On Nanny in November

I thought that, just as an exercise, I would try to think about things that I admired about Nanny, my mother’s mother. I’ve written enough about what a terrible person she was; surely, she must have had some positive traits or done some good things? I know Susan remembers her fondly; I can only imagine that’s because Nanny must have had some qualities she admired. What those were I can only speculate; perhaps you’d have to be a fellow female to do so.

One of the earliest fond memories I have of Nanny was that when we were little and visiting her shop, she would give us our own Cokes. Believe it or not, soda was a rather rare treat for us, and to have our own bottle (rather than it being totted out in small glasses) seemed like a luxurious upgrade.

And she had ambition, and a work ethic. Anyone who opened so many beauty shops could not sit around on their laurels. True, she didn’t seem to know how to curate it once she had it. She did know how to personally lever it once she had it, using ‘wealth’ to manipulate her family and to gain appeal in what I must reluctantly refer to as her ‘sex life,’ including attracting husbands. Much of my early life was Mom and us kids frantically juggling stuff between her shops as she tried to build an empire. Not pleasant, but … ambitious.

I always admired her taste in Christmas decorations, too. I was pleased when Mom inherited so many of them, because they had been a bright spot in my otherwise Christmasless childhood. They seemed the one toehold of whimsey in her life. I remember listening to her Christmas records many times during dull stretches when I was trapped over there for one reason or another.

I also have a sneaking admiration for her painting skills. That she had the stick-to-it-tivness to try painting for so long. And she produced some passable efforts, especially in her still-life flowers. She had some vision of beauty and tried to reproduce it.

I think, in the final analysis, Nanny was a cosmetician down to her bones. Quality didn’t seem to matter to her very much, just the appearance of it. The fancy house she built was not sturdy, but it mocked an image of durability.  Much of her existence seemed to follow this rule: a constant dance of smoke and mirrors, an illusion held together only long enough to serve her purposes, which dissipated when one tried to touch the reality of it. She was a master of putting lipstick on a pig, but it always helped her sell the pig. One can admire her salesmanship, if not her product. If only this ability had always been directed toward more solid, worthier goals. A desperate dance of survival, not without skill.

I came to praise Nanny somehow, but I’ve had to place so many qualifiers around what I can say about her that it comes across as a not-so-subtle put-down. But so it goes. Even her own children could not think of anything nice to say at her funeral. “Why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.” But that might have happened to her, however she was.

The irony of it is that I’m thinking of her so much, even almost thirty years after she’s passed away. In fact, I’ve become sort of her half-assed biographer. I doubt if any of the family has written so much about her as I have. She was certainly a strong character, like you can say that Hitler was a stand-out character of the 20^th Century. Nanny passed away on November 12, 1997; perhaps that’s what brought her to mind.