches.  She did not share. 

She had (what would end up to be) 23 grandchildren.  This is only counting the direct children of her 9 biological children & 1 foster child.  On Sundays and holidays, she would hold court, receiving the onslaught of visitations from most of her children and their children, usually all at varied times.  On Sundays, she would have the makings of sandwiches for everyone (ham for the grown ups only, bologna for the kids).  On Holidays there would a corresponding buffet feast for everyone to enjoy as they passed through or stayed.  And dessert of course.  I spent so much time with her and at her house that I was there for most of the varied visitations.  I got to see the comings and goings of the various aunts, uncles and cousins.  And no one seemed any different than me.  She treated them all dotingly.  Hugs and kisses abound, latest school pictures on her shelves.  Presents for birthdays and Christmas.  Coloring books and crayons always within our reach, books and unlimited playtime outside, together.   Each would share their report card, and if stellar, would get a dollar or more depending on the degree of stellar.  Some came and visited more often, and therefore some cousins bonded more than others.  Some came sporadically.  However, from my view, the playing field was equal, and we were all loved with the same level of divine impartial tenderness. 

Until one day I was slapped, almost literally, with the brusque, merciless, harsh perspective from one of the ‘lesser loved’.  “All my life,” she said with a distinct sneer, “I hated you.”  She didn’t mince words.  Perhaps this was one of her talents, she told things as it were.  She pulled no punches.  No, she certainly did not PULL any punches; she just came out and punched.  Period.  “I hated you because you were Grandma’s favorite.”  I was rendered beyond speechless with this revelation.  “All we all ever heard about was how wonderful you were.  How great you did in school.  How you got a part time job at the library.  How you spent the day with her.  How you cooked dinner, and made sure that you brought over a dish just for her.  On and on.  That’s all we heard.  And I hated you for it.”  True I knew that my grandmother put me in the center of the universe, but I thought that all my cousins were right there with me.  Sharing and occupying the nucleus of her universe equally.  All equal recipients of her attention and love.  This disclosure coupled with her emotional confession hit me as if she had indeed struck out physically.  I would never want my cohorts, my playmates, my family, my cousins, to feel ‘lesser’ in any way.  And certainly not ‘lesser’ to me. 

Logically it was pointed out to me, by some one else less enmeshed, if they had done as well in school, gotten a good job, spent more time with her, or brought her meals, then perhaps, they too, would be raved about.  And envied.  But in the meanwhile, it was I, who was “hated”.  And it hurt.  I presume it was supposed to.

My grandfather, her husband, was a rough and tough kind of guy.  Tall, crew cut, chewed on a cigar.  Never smoked it, just chewed on the ends until it was some sort of mangled wet glob of tobacco and wrap.  Cool and unemotional.  This is how I remember him anyway.  I heard stories that he was mean when he was younger.  My mother told me of times when he hit her, or her brothers or sisters.  And not just a spanking, but an outright beating.  Things were different then, she would say.  But you could tell even she knew it was a bit over the line.  She had a scar on her leg from where one time he whipped her with a weeping willow branch.  She couldn’t recall why.   

He liked to be called POP.  Not Grandpa.  Not Dad.  But Pop.  It was generic enough for everyone to use it, his children, his grandchildren, even those stragglers that his wife and his kids brought along for Sunday lunch.  Just Pop.  When I knew him, he worked in a gun factory, quite a number of my family did.  He retired around 1982 or so – give or take, I was 10.  My youngest aunt had her first baby that year.  A baby girl.  A baby girl of his baby girl.  He totted over that little girl.  He was seen pushing her stroller, playing with her dolls, being generally affectionate.  It was a side of him none of us were able to enjoy, because he never had the time previously.  I don’t remember us being jealous.  I remember us knowing it just made sense. Retired, he had the energy, the patience and the interest.  He also would take a couple of us girls on an impromptu trip.   We would get in the car and just go for a ride.  Sometimes it was just a ride around the local towns, past the beaches or state parks.  Sometimes we ended up in Vermont.  Or at Santa’s Village.  Or Storybook Land.   Without a piece of luggage packed!  We would stop at K-mart once we got there, and pick up a new outfit and a set of PJs.  Not only did we get a fun spontaneous trip, but we got a new outfit out of the deal!

On the Sundays and Holidays, when his wife was the queen receiving her many visitors, he held his own court of sorts.  A friendly card game between the men of the family, his sons, my uncles, and, if they were lucky, the husbands of his daughters, too.  Every so often, a daughter would slip in for a hand or two.  That was not the norm, and we girls always felt a little bit of pride that ‘one of us’ was let into that sacred circle.  It had the appearance of a simple men’s poker game.  But it was not.  Not Poker, anyway.  It was cribbage, or Hearts, or Spades, or something along those lines.  Usually Cribbage.  And my father taught me the game.  It seemed one of those rights of passage that we needed to know in our family:  The game of Cribbage.  (15-2; 15-4.  That’s about all I can remember of if these days.)  I believe money was sometimes exchanged, pennies on the point.  But money wasn’t the purpose of the event; it was clearly just for the sport of it.  But it did seem like a close knit club of men, not open and welcoming to newcomers, but an exclusive circle of seasoned semi-related men, seated around a table, seriously choosing their cards.  Their leader chewing on a mangled nub of a cigar.

These were my maternal Grandparents.  Flawed as the best or worst of them.  I am lucky.  I have good memories of both of them.  They were characters in their own way with faults of their own, but very forgivable faults.  But I am a little biased, as it turns out.  There are horror stories.  Family legends.  Stories of mafia type (perhaps not the Italian Mafia, but a local more WASPY type group) involvement.  Running numbers and sports gambling.  My grandfather being some sort of enforcer type.  There were rumors about a friend of the family who touched people inappropriately – but no one would say who; or even who the victims were.  Protecting the guilty and the innocent.  There are stories of violence by the hand of both of them, on their children, and one of their eldest granddaughters.  Crazy, insane stories, involving kitchen items speared across the room, and threatening knives. 

And then there is the medical story.  My grandmother was diabetic.  Lost a few toes to unmanaged diabetes.  And then suffered a stroke.  She relearned how to talk and write only to die peacefully in her sleep for no other apparent reason.  My grandfather had a heart attack fairly young.  And then was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  I didn’t see him much once he got sick, by his choice, or so I was told.  He didn’t want anyone to see him once he was in the hospital.  Remember him as he was.   I can respect this, now, having watched two of my dearest loved ones waste away to that dreaded disease.  For most of my life, since his death, I was told it was prostate cancer.  However, when my own mother died way too young from Colon cancer it was revealed to me that it was colon cancer that also took my grandfather’s life.  Or maybe not.   

               

My daughter was the luckiest little girl to have TWO sets of loving grandparents.  Two grandmothers and two grandfathers.  My parents and my husband’s parents taught me all about being fantastic grandparents.  My daughter is the center of their world.  Sometimes they spoil her, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  They love her unconditionally.  Whether she does well in school or not, whether she sings on key or off, whether she is clean or dirty, girly or not.  They love her with all their very being.

I was amazed to see even my parents melt when that little girl was in their arms.  They didn’t have the best of role models of how to love this little bundle, but they didn’t need any.  They just followed their hearts.  They played with her, and played along with her.  They climbed into that tent and read Baby Beluga for the 10^th time, and they passed that overgrown colorful ball in the backyard.  And they knew instinctively to hold that cold plum to her swollen painful teething gums and let her gnaw her way to the juicy pulp.  And many many more stories like these.  Stories that I will continue to tell her long after they are gone, and they are barely a memory.  Family legends in their own right.