11:24 a.m. - 2009-04-22
All my fingers
I am thinking sometime, that despite my best efforts to be on top of things, there is alot I do not know - some of the information is hidden from me.
I've also been thinking alot about my grandmother's hands. We've been finding ourselves in buildings that were once mills - textile mills mostly - that is what was manufactured around here in the last two centuries - and it reminded me of my mother's mother. She worked in mills for most of her girlhood - she was always very proud that she had all of her fingers. She was small and quick. She was also the only anorexic septagenarian I ever knew. She smoked and drank. I think I've written before that she and my grandfather did not marry until a few months after I was born.
My Nana grew up in a well-known Massachusetts mill town near the ocean. Her mother died when she was very young, as did a brother, and her father worked with the railroads, so he shipped the remaining three daughters to a convent just south of the Canadian border - Vermont I think. My grandmother had known English, but then at the convent, they only spoke French, so she had to relearn English when she left the convent around age 16, and returned to the city she was born in and worked in the mills. She said she also worked in mills in Connecticut. One of her sisters married frequently; her other sister became a nurse, but my Nana somehow ended up in New York. And that is where she met my grandfather, an Italian with red hair and freckles who had changed his name in order to get work. My grandfather worked at various jobs, including the Brooklyn shipyards, he was a trimpet player for a band, I think he worked as a waiter, but in the years I knew him, he was a liquor salesman and was very good at it. My grandmother was an alcoholic and my mother has told us all on many occasions that she would have to go and find her mother and bring her home from a bar. She also relates the time that my grandmother took off when she was about Andy's age and went to Florida after being told that my grandfather was having an affair. But she came back after a few weeks. Their relationship was always tumultuous. Both had lost their mothers at an early age. Both had fathers that looked after themselves rather than their children, though I believe my grandmother's father thought that he was doing right by his daughters by sending them to a convent.
Both had lost siblings when they were young. I wonder what their lives would have been like if they had access to education? I believe both of them only got as far as 6th or 7th grade, though I have no idea what the convent education was.
They were both quick studies, though neither of them read more than the newspapers, they could whip through a crossword puzzle in no time. I wonder.
And what else - had pulled pork sandwiches for dinner - they were more mustardy than I remember, but good for cleaning out the sinuses.
After Andy and I left work, I went to the eye doctor and had my eyes checked and ordered new glasses (purplish!) I had a monster headache by the time I got home - I'm sure it is the change in the weather, but I fell asleep after I ate, and spouse woke me up around 8 p.m. Yikes!
I did some mending, then headed up to bed around 10:30. My parents are heading to my sister's for "Grandparents' Day" at my niece's school. It is about a two and a half-hour drive. My brother is headed south to Disneyworld with his family.
I'm just here.
Tonight is turkey in the crockpot with veggies.
And for now, that's all I got.
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