Don’t Paint the Kitchen Green
A love story.
My mom parks the car on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn on a Friday afternoon in 1968. I’m so excited, I can barely wait for her to shift the car into park and cut the engine. I open the car door, scoot out to the sidewalk, impatient, I run down the street because I can’t wait to see Meme.
She lives in a studio apartment not too far from Prospect Park. The studio overlooks the courtyard entrance of the pre-war building she lives in. It’s on the first floor, 5 steps up from the lobby. My mom takes me to visit her sometimes so I can sleep over on the weekend.
I run into the courtyard and see her waiting for me at her open window. Has she been waiting long? She seems as excited as I am; we love each other so much. She waves and calls my name, a big smile on her face. Mom walks with me into the lobby, and I’m hit with an odd smell, an old apartment building smell that’s slightly astringent, a little sour, and somehow luscious in an indescribable and unexpected way. The smell mingles with the aromas of all the different foods the tenants cook.
Over the years I encountered the exact smell in other buildings throughout the city, and my memories of her flood back, a bittersweet mixture of joy and sadness. It conjures up waves of love, and visions of my sweet Meme. I’d linger in those lobbies, wanting to keep her with me, savoring the sudden visit I’d been granted. I wish I could describe it better. Maybe you know what I’m talking about?
Meme (pronounced ME-ME) was my grandmother. I’m now the same age as she was when I was born, give or take a couple of years. But she always, always looked like a little old lady to me, wearing her hair in an every-Friday-wash-and-set. A former redhead, her hair was like golden floss by the time I hit the scene in 1961. Her beautician styled it into a soft helmet, which Meme carefully wrapped in tissue paper every night before she went to bed. It had to last until her next appointment at the beauty parlor the following week.
She was very fair and avoided the sun because she burned easily. Her paper-thin skin was quite wrinkled. She had that floppy skin under her upper arms––I think they’re called “bat wings.” My brother and I used to paddle that skin so that it jiggled back and forth. We’d jiggle, she’d giggle, then blush. I don’t think she enjoyed the way we treated her flesh, but she tolerated it because her love for us was deep.
I named her “Meme” when I was a baby––no one seems to know why––and it stuck, though only in my immediate family. Her given name was Rose, and my cousins called her Grandma Rosie. At her tallest, she stood 4’11”. She was born two months premature, weighing only a couple of pounds; about the size of a small Cornish game hen. It’s shocking that she survived, born at home at a time when there no NICUs. My grandmother was tough in her own tender way. Delicate and sturdy, she made her way in the world and dealt with all kinds of obstacles and losses with grace. Meme had a big personality that contradicted her physical stature, though it lurked underneath a somewhat shy persona.
By the end of her life, she was even shorter, her sweet personality diminished as well. Meme was a gentle force. A doer.
She wore sensible, sturdy, lace-up black shoes, with a small heel to boost her just a bit. She always wore dresses; and marveled at the ease of polyester that didn’t need ironing. One less thing for her to care for. She wore a girdle, a long line bra with 5 hooks in the back and straps that sometimes slipped from her gently sloping shoulders, nylons with a garter belt, and a proper slip every single day. She called her rain boots “galoshes”, and her suitcase was a “valise.” She always kept a Kleenex tucked in her sleeve. In the 1950s and 60s, her eyeglasses were the popular cat eye frames of the era, with an understated spritz of marcasites embellishing each corner. I recall her wearing modest shorts, just once, when she visited the beach house my family rented one summer when I was 5. Wearing shorts was extremely out of character for my proper grandmother. I never saw her in a bathing suit. Her exposed ghost-pale legs were jarring in their unfamiliarity. I think the shorts made her uncomfortable, too.
In 1944 she found herself suddenly widowed. She was a responsible single parent who raised two kids alone. She never remarried or even dated after my grandfather’s death. She didn’t have the time or inclination to date. She was busy and she had work to do. In keeping with her exacting nature and logical mind, she worked as a bookkeeper well past retirement age and never called in sick. She was careful with money and provided for her family as best she could.
As she raised two children, she longed for a better apartment than the one they inhabited. She dreamed of finding just the right place for them, and more than anything wanted a green kitchen, a fashionable color of the 1940s, a sign of style and success. Finding good housing was difficult, especially when one had limited resources; she was always on the lookout, daring not to hope too hard, to quell (in advance) the likelihood of disappointment. She’s the source of a piece of family wisdom; she’d say “Don’t paint the kitchen green,” which meant don’t count on anything until you know it’s a done deal. Her sage advice reminds me to stay present when I become invested in a future outcome I can’t control.
Her Brooklyn studio was spartan, simple and spare. Her single bed, hard-as-a-rock, was always perfectly made. It lived pushed up against a wall, to allow for more floor space in the one large room, and a couch sat against another wall, where I would sleep when I stayed over. She ate her meals at a small table in her kitchen. The bathroom, tiled white, was always sparkling clean. Longer than it was wide, all the fixtures lined up against one wall. First, there was a stall shower with a textured glass door. She never used it for bathing. That’s where she kept her vacuum, broom, dustpan, mop, and bucket. The bathtub was next to the shower, and the toilet was at the end, next to a tiny window, facing a small sink.
