A propos de ne rien

I thought you might like to see what it looks like each day when I get around to writing.  Sometimes the glass holds cider, sometimes water, sometimes herbal tea.  But today I have an already open bottle of red wine, so why not?

You will see I am made up and wearing lipstick.  That is because I went out earlier when the sun was high in the sky and it was still warm.  I am now cosily ensconced for the evening, with a French game show on the tv in the background.  There are bits and pieces of left overs in the fridge for my dinner later.  Not glamorous, but very comfortable thank you.

So Grandma …

I would like to launch into the story of her life, but to be honest I know next to nothing.  What I will tell you later will be a pastiche made up from her stories to me, and the stories of my mother and others about her.  Because it is a story, I will fill in the gaps as I see fit.  It will, I hope, be. true to the spirit of her life if not the full facts.  

But because I am daunted, and a little frightened by the thought of taking such liberties, I will start by describing the woman I knew.

I was ten when my grandmother died of a brain tumour.  She had been ill for only a few months, but the pressure on our household was horrific.  My parents had taken in my cousin Steven, only 7 at the time, after both of his parents died suddenly within two months of each other.  And, yes, that is a story in itself, but again not mine to tell.  My sister, nine years younger than me, was a fractious baby with a chronic throat infection that had her screaming the house down in the wee small hours of every night.  

Grandma was 72, and for most of her illness no one had any idea what was wrong with her, and the doctors showed very little interest in finding out.  A strong, healthy, fit women degenerated into a helpless invalid in the course of a couple of months, and my mother was her only nurse for most of this time.  A sick baby, a sick mother, a bereft orphan, and two other children to care for.  I can still feel the desperation.  It came down to a couple of nightmarish weeks in a horrible rest home, a week or so of respite in the Mater Hospital trading on the Catholic history of the family.  Then she was gone.

So the women I knew was my current age when I was born, and I knew her as an old woman, because that is how we viewed people of that age in my childhood.  And indeed, she was old in the sense that her adventurous life was behind her.  In fact, as far as I was concerned it had never existed.

For a time, when I was very young, my grandmother looked like someone out of an old movie.  It was the 1950s after all.  Her hair was long and grey, with a darker streak through the forehead.  The mark of Cain it is sometimes called.  She wore it up in an old fashioned bun, and jammed a felt hat on top secured with a fearsome hat pin.  I was convinced she stuck the pin right into her scalp, and worried that she might do the same to me in my Sunday school bonnet.  She wore blouses buttoned to the neck, long woollen skirts, and smelt of powder and old lady.  Much of the time she was hidden in her room with the door firmly shut.  I never went in there uninvited.  It was like a different country.  But when she emerged she was always there for me.

One day she came home with a new, short layered cut.  It was like she was a different woman.  My mother took over her clothing shopping, and suddenly she had a wardrobe of light, printed Osti dresses, which were really quite ‘elderly chic’ at the time.  The hats largely disappeared.  I guess the 50s had progressed into the 60s.

But she was still my grandmother, although our family was undergoing changes too.  My father left the building company he had been working for and set up in business as a contractor.  My mother learnt to drive and got her own car.  My parents purchased an empty lot in Otahuhu and sold our house in One Tree Hill that was within spitting distance of the Onehunga they had both grown up in.  For a time, while building in Otahuhu and living in a small flat, my grandmother lived in the Far North with her only other daughter.  I suspect my mother had hopes this might become a permanent arrangement, but I held out for her return.  And, return she did.

In order to save money, we all moved into our unfinished, unlined house in the winter of 1963, and Grandma moved in with us again.  At that stage we were a family of five – my parents, me, my brother and Grandma.  The house was freezing, but otherwise large and comfortable, and the nightmares had yet to come.

I think we were all quite happy for a time.  I will try and describe my grandmother as I knew her then.  

