An orphan and immigrant to the United States from Kent in England, my maternal grandmother Daisy sounded like Stan Laurel and drank her Lipton's tea at 4pm each day with lemon and sugar -- no milk for this survivor of marital abandonment and the Great Depression.
She raised my mother and aunt by herself; they both married blue collar workers who had steady jobs and strong unions. Times were good for blue collar workers when Eisenhower gave way to Kennedy fifty years ago when I was a boy. Christmas meant little to me beyond the raw, naked greed engendered by toy companies like Marx and Mattel in their lurid TV commercials.
I remember some wonderful, idiotic, toys for Christmas back then:
The Wham-O Air Blaster. Lincoln Logs. Crashmobile. Odd Ogg. Erector sets. Monster Magnet. And always Silly Putty and a Slinky in my stocking.
These were presents from my parents, a.k.a. Santa Claus.
My grandmother Daisy inevitably gave me a coloring book.
"What's she saving her money for, a trip to the moon?" I asked precociously, and cruelly, when I was eight. I was rewarded for this bon mot by a chuckle from my dad and a murderous gleam from my mother that would have lasered me in half had it not been Christmas morning.
I resented Grandma Daisy's stinginess, since an eight-year-old boy in 1961 in my neighborhood didn't know the difference between stinginess and poverty. You worked hard and made good money; that was the Gospel at 900 19th Avenue S.E., Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you didn't work hard you were either a bum or a commie – either way you were banished from the family, the neighborhood, from the realm of humanity.
My grandmother did not work – she drank tea and watched soap operas and slept on a hide abed in her one-room attic apartment, with the cheap gas smell of her one-ring burner affronting my nose whenever I would visit her. And since she didn't work, and her mind began to wander, and her arthritis got worse, she was sent away to "the home". Dad would not have her living with us, though my mother cried and made him sleep on the couch.
No more coloring books. Which was a relief to me, since I no longer had to send her a contrived thank-you note. When my mother asked if I wanted to go see Grandma Daisy at "the home" I revolted and demanded to be left alone to watch Lunch with Casey or Axel's Tree House on the television.
I am happy to say that I have never given any of my own grandchildren a coloring book for Christmas. I live overseas, and am divorced, so I send them bright, interesting postcards.
No comments:
Post a Comment