After both sets of grandparents ended up moving to the same Center City apartment building, I spent most Sunday afternoons throughout my childhood visiting one and then the other, starting with Rose and Sam, my father’s parents, and ending with Leah and Grampy, my mom’s. We’d take the elevator to Rose’s floor, where we three kids always hung back by dragging our feet down the long, carpeted hallway. Our hands glued to our sides, we’d refuse to knock on the door, hissing back and forth, “You knock,” and “No, you knock,” until our father or mother would reluctantly lift the knocker to announce we were there.
Rose and her witch shoes would loudly clomp to the door, where she’d fumble to unlock the many locks guarding her fortress. As soon as I heard the final clonk of the last dead bolt, signaling she’d be popping her angry face out like a frightening jack-in-the-box, I’d have to force myself to breathe, because I dreaded her claw-like hand’s grab, which pulled me to her mouth so she could suck my cheek instead of softly kissing it. I don’t know if the rest of my family hating being cheek-sucked or visiting her as much as I did, because we never discussed it, but I’m guessing they wished they could be anywhere else but there, too. Since I only vaguely remember silent Grandpop Sam, I’m guessing that’s because wild, Jewish Rose takes up most of the room in my now middle-aged memory bank.
After she unhanded me, I’d walk inside and pay silent homage to 4 year-old me dressed up in my hand-me-down party dress, heart necklace (my one and only present from Rose), and black patent shoes, captured forever inside the one displayed picture on the cabinet next to the door: Rose and Sam’s Fiftieth wedding anniversary at the Warwick hotel. All I knew about Rose and Sam was in this family portrait, where all of us (except my cousin M, who wasn’t born yet) were permanently captured together as a family for the first and only time. I know they say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but I wish my grandmom had been able to substitute even half of those thousand, so I’d have learned more about her than the almost-nothing I knew and know.
What I can tell you about Rose is that she was short, low-to-the-ground, Yiddish-accented, unfriendly, boxlike, and scary. She sported dangling arm flesh, bright red lipstick, black clumpy lace-up shoes, and a humorless countenance. I used to stare at her in dread, wishing to be anywhere else but near her. She didn’t hug, coddle, or talk, although she sure did loom large. The only grandmotherly act I remember her performing was to offer us a dish of dried, stale candy, which she’d slam down on the coffee table and order us to “Est and be qviet.” As deprived of candy as we three kids were, and we were seriously deprived (my mom, dead against sweets, convinced me that even looking at candy would rot my teeth), I was never able to enjoy (or swallow) one piece of that white-spotted drek, Sunday after Sunday, during those interminable visits.
My favorite part of the visit occurred when my mother cheerfully reminded Rose it was time for us to visit her parents, our well-deserved reward for withstanding Rose’s unpleasantness. Getting off the elevator a second time, we three kids would race each other to the next set’s door, then fight each other to be the first to knock with all our might. Once inside, I’d snuggle up to Grampy or search for treasures in Leah’s drawers, which held a mish-mash of colorful costume jewelry, eyeglasses of every shape and hue, and little plastic volcano-shaped viewfinders with pictures of the two of them posing jauntily on vacation in Florida.
Now that I’m a grandmom, I wonder what the grandkids will remember about me, now that I have my own set of unmistakable DNA-twinned arm flaps (even after religiously lifting weights) and enough inner Leah to shower the people I love with love. At least when they’ve traveled over the river and through the woods, they’ll find a stash of children’s book to rival a library, many of the kids’ best-loved toys, and my husband’s and my two hearts (silver and gold) ready to burst with adoration when the time comes for our little treasures to come knocking at our door.
Oh, boy, does hope ever spring eternal, “ready to [expatiate] in a life to come.” (Yes, I’m quoting Alexander Pope – who’d have imagined?)