She smoked continuously, and was the only member of the family to do so.  Pall Mall.  When she ran out she would ask me to go to the dairy at the Monument and buy her another packet.  In those days young children could stroll freely around the suburbs, and buy cigarettes without a care from any corner dairy.  I would demure on the grounds of her health, she would give me threepence to spend, and the deed was done.  Then she would lean on the kitchen bench smoking and gazing sightlessly across the creek at the green spaces of Middlemore Golf Course.  I used to wonder what thoughts she was lost in, but of course a child does not ask such questions.  A pity.

On the nights when my parents were out she would play cards and feed me Cadbury Milk Chocolate.  I remember the blocks were huge, and each little square was twice the size of what you get now.  I no longer eat it after the palm sugar episode and the shift in production out of Dunedin.  But for most of my life I was addicted to it after that early saturation.  And I still play Patience, but usually online versions now.

At other times she would sing to me the old music hall songs of her youth.  I was forbidden by my mother to sing in the house due to my total lack of ability to follow a tune, but my grandmother seemed not to mind.  I can still remember the words to so many of those corny old songs, and, as I said earlier, do the Lambeth Walk.  

During the school holidays, and on weekends when my parents were house building and section developing, we would go out.  The Easter Show, the Zoo, shopping in town or in Otahuhu.  If local we walked, although often we got a taxi home.  In those days taxis were flash cars, maintained immaculately by their owners, and I remember the clean car smell of a taxi on a wet day.  I loved those outings, but learnt not to show too much excitement on returning home.  If I was too “full of myself”, the inherent tension between my mother and grandmother would spill over into grief for me.  So many great days ended up in horrible nights.  I learnt it can be dangerous to be happy, and it has taken me a long time to unlearn that lesson.

My grandmother had some bad habits that were apparent even to me.  She had a habit of buying things, often for other people, on hire purchase.  Or putting them on lay-by.  She did not always follow through.  Her most obvious vice at that time (and in the past as I now understand) was gambling on the horses.  Not a habit she could really afford on a pension.  But every week she sat down with the racing guide and chose her horses.  Sometimes she had me choose them for her.  My preferred method was to close my eyes and stick a pin in the page.  Then off we would go, on foot, to the TAB located conveniently between the Star and Criterion Hotels in Otahuhu.  I waited outside, the bet was made, and off we went to await the race.  I don’t recall many collections, but no doubt there were some.

My mother recalls walking as a child from their home in Church St, Onehunga (the house was where DressMart now stands) to the Ellerslie Race Course, meeting her aunt and cousin, and spending the whole day there before walking home again.  My grandmother would often forget to feed her on these occasions, so it was a long hard day for a child, and not a memory she cherishes.  It cannot have pleased her that her mother continued her habit through the TAB under her own roof, and engaged me in the process as well.

But I got the best of my grandmother.  She taught me to knit, even though I was left handed and clumsy, and she was not.  She showed me love and affection at all times, not least in teaching me to bake.  Although not a great cook or housekeeper, she was a keen baker.   I baked right alongside her.  Rock cakes, short bread, madeira cake, fruit cake, and every kind of stodgy, sugary and wonderful pudding known to man.  When she became ill I took over baking duties in the household,  and kept right on baking until my own girls took over from me.  Even now, given flour, sugar, butter and eggs I can throw together a great tasting cake without a recipe in the minimum of time.  However, I don’t – because that was a habit that proved not good for me at all!

When members of the wide, and largely mysterious to me, family, came to visit, my mother and grandmother would sit and gossip for hours.  I was a great eavesdropper, and would curl up in a corner hoping I would not be noticed and sent out to play.  I was not great at going outside to play.  It was always clear to me that the family net spread wide, but I did not understand exactly how it worked as a child.  When my parents’ friends came to visit, my grandmother would turn turtle and retreat to her room.  She was not shy.  It was just that these were people she had no interest in.  Not surprisingly, this was a source of tension in the household, although I suspect if she had remained, her presence would have been an equal irritant.

So there we have her, at 70 or so, a women with a mind of her own, prone to reveries, in turns garrulous and remote, loving and distant.  And of course, I did not know her at all.  I only knew the person she chose to be to me.