Love You To Lands’ End

As someone with a considerable need for emotional vulnerability in my relationships, Grandma Jean and I weren’t particularly close. We lacked the typical maturation of grandchild and grandparent into adulthood, instead maintaining a transactional nature. You will give me candy, I will be your grandchild.

“Werther's caramels,” my sister’s voice would remind me on the phone today. “twisted in a golden plastic. And Mike-and-Ike’s.”

That’s right, Dad’s namesake. Mike-and-Ike’s poured into big glass jars with round tops on the counter. Lime green and yellow and red. Sticky and sweet in the summertime. 

For Christmas, Lands End Fleece pajamas. One size fits all grandkids. 

As with all world-making for a child, parent perspectives shaped my understanding of Grandma Jean. Grandma liked her medicine and took it too much, even when she didn’t need it. She liked to talk on the phone a lot and rarely left the house, but whether you were on the line for 20 minutes or an hour, your role was typically “hi” and “nice chatting too” and “bye.” Dad was sad she didn’t come to our soccer games. 

These perspectives were reinforced by our Aunties, the spicy trifecta whose screaming matches and giggles could be heard just tin cans and strings away in our Greenlake neighborhood. East Greenlake was a working class neighborhood before big tech came in, the housing market reasonable enough for the sorority to snatch humble apartments nearby where they watered the soil that helped us grow. 

—

Only a handful of memories in adulthood feel relevant with Grandma Jean.

First, when she leaned toward me at Thanksgiving awhile back and fervently whispered that my mom was breeding fish-humans in Greenlake. 

The second, a fence jump into the teal house on 57th before its sale was finalized, my sister and my Sony in hand. We didn’t tell our family this, but we spent hours trying on Jean’s old dresses and thumbing through Polaroids and letters and Irish Catholic keepsakes. I think our curiosity felt safer to explore in her absence. Our questions weren’t made to meet her gaze. 

Perhaps our most honest moment, though, occurred about 1.5 years ago in her well-meaning memory care facility where she sat for years, all but melted by her dementia. With shocking lucidity, she said to me, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you kids more, growing up.”

— 

As I raise my legs for circulation, the cool touch of pre-war plaster against my heels lifts some morning grogginess, but not as much as I’d hoped. So much history in these brownstone walls but none familiar. I reverse my stance as the blood rushes and my toes touch the floor for the first time today. My reaction to Jean’s passing still feels… floaty. 

I try more processing as I begin whatever cleaning tasks seem the most likely for dopamine hits upon completion. Counter wipes. Wine-stained glasses to the sink. My feelings feel as distant as my feet to their hometown.

When the emotions finally start to file in, anger sits in sadness’ seat. I feel guilty that I don’t feel deep grief, which makes me angry because why should I? I begin to mutter Jean’s shortcomings to God as I build my case. I fold a dirty dish towel from my roommate’s coffee. I don’t really want to be alone with my feelings, so I phone Cousin Danny. 

“I may have just gotten her glory days,” he hypothesizes, 9 years my senior. “but yeah, that woman was pretty wretched.” I laugh as I study the framed photo on my radiator. A tattoo’d Cousin Dan smoking a cigarette on top of the Grand Canyon. Always serving irreverence with style. But I knew he loved her.

“It all happened during the invention of the Kitchen-Aid. And Valium,” he said. Mother’s Little Helper. “She got pregnant, had the 5 kids, and then what? She couldn’t own her own bank account. She didn’t have a car. The Kitchen-Aid came around and did all the work for her. And you know, boredom is like a death sentence for smart people.”

I feel my anger start to soften. Of course. Compassion loves the dead. 

We meander into the ethics of raising children and how liberal acceptance has ruined the magic of a misfit before hanging up.

More impulsive cleaning. I pick up a photo from the floor. Montauk lighthouse ahead of them, my aunts peer back at the camera behind. The sisters’ only trip to New York, 1988. Gifted to me for Christmas this year following my move. Lighthouses have always been my thing. 

I wonder how T is coping. Dad jokes that T has the memory of an elephant, for better or for worse. Her encyclopedic brain mixed with Larry David cynicism usually makes for an entertaining call, even in such circumstances. 

“Mom said Nana was her best friend, but she was never that for us. Who knows, crabby old lady. I think she was mean to me because I ruined her chance of a career. Married in October and had me in May. Took me too long to do the math on that. Said I should be more grateful, she only had the other kids to keep me company.”

Nothing like an unplanned pregnancy in the 60’s to shoot you down the homemaker track like a bobsled. 

“She didn’t have her own car, you know? She resented Grandpa Joe for that. Left her at home with a pregnant belly. Had nothing to do all day.  She moved back in with Nana, actually. Said she needed her best friend.”

I feel ancestral restlessness in my bones. The valiums start to make sense - her generation’s emotional illiteracy trapping Jean inside her own bleeding. 

I discern a yearn for post-mortem optimism as T continued. “Mom always liked to give airport rides. I don’t know why, she just liked it. She drove us sisters to the airport once. Handed us each a $100 bill. Mo and I looked at each other in disbelief because it was so unlike her. With little emotion, Mom just said, ‘Well I never made it to New York.’”

Something in my sternum relaxes. I reach for the lighthouse photo again, running my eyes across the muted blues and reds. I wonder if the sisters showed their captured moments to Jean. If they did, I wonder what emotions stood behind her facade. I wonder if there was sadness, or longing, or resentment, or pride.

I think about my own life. Almost 27, living in New York City, stressed about the deficit of men that meet my standards while abundant in dynamic female friends. Running my own business in a male dominated field. Struggling to find routine amongst all this free will.

Like windblown paper coming to rest, the layers of meaning find the earth together and my eyes begin to water.

_

Rest peacefully, Grandma Jean. With relentless pursuit of the best of me, I bestow your momentum upon my every move.

Jean Cogan and Highboy in Washington State. June 25, 1951.