Things
have been pretty hectic in our household for the last few months, as some of
you know. My mom gave us a scare a month ago; heart palpitations that woke her
in the middle of the night and sent her to the ER. I've been approached with a
job offer at a startup company on the other side of the country, but nothing
has been decided. It's the Christmas season and my family and friends in Ohio
are sending waves of "we miss you" across the internet, tugging on my
sentiments. All in all, my emotions have taken more twists and turns than a
rollercoaster. It's no surprise to me that I woke the other morning remembering
a person and a place that gave me great comfort as a child. It wasn't my Mamaw;
she was a delicate, tender person, but I only saw her twice a year at most. It
wasn't my evil Grandma either. I always felt like an intruder in her home and
crept around trying to make as little noise as possible. The person I miss,
whose comfort I crave the most, was the lady across the street.
Gertrude
Deszi and her husband Gustav lived across the street from my family for roughly
twenty-five years. Both were first generation Hungarian-Americans, with one
important difference. Gus' family was Catholic, while Gert's was Jewish.
Neither of them ever spoke about it, but I gather from their silence that their
marriage was a bit of a scandal for both families. I can only image how
difficult things were for them, but I think that having experienced my own
family's harsh disapproval of my relationship with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wafflelips
I can relate a little.
Gus was a
paratrooper in World War II. There was a photograph of him in their living
room; young and dashing in his uniform. He was captured and spent time in a
German POW camp. He was treated poorly, to say the least. When he returned, the
left side of his face hung slack, all muscle control lost. The dashing young
man in the photograph was gone forever. His speech was badly slurred
afterwards, and I think he was self-conscious about talking to people. He spent
many hours in his garden tending his flowers. When Gus got older and sicker, it
was I who'd tend the flowers. I'd cross the street to mow his lawn, rake the
leaves, shovel the snow from his driveway. I didn't really mind. I feigned
teenage apathy, but truth be told I was happy to help them.
They
never had children. I think it was because they were unable, not because they
were unwilling. Gert took my mother under her wing readily enough. I imagine
them early on, my young mother with an infant daughter living hundreds of miles
from her mother and sisters. Her husband working long hours, leaving her home
alone. And I wonder if she and Gert found some sort of comfort in each other, a
surrogate mother daughter relationship to fill the void in their lives.They
certainly acted that way. I can still hear Gert calling after my mother,
reminding her to "put your babushka on Mave, the wind is cold and you know
how sensitive your ears are." Now that I think of it, Gert was the only
person I can recall mothering my mother.
If she mothered
my mom, then she grandmothered us kids. I spent many afternoons at her house.
First we'd cross the street; look left, right, then left again. Cross the
street and walk up the drive, around the corner of the red brick house to the
door at the back. Enter the warm kitchen to see Gert sitting at her kitchen
table, watching Let's Make a Deal or Mike Douglas on the tiny black and white
television. Maybe Tom Jones was on the
variety show; how she loved Tom Jones, would cackle and fan herself with the
paper when he performed. Gert would come to me, give me a squeeze. Then she'd
lean down and pinch my cheeks. "Would you look at those cheeks?"
she'd exclaim. "I could just eat 'em up." I found the routine
slightly unnerving but Mom never looked worried. I came to the conclusion that
it was just a weird quirk of Gert's.
Mom would
sit to her right, I would sit across the table. Gert would go to the counter,
open the pink box from Hough bakery and let me have one or two cookies. If Mom
said it was okay, she'd even let me have some Coca-Cola in one of the Cleveland
Browns glasses that was small enough for my hands, cheap enough not to worry if
it slipped from my hand. I was too little to realize this. They seemed rare and
precious to me, so I would carefully place the glass on the placemat and hand
it back to her when I was finished, proud that I could be trusted with such
treasures. While I ate the cookies, she and Mom would talk. Gert would consult
the folded paper at her side, glance through her magnifying glass at the
lottery numbers. Then she'd replace it next to the pack of Lucky Strikes
unfiltered cigarettes that sat on the table to her left.
She was
diagnosed with lung cancer when I was a junior in high school. She didn't last
very long afterwards. Mom visited her in the hospital constantly. I was
reluctant to go, but Mom was unrelenting. "You need to go see her." I
went. I didn't recognize Gert; on morphine, barely conscious. I didn't
recognize Gus either, sitting trembling by her bedside. I didn't recognize what
it meant when Gert gasped for air, then went silent. Mom and Gus did. Gus broke
down sobbing while Mom called for the nurse. I stood at the foot of the bed,
staring up at Gert, waiting for her to breathe again, to laugh, to talk, to
advise my mother. But she was gone.
It took
me a while to understand why I mourned for her so. My grandmothers both passed
away when I was in college, and while it saddened me their passing never broke
my heart. I thought of them occasionally but I never yearned for them like I
yearn for that red brick house, that warm kitchen. But one day I was telling a
friend a story about her; when I finished my friend smiled and said "She
sounds like my bubbe." And there I had my answer; I couldn't call her my
grandmother but I wouldn't refer to her as the lady across the street, either.
She was my bubbe. It seems a reasonable compromise.
Happy New
Year, Gert. Te hiánzik nekem.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
