Dawn Byrne: childhood

Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts

Uncle John (not my uncle) was a finer grandfather than my biological ones. A close friend to Grandma, Uncle John sat quietly in a corner at family celebrations and get-togethers, always clean shaven, dressed as an informal businessman.

He collected junk throughout the streets of Philadelphia at 4am, pushing a hand-rigged cart in which he piled discarded scraps. Afterwards, at his home, he stripped metals to separate them from other materials before recycling was a household word. Uncle John easily identified any type of metal my siblings and I waved in front of him. So resourceful and hardworking, he hid from most people that he never learned to read.

All five of us kids loved his visits. He always deposited Philly soft pretzels and donuts onto our dining room table. Sometimes, he’d bring small toys for us, and household goods for Mom. But the best things were treasures he found while junking: costume jewelry; broken tools, which he restored; a bolt of material; statuary.

His most valuable trash pick, was a wilted paperback of Erma Bombeck’s book “Motherhood: The World’s Second Oldest Profession.” He couldn’t have known the title or about the author, but Uncle John knew I loved reading. And his timing was perfect. I was a new mother, and never heard of Aunt Erma’s amazing humor writing. From that book, I gained emotional sustenance as a poor mother, by allowing myself to view through humor, situations I was powerless to change. My child-less, non-grandfather, who couldn’t read, introduced me to a writing legend who still inspires today. Reading that first Bombeckian book triggered me to read others. I’m still a fan.

Uncle John’s life is historic. He came to America as a baby, and was adopted by a Jewish family from Germany named Simon. Uncle John never knew his original last name because he couldn’t read his birth certificate. I’m happy Uncle John owned a portrait of himself as a child. Surely, his adoptive parents had it done. I cherish it, and his “hut” he wore to visit us. It sits above my head, on a bookcase, as I type this. Thank you, dear Uncle John, for your interesting life and legacy of love beyond genetics.

Walking through our vestibule you‘d swear the Wicked Witch of the West met her dismembering doom via a fallen couch. Grandma's artificial leg leaned against the living room wall wearing its black shoe, stocking, and rubber garter. Grandma's “good” leg lay flat on the floor, sticking out from behind the couch. Her cigarette-singed: "Who came in?" was a relief.

“It's me, Grandma.” The Easter palm I held waved as I swiveled on my heel towards a painting on the wall behind me.

“Sunday school over already?”

“Yep. I got your palm. Can I put it behind Great-Aunt Eliza‘s picture?” Great-Aunt Eliza died as a child. She sat for eternity in a rocker wearing a fancy dress behind the oval frame’s bubbled glass.

“Put it on my chair. I have to burn the old one in the ashtray first.” I obeyed. Grandma cursed, behind my back, behind the upholstery. “Hand me those studs.”

I scanned the debris on the floor: pieces of material, a ballpeen hammer, scissors, carpet tacks, Grandma's pocketbook, cigarettes, nails and a clear-topped box of heavy duty gold studs. The man at the hardware store said they‘d work if Grandma tacked the material on first.

“Here they are Grandma.” I handed them in the direction of the live leg. Her hand popped out from behind the Early American furniture she resurrected, took the plastic box, and was gone.

Holidays called for sprucing up the house, but those puny studs didn't stand a chance against my brother's furniture abuse. Masked explicatives behind the couch made it clear the studs gave Grandma trouble.

“Why are you doing that today Grandma?”

Her leg shifted. "You can't expect me to sew on the Sabbath." The unfinished Easter dresses for my sister and me must’ve been on her mind. "We don‘t use needles on Sunday in respect for Christ being pierced." Grandma's point confused me when she added, "Hand me that ball peen hammer.”

The left corner of the old couch's headrest didn't flap when I leaned on it to hand her the tool. “How'dya fix the wing tip?” I inspected her handiwork.

“I reinforced it with nails and pulled the material taut over it.” She pretended not to be proud. She didn’t even curse.

“The couch looks nice, Grandma.” Uncle John, no relation, had found the material in the trash outside a warehouse. Its color clashed even worse than the original fabric. Scraps of it on the floor tripped my mind back to the dresses. “Where's Mommy?”

“In the kitchen.”

I moved fast, hoping Grandma wouldn't need something else before I was far enough away to "not" hear her.

“Mommy, where'd Grandma get the stuff for our Easter dresses?” Sweet onions scented Mom‘s long hands, even when she wasn’t mixing ground meat.

She tilted her head to fix her glasses with the back of her wrist. Sunlight from the kitchen window made her ring glimmer. I tried to remember if, lying in his coffin, Dad had worn his wedding band.

Fatigue filtered through Mom’s answer. “Grandma took apart those curtains we had upstairs.”

“They're itchy.” I couldn’t complain to Grandma. “Liz and me tried them on when Grandma pinned them up yesterday. My legs are all red.” The torturous material never fazed the tough skin on Grandma's hands and forearms as she created those deceiving delights.

Mom didn't understand how bad it was. “You only have to wear them for a little while. Grandma worked hard on them.” As a kid, I didn’t know how to plead my case further.

I dreaded the humiliation. The dresses not only itched and burned. Those sheer pink recycled curtains barely veiled our slips. Mrs. Watson would whisper the word 'fiberglass' as we sat on either side of her waiting to say our Bible verses on the church basement’s stage. Grandma pounded another stud into the furniture. I cringed.