Meme never liked showers, preferring a bath every morning. I’m sure it had something to do with not wanting to mess up her careful hairdo. She slept on her back, and remained in that position all night. Every night, she wrapped tissue paper around her coif and clipped it into place. If she moved her head even slightly while she slept, the paper would crinkle softly, a whisper in the dark. She’s the only person I’ve ever known to sleep without a pillow. Her explosive snores roared all night with occasional lapses into stillness that were then interrupted by huge snorting blasts that would jar me from my sleep. She said she had a deviated septum. If she were alive today, she’d be using a CPAP device, just as I do now. It would definitely mess up her hair.
Whenever we had an overnight visit, I’d try to fall asleep before she would get into bed as a hopeful defense against a sleepless night. But it mattered little to me in the long run, because I was with Meme.
My grandmother was my refuge, my haven, whether she was aware of it or not. She saw me clearly and loved me unconditionally. I’ve never loved another person in the same way as I love(d) her. When I was a child, she would hug me tightly and I’d burrow into her softness, as she squeezed me firmly in her arms. I never wanted her to let me go.
When she’d visit me, we’d sleep in my bedroom together. The bottom drawer of my trundle bed pulled out so I could sleep on the not-as-comfortable foam mattress, with Meme taking my bed which was higher up, and easier for her to access. It too, had a hard-as-a-rock mattress much like the one she had at home. At night, her dental bridge would soak in a repurposed shrimp cocktail glass that sat beside the sink in the bathroom my brother and I shared. When she’d go back to her apartment in the city, the shrimp cocktail glass was tucked away in the vanity drawer, next to her neatly clipped and folded tissue paper, patiently waiting for her next visit.
I’d beg her to tell me stories of her childhood, but she’d change the subject; the only thing she’d say was “we all worked very hard.” I do recall her describing a wooden hoop and stick she liked to play with on the sidewalk outside her family home in Greenwich Village, and a story about her washing dishes at the age of two or three, standing on a chair pulled up to the sink so she could reach.
No one knew how old Meme really was and it wasn’t talked about much, mostly to protect a not-so-secret family secret. When she was a young woman, she and her siblings all agreed to lie about their ages at the behest of their oldest sister, my great aunt Lily. There was no turning her down. Lily was single and close to spinster age. As each day passed without a suitor, Lily became more unmarriageable. As a nod to Lily’s vanity, and a general fear of repercussions should anyone object, all 7 brothers and sisters deducted years from their ages to support her lie, an intricate––and probably unnecessary ploy––so she could get a man. Meshuga, all of them! That’s Yiddish for crazy. Of course, family lore gets exaggerated with each retelling. No one knows for sure how much of this legend is true. The date on Meme’s gravestone records her birth year as 1900. She was 96 years old on paper but was closer to 100 by our estimates.
Meme loved to read and go to the theater; she took me with her to plays and movies. We had fun. She adored Barbara Walters, and grudgingly accepted and grew to love Jane Pauley when she took over at The Today Show in 1976. Her culinary specialities were date and nut bread (not my fave) and stewed fruit. My grandmother could pick a chicken carcass clean to the bone, leaving not a scrap of meat behind. Shalimar was her fragrance of choice and Jean Naté was a close runner up. Meme knew her way around a Scrabble board, her knowledge of two letter words and strategy made her hard to beat. I still have her set with all the letters intact. She discovered the joy of crocheting when I was a kid. Everyone in my family (everyone!) was gifted with an afghan blanket of our own. She churned them out with amazing speed, proudly choosing color palettes to match our rooms.
When I was 14 or 15, Meme moved south to Memphis to be with my uncle and his family. The weather was better for her as she was starting to decline and winters were hard in New York. She began experiencing recurring bouts of depression, sometimes needing hospitalization. Depression runs in my family, especially among the women. But we wrote letters back and forth and every so often I’d discover a check for $10 tucked in the envelope, and on my birthday, she’d send me $25. I have every letter she ever sent. My uncle was a doctor; and was better equipped to care for her as she aged. It broke my heart to lose her from my daily life. Later, he moved the family to Chicago, where the weather was much harder, but at that point she didn’t go out much. I saw her rarely and her descent was steep.
In the middle of February 1996, I got the call that she had died. The funeral was organized quickly, her body transported to back to New York and I white-knuckled my way from upstate during a white-out blizzard. I was barely able to see the car in front of me, as I efforted to use its taillights as my guide all the way there. I held her in my heart as I drove––sobbing at the wheel––but trusting that I’d arrive safely at my destination.
She’s been gone for almost 30 years, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of her, my guiding angel. I wear her wedding band every day.
In 2012, at the age of 51, I was finally able to buy a home of my own. The first thing I did was paint my kitchen green.
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You’re a captivating writer, Nan. Here’s to green kitchens and loving grandmothers.
The kitchen is just the right shade of green.