It was fifty years ago on this date, a few days before my sixteenth and a half birthday, a time when all I cared about was what pool I could sneak into--or be legitimately invited to--and watching "The Dick Cavett Show"
I'd watch it on a black and white portable TV, a Sweet Sixteen gift received six months earlier from my brothers, probably the best gift I ever got(my reaction upon unwrapping the paper is on 8mm film somewhere) because my Mom convinced me that the heavy box my cousin Andy carried into the Sweet 16 venue, Fisher's Restaurant, contained "heavy robes and pajamas."
My grandmom Sarah gave me a SAPPHIRE(there's that word again) class ring, that would be stolen and never recovered in my first year of college, and that is significant because it was the last gift she'd ever give me.
My grandmom died on this date fifty years ago, and I remember my Dad knocking on my bedroom door, where the mirrors were covered with icy frost, due to all the cross ventilation from the two air-conditioned bedrooms(mine was not) and saying, "Grandmom didn't make it."
He quietly left the room and I put 'The Dick Cavett Show" back on, and I cried, partially because I knew I'd never see my grandmother again, but mostly due to guilt, because..who returns to a TV show, even one hosted my a witty intellectual who was her major crush, just after receiving news that her grandmother died?
If a miraculous portal could be built just long enough for her to visit, she'd meet her ten great grandchildren and eight great great grand children, a lot of them named after her.
When it was my chance to chat with her, (as her second eldest grandchild and the first of two granddaughters) I'd let her ask the questions and I'd let her do most of the talking.
I'd show her the photo album I made that was passed around at her shiva..I hand-glued and cut two feet that I had drawn free-style on contact paper for the cover. Her nickname was "Feet" because she'd boast about how gorgeous hers were--and they were! She could have been a shoe model.
I'd congratulate her for being the most Americanized of all her sisters--five girls and one boy came over from a town in the Ukraine, but my grandmom was the only one who lost her Russian accent. She'd tell my great Aunt Minnie that the word was pronounced "hamburger"..not "ahm-bah-gah"
She'd encourage me to write and encourage me to draw and encourage me to lose weight..(One and a half out of three ain't bad!)
She'd send me birthday cards, where she'd always spell my middle name, Randi, with a "Y" even 'though my mom corrected her a million--I mean--sixteeen-times.
She loved our family mutt, Sandy, and saved up any leftover meat or bones she had in her freezer for him. . We..(not we..I was just a Dick Cavett obsessed teenager).. we, the PARENTS in my family ..were not too responsible, or maybe that's just what life was like in the 70's, would let Sandy out without a leash, and he'd always manage to find his way to their home, probably a good two miles away, where he'd be greeted with some leftover meatloaf, and love from my grandma, and a crude joke about his "pink hairless testicles" from my grandfather.
I often wonder what my 119-year-old grandmom would think about me, her eldest grand daughter, these days.
I'm not sure what her exact thoughts would be, but I think she'd be proud of my vivid, accurate memory, and they way I share so many past events with so many relatives..and friends..and complete strangers.
Grandmom, would it be cool if I shared a few slightly embarrassing stories today, on the fiftieth anniversary of your passing?
Like the time you were walking down Wyoming Avenue, and your "bloomers" suddenly fell down? In front of people you knew?
Or the time your sweet little daughter, my beloved Aunt Ruby, was sleeping soundly in your suburban Boston home, and you yelled at a neighborhood kid for disturbing her slumber..and that kid grew up to be Leonard Bernstein?
Or..my favorite story of all--when the pathologist found "abnormal particles" in the stool specimen you submitted to the lab, because that sample had been sprayed with Channel Number Five perfume, because, you being..well..YOU..the girly girl who gave her daughters the names Laurel and Ruby, like the flower and the jewel, would never submit a stool sample that might offend a scientist in a lab?
Too bad if these stories embarrass you, Grandma..who told you to be the grandmother of a girl without a filter?
And isn't this more fun than lighting a memorial candle?
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