When I was a girl I loved going to my Nana’s apartment. I loved taking two public buses from my south side neighborhood to her north side high rise, knowing how to transfer downtown by myself. I loved taking the elevator and swimming in the indoor pool on the 41st floor of her building.
Nana’s apartment was a haven of comfort for me. When I think back on my time with Nana, I don’t remember doing much. We didn’t do arts and crafts or bake cookies or do puzzles or play games. When Nana wasn’t watching my sisters and me play in the pool, we just hung out and talked.
When I got to high school and later to college, Nana and I spent less time at the pool. Occassionally, when she was feeling up to it, we’d take a cab and go downtown to go shopping at I. Magnin and have a “ladies lunch.” Sometimes we’d lie on her big king-sized bed and I’d help her with a crossword puzzle or she’d read a poem she loved. As we lazed, she’d direct me to one of the drawers across from her bed that held her jewelry and accessories. “Try that one on,” she’d say as I reached for a black and gold silk scarf. Sometimes she’d give me a piece of jewelry or a pair of gloves or a hat.
Nana’s bedroom was on the west side of the building on the fourteenth floor. From her room we could see into another high rise across the street. I loved to look up and down and across at all the windows trying to spy people in their bedrooms or kitchens doing something special or important. I wondered what people thought of us as we puttered around in her bedroom. I wondered if they could tell how special our simple movements were.
Nana loved classical music and often played a cassette tape in the little boom box next to her bed. Sadly, Nana suffered a lifetime of back pain and was often more comfortable lying down than sitting up. With her head propped up on several pillows and her slender ankles crossed, Nana would twirl her thin wrists and long fingers with her simple, thick, gold wedding band, in an air-dance to the classical melody. I’d lie on my belly, chin settled into my open palms and windshield wiper my legs back and forth in unison and we’d chat.
Sometimes Nana would share stories about her Russian mother or about her handsome father who lost everything in the Great Depression. During the fall of my senior year in high school she played me the Pachelbel Canon. Right away it was familiar and comforting to me. I loved it. We listened to that tape often and one afternoon she gave it to me to take home. I played it on repeat for months and packed it with me to college and beyond. The case of that cracked and then tape players became obsolete but I held onto that cassette for years.
The summer before my junior year of high school I worked as a waitress at a diner across the street from the art museum downtown to save money for my upcoming year abroad in Spain. I was highly motivated to save because Nana committed to match whatever I saved. By the end of August I’d saved $2500. I went to Europe for the year with a whopping $5000. In 1989, this felt like a lot of money.
A few years after I graduated from college Nana got sick with liver cancer. She was 82. Always a sedentary person, with the cancer Nana got quieter, even more stoic than she’d always been. By this time I’d moved to the west coast but I flew home to the midwest often to spend time with her. We’d do the same things we always had. We listened to classical music and looked at her beautiful things. Now though, Nana wanted to give her treasures away. She gave me many pieces of jewelry including the wedding ring that danced on her finger to the Pachelbel Canon. Each time I visited, I came home with silk blouses and scarves. Once she gave me a fantastic full-length red mohair coat.
For my senior prom, my grandmother gave me a beautiful jade bracelet to wear. Somehow, between the cheesy horse-drawn carriage my date insisted on and the hotel ballroom, I lost the bracelet. I was terrified to tell her that I’d lost the bracelet, but my mother insisted I share the bad news. When I finally got up the nerve, Nana just walked to her big chest of drawers and took out a heavy anchorchain gold bracelet and said, “take this one.” All of my worries of disappointing her were for naught.
When I got pregnant there was no question that, if I had a girl, I would name her after my Nana. The quiet power of her influence on my life has always been with me and honoring my daughter, one of the humans I love most in the world with the memory of Nana, felt like one the greatest gifts I could offer.
Nana has been gone for a quarter of a century. I wear her wedding ring for special occasions and listen to classical music whenever I write. I still have several of the scarves she gave me and the big red mohair coat. A few days ago, listening to a classical mix on Spotify, the Pachelbel Canon came on. For a moment, I was right there again, a little girl lying on Nana’s big king-sized bed, watching her thin wrists and long fingers dance to the music.
It’s been a long time since I spent a long, lazy afternoon with Nana, but all the relics from her life live on in mine. Though she’s gone, her spirit finds her way into my memory almost every day
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