The Runny Pen

When you tell someone that your grandmother died you receive a sympathetic frown. Their grimace lasts about three seconds, and then the frowner will zip right back into the groove of dialog they approached you with. This doesn’t offend me because I’ve found the response common, but I find it curious and telling about our country and modern times. Grandparents are revered in other countries but not so much here at home. Here in America, grandparents don’t really seem to count. They are brushed aside and resented for costs of admittance to a ‘home’. Which (if for no other reason) makes me proud to be Irish/Italian. Because in the culture of my family Nana not only counted, she was the most popular person.

Many grandparents lose their taste in clothing and stylistic flair near their sixties. Not my Nana. She wore Italian designers at formal occasions and The United Colors of Benetton when casually reading at home. Nana began practicing yoga in the fifties, long before yoga studios were as common as a Starbuck’s kiosk. She took me to my first opera “Porgy and Bess” saying it was a particularly good introduction for me because it was about drug dealers in New Orleans and she thought I’d like that. Unlike most grandmas, Nana never had blue hair or food in her fridge. I’d stop by on my bike ride home from junior high and she’d be knotted into a yoga pretzel, letting me know there was a wheat germ shake in the blender.

The short version of Nana’s obituary reads like this: Catherine Ana Maddux was born in Napa, CA in 1917. She married my grandfather after meeting him at an open air, big band dance in Monte Rio 1936. She worked as a supervising accountant at the Santa Rosa Junior College for 29 years. She had two daughters and a son, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Most of us grandkids attended SRJC and have fond memories and a strong education as a result. I remember meeting her co-workers and holding her hand when we attended Day Under The Oaks on campus. I choose not to mention my grandfather’s name because I never met him. In the year 1950, he abandoned his wife and 14 year-old daughter, 8 year-old son, and a baby girl still in Nana’s belly. He went out for a pack of smokes and never returned; what they used to refer to as an ‘Irish divorce’.

As tragic as this sounds, it shaped my Nana in strong ways. Rural Santa Rosa of 1950 was a close-minded and judgmental place for a single mother and she was the subject of gossip, labeled with the stigma of ‘divorcee’ (although she didn’t legally divorce the man until 25 years after his departure). It made her an underdog, an outsider. She befriended the SRJC president emeritus Randolph and his artist friend Marshall. My family had BBQs at their picturesque home off Mark West Springs Road where we played volleyball in their pool for hours. It was until my late teens that I realized Ran and Marsh were gay. And then I realized just how accepting, loving, non-judgmental and rebellious Nana was to befriend them in close-minded Santa Rosa of the fifties, only an hour’s drive north of San Francisco but light years away in mood and temperament.

Her daughter Mary fell in love with a Mexican after her year as a foreign exchange student, and Nana invited him to visit her in Santa Rosa. When Enrique arrived at the door after a three day drive from Mexico City the Santa Rosa police tried to arrest him, thinking he was a burglar. She scolded the police and welcomed Enrique and his best friend inside where she had food and beers waiting. Mexicans were treated like Muslims are today. Back then, Sonoma County had little tolerance for Hispanics who are now the life-blood of the wine country.

She attended my graduation from CSU Long Beach at 80 years of age. She picked my sister up from school every day. She was a mother to my cousin when his own mother abandoned him. She never stopped trying to learn Spanish so she could more effectively communicate with her Mexican grand-daughters. When my parents divorced she helped with any needed task, consoling her daughter Joanne through the difficulties of raising two kids on her own. Nana knew something about that experience.

For Christmas one year we bought Nana a sweatshirt printed with the word WHATEVER. She said it all the time. It is a word that can be confused with apathy but the way she used it was indeed the opposite. Whatever was her lack of judgement of other human beings. Whatever allowed life’s hardships to roll like water off a duck’s back. Whatever kept her focused on the simple joys of a glass of white wine and the company of her family at Sunday dinner. Though raised and buried a Catholic, whatever was her most Buddhist philosophy.

The image of my grandparents dancing to a big band on the banks of the Russian River in 1936 conjures an idyllic time. I’ve often imagined what it must’ve been like to fish the Russian River packed full of steelhead, completely devoid of pollution or fishing regulations. Going to war was honorable, defeating the evil villain Hitler a clear and noble cause. Why wouldn’t you trust your government, Nixon was barely of drinking age? You married your high-school sweetheart at 20 and had four kids before 30. A pension was something you could rely upon. Nana’s character was formed by what Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation”.

I am privileged to have had a final conversation with her four days before her death, two days before she slipped into a coma. She died that rare and best kind of death; in her own home with both daughters holding each of her frail hands until her final exhale. I am aware that I paint this perfect portrait of my Nana but in truth, she had no tolerance for Republicans, bigots or whiners. And I smile because at different times in my life, I have been all three. But she loved me anyway.