What Happened (Part 2)

The House on Cottage Street, Some Time Later

In the one story I ever heard from my infancy gospel I am an incidental character, but a catalytic one.  It also upsets long-held views of some of the people involved, with the “wicked” grandmother acting rather well and the “good” grandmother acting rather badly.  I had just been born, Mom’s second child in less than two years, and I think she may have been suffering from what would now be diagnosed as post-partum depression—though God knows she had plenty to be depressed about.

In Mom’s own words, “The first couple of years [Buddy’s] family rejected me... We went through the first year with infidelity, financial loss, and being thought of by his family as ‘awful’ for the way we supposedly treated his mother.  She hated me at the start … I took Buddy from her.  He was her security.”  Mom was stuck in the shabby little house that Omi (as we called our father’s mother, a German endearment for grandmother — her given name was Clara) had by her financial extravagances on our Uncle Bobby’s behalf forced them to take over the payments and occupy.

So when Nanny (as we called our mother’s mother, at her own request; she felt that “Granny” or any other variation on grandmother was too ageing — she was going by Sylvia at the time, a name she had taken from the actress Sylvia Sydney to replace her given name of Arzenath) showed up to visit her and see her new grandson, Mom poured out her heart and her troubles.  After her daughter laid herself bare, did Nanny offer any love, help, or even sympathy?  No, she did not!  “One of my Mom's favorite sayings was ‘You've made your bed, now lie in it.’"  Nanny gave her a speech of a harsh and bracing nature, the burden of which was that she had a brand-new helpless baby that was depending on her and that she had better suck it up and face the life she had made.

     I don’t know whether she did this just because that was the way Nanny was, or that perhaps she actually had enough insight into Mom’s character to know that to offer her support could lead Mom into an emotional wallow.  Either way, the effect was that Mom pulled herself together and persevered, until finally we came to the porch of our brand-new house and me happily bouncing away.

[Later on of course Omi became quite fond of Mom, and when Omi moved back into the house and we moved to Loop Drive, they would spend many days together playing cards and dominoes, visiting, and Mom would fix her hair and Omi would babysit us when Mom and Pop went out of town. Nanny, of course, remained as thorny and distant and demanding as ever.]