My Nana…my grandmother…lived into her 94th year. She was born in 1884 in Clinton, Massachusetts. Her grandparents immigrated from Ireland in the early 1850s just after “Clintonville” became incorporated and the Bigelow brothers’ mills made it a prosperous place to live. My great-grandfather was three years old when his family settled in Massachusetts; my great-grandmother was the sixth child, but the first of the next seven born in America. In researching my family tree, I haven’t found a record of my grandmother’s paternal grandfather. It may have been that he succumbed to disease as a result of the Irish famine and the family moved to this country to live with his relations who were already in Massachusetts.
My grandmother was the oldest of three children. Nana, even though she was pure Irish had black hair…until she was in her fifties when it began turning white…and blue eyes. She was a proper, educated lady. Nana learned four years of Latin in three and learned German, too. Nana never had tasted a drop of wine or any liquor…uncommon for the Irish of her day. She told me once, “If you taste wine or liquor, you’ll become an alcoholic.” She never told me why she thought so.
My great-grandmother had died a short time after giving birth to her third child. My great-grandfather was Clinton’s truant officer, a member of the police department. Nana’s father remarried and had three more children…I only knew of Nana and her two siblings. My grandmother, her sister, and her brother all graduated from Teachers’ College in Worcester. My great uncle moved to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts and Nana and her sister moved to Newark, New Jersey to teach school. I also wonder why she moved so far away when her home town was growing and her father was a respected member of the community.
Now that I have grandchildren of my own, I often regret that I hadn’t asked my grandmother more about her life. She did share a few stories with me, though. Nana told me of times when, as a young girl, she would arrive home from school to find a bum sleeping on her bed. Of course, it had been frightening to her. She had beautiful penmanship and because of that, she was asked to be a census taker. Nana was very proud of that. During her first year as a teacher in Newark, she was concerned because her students were falling asleep during the afternoon session. Thinking it was her teaching causing them to lose attention and drift off, she tried everything she could think of. She didn’t want anyone to know she was having a difficult time, but nothing she tried worked. Nana finally gave in and asked a colleague for advice. It was explained to her that the students’ fathers worked in the local breweries. Instead of drinking milk with their lunch, they drank beer since it was inexpensive or free. After learning about the cause of their sleepiness, she let them “sleep it off” before she began her afternoon lessons. Perhaps that had a big influence on her not wanting to sip a glass of wine with her dinner.
While teaching in Newark, Nana met her husband, my PopPop, a well to do dentist with a practice located a few blocks down from where she and her sister lived on Broad Street. PopPop had one son by his first wife; he was ten when my mother was born in 1917. About twenty years ago, I found out from one of her step-granddaughters that my Nana was PopPop’s third wife! The first one passed away; the second liked to spend his money, so he divorced her. I like to think my grandparents happened to meet because Nana needed a dentist and by chance chose him…and the rest is history, as they say.
My grandparents lived in Newark until the early 1920s. From there they moved to Maplewood, but moved back to Newark when my mother went off to college. About that time, PopPop retired and they moved down to Manasquan. My parents married in 1940…my sister was born in 1944 while Dad was in the Navy during the war…and I was born in 1949 when my family lived in Fanwood. My grandfather’s son died sometime between my sister’s and my births. He may have had a condition that had caused his mother to die early, also.
I do remember spending summer days in Manasquan, even though I was very young. Some memories actually come from pictures of us on the beach when I was one week old and of me sitting in a rocker in the shape of a dog, also on the beach, when I was two. I do remember the rocker – it was a favorite of mine. After spending time at the beach, we would walk the three blocks back to the house. Of course, I was full of sand. My grandmother would put me in the kitchen sink to wash it all off. The funniest memory I have was seeing my grandfather come into the bedroom, not knowing I was there, in his long underwear. From his reaction, you would have thought I had seen him without anything on. He was so embarrassed. To me, it was the silliest thing I had ever seen.
PopPop was an avid golfer and a master bridge player. He would drive south to Hilton Head and north to Maine with my grandmother in a robin’s egg blue 1933 Nash coupe… During one of their summer vacations in Maine, my grandfather became ill. My grandmother had to drive home, without ever driving before…it must have taken days. They had lived very well but after PopPop died Nana, worrying about her finances, sold the house. She moved into an apartment for a couple of years until she found employment with the Preventorium for Children in Farmingdale, NJ. As I remember it, she was a “house mother” for young girls from New York City who were predisposed or had been in a tuberculosis environment. The institution’s purpose was to give the children “life in the open, pure food, and wise supervision.” She enjoyed her responsibility and the children. My Nana was the true image of a “grandmother” and even the toughest of the children warmed up to her. By then her hair was mostly white with little ringlets over her entire head. Nana was warm and fuzzy while maintaining her strong inner strength and independence. She would have continued working with the children, but to her dismay, new management took over the Preventorium. They told her she had to retire; she was seventy-five.
Nana moved in with us when I was ten…it was good for my sister and I. Our mother had been diagnosed with cancer two years before. They had found the source of her many years of headaches…she had a slow growing, inoperable brain tumor.
As was my grandmother, so was my mother…a strong, independent woman. The doctors had given her two years to live – told her she wouldn’t see my sister graduate from high school, but she did and then some. They didn’t take into account her will to live. She was determined to prove the doctors wrong. She saw my sister graduate from Jr. College and her wedding, my high school graduation, and my sister’s first born…Mother’s first grandchild and Nana’s great-grandchild.
During the years that Nana lived with us, my mother was able to be active as much as her health allowed her. Even though my parents were “comfortable,” Mom enjoyed working and being active in community organizations. Most importantly, she was always there for all of us. She never let the cancer get the best of her.
Nana helped Mom by doing errands and chauffeuring us around. When she went out, she always wore a hat and gloves. (I still have visions of her during thunderstorms. She would put her hat, coat, and gloves on and sit by the door with her purse just in case lightning struck the house.) After school she would drive me eight miles, at 25 mph, in that robin’s egg blue 1933 Nash down the two-lane highway to my ballet lessons. Needless to say, I was so embarrassed…I didn’t want anyone to see me so I slid down in the seat as far as possible. It took forever…I arrived late every time. A couple of years later, time finally caught up to Nana. I’m ashamed now to say that I was relieved when she couldn’t drive anymore. She eventually sold the Nash to the postman. It seemed to me that was when she began to “age.” In addition to losing her independence, she felt so helpless as she watched her only child suffer with cancer.
My mother’s deteriorating health affected my grandmother’s, also. By then my grandmother was legally blind and began to show signs of dementia, asking where her father, sister, and brother were…worrying about a baby that she helped take care and apparently died. She was living in the past more and more. Perhaps it was God’s way of shielding her from the pain. The saving grace for Nana was Casey Stengel and the NY Mets on the radio. Nana loved her baseball. She would sit in her room for as long as the game was aired and praised Casey long after.
Mom passed away in 1967 when her only grandchild was eleven months old. My father eventually remarried, but after a while, Nana couldn’t be left alone. Nana began to leave the stove on and even flooded the kitchen a couple of times when she forgot to turn the water off. She didn’t recognize me and accused the cleaning lady of stealing her jewelry – jewelry that she had sold after my grandfather died. We had a visiting nurse a few times a week, but I couldn’t help take care of her as much as she needed. In 1972 I had graduated from college and began my first teaching job…and…planning my wedding. We had no choice but admit her into a nursing home. Other than dementia and deteriorating eye sight, Nana had never been sick until February, 1976 when she caught the flu from someone at the nursing home. My once strong Nana was unable to fight it; six weeks before my first child was to be born, she passed away.
My Nana…my grandmother…a compassionate and dedicated teacher…may my students remember their teacher as those of long ago remembered my grandmother…
My Nana…my grandmother…a strong, loving woman…may my grandchildren remember their Nana as I remember mine…