A week later I sat on the revamped couch as Uncle John snapped a picture, finalizing my anguish. My sister was the first to bolt upstairs and strip the abusive pink night terror from her body. We flung the things into the bottom of our closet in exchange for the salvation of sweat pants and t-shirts. Back downstairs, we indulged in candy eggs and animals, renewed. The holiday endured for chocolate, love of others and maybe real dresses next year.

My socks only touched the even number steps. After 14, I landed on the living room carpet in front of Grandma's ceramic Buddha. He was six inches tall. I measured him with the ruler my sister got from the third grade science fair. Buddha smiled across the room at Grandma snoring in her brown leather chair, with his legs crossed inside-out on top of our broken TV.

Liz squatted on the floor with our brother's rubber ball that had pimples on it. She set it in different places around the room, ob-serv-ing like a real scientist. Besides the ball, she had tried a lemon drop, and a bobbin from Grandma's sewing machine in her experiment that morning.

"Liz, doncha think Grandma looks like Buddha?" I asked.

"You're stupid," Liz said. "He's a man. Grandma's got hair and boobs."

"Yeah, but when her hair's wet, she looks bald. And her boobs look like extra long bellies rollin' over the sides of her big one." Grandma, wet in the sun, flashed into my head. "Maybe she's his wife."

"Gods don't have wives." Liz dribbled the ball.

"What about Zeus? He's married, and he's king of all the gods."

"People don't believe in that anymore," Liz said. "Those were just stories made up before people got smarter." She steadied the ball on the TV. It rolled to the left and circled a little. I didn't let on I agreed with Liz's de-duc-tion about pretend gods.

I asked, "Do you think people rub Buddha's belly for luck the way I like hugging Grandma's? I feel lucky magic when I'm near her belly."

"You make it sound like some sort of pot of gold. We're not Irish. And we don't worship Buddha either."

Liz chucked the ball into the kitchen. She made an ob-ser-va-tion of Buddha, then Grandma. "Grandma's tan does sort of make her look like the brown statue that got broke." Liz turned back to the TV. "This green one's prettier though." She rubbed its head.

"See?" I asked. "Green...Irish. Like the Barney Stone. Doncha rub that for good luck too?" Boy, was I proud of my de-duc-tion.

"No," Liz said as she climbed onto our floor console and stood up, with Buddha between her feet. "You kiss it while you hang over it." She bent until she was face to upside-down face with him. Her blonde hair dangled across the TV's screen like a grass skirt.

Grandma's sleep meditation was over in one extra loud snort. "Get down from there and leave that statue alone. I still can't get the head to stay on the one your brother broke." She coughed and shifted in her chair. The lady smell that stayed in the leather of the chair, even when she stood up, got stronger.

"I did it!" Liz said with her arms up. She jumped off the TV. "I kissed the Blarney Buddha's belly."

Grandma said something real low that I couldn't hear. She leaned to the right and then to the left. One of her huge crinkly hands disappeared each time into the big pockets sticking out from the sides of her recliner. With the TV not working, I heard sounds in the living room I didn't remember hearing before, like Grandma's chair burping when she moved in it, and the springy squeak when Liz popped onto the couch. I bounced on the carpet near the front door. That was where the floor creaked the loudest.

Liz investigated the rim and sides of an empty cup on the end table. She rolled it between her hands, but it dropped onto the coffee table upside down with a 'clump'. Grandma breathed a noisy breath and kept digging.

I sat with Liz on the couch next to Grandm'a recliner. Liz lifted her feet off the floor and criss-crossed her legs. She asked, "Grandma, can you sit in a lotus position?"

Wiggling on the couch, I forcing myself to keep quiet. Now that Liz had given up on the boring stuff, the fun started. In my head, I followed her scientific pro-ce-dure. Grandma and Buddha actually were two of the roundest things in the house.

"What?" Grandma asked.

"You know, on the floor, like Buddha on his little slab. I don't believe a real person with a belly can do it."

"How can I do that with only one leg?" Grandma pulled out a TV Guide, a red marker, a cone-shaped spool of thread, and a can of 3-IN-ONE oil from the chairs pockets.

I had forgotten too-about Grandma needing another leg to sit cross-legged.

Liz rolled her eyes from the leg that wasn't there to the ceiling, and kept them there for a few seconds. Then she asked, "Can you try it anyway, please? I want to also see which direction your body rolls."

"What for?" Grandma pull out a deck of cards and an empty tic tac dispenser, and piled them on a TV table.

"I'm trying to figure out how level the house is. Round stuff works the best," Liz replied.

I stopped fidgeting. Excitement bubbled inside me to see if Grandma would do it. Liz was her favorite because she was named after Grandma. Maybe Grandma would try since Liz asked her to do it.

"If I got on that floor, I'd never get up. Now run upstairs and see if my cigarettes are in the bathroom." Yep, Liz was her favorite. She always asks her to get the cigarettes.

"I'll get 'em." I didn't give Liz a chance to beat me to them.

I came back, plunking myself down every step, holding the gold pack of Marlboros. "Here you go," I said, handing it to Grandma and backing away.

Grandma flipped open the book of matches that was tucked under the cellophane around the cigarettes. "Damn it to hell."

My voice jumped: "What's the matter?"

"The match book's empty."

"Do you want me to get another one from the kitchen?" I froze on tiptoes, with a hand behind my back.

"No I found one," Grandma said, picking a bent pack of matches out from the space between the arm of her recliner and seat cushion. She shook the cigarettes until one popped out above the rest, then picked it out and shoved it between her lips.

I turned to leave.

"Wait a minute," Grandma said from the side of her mouth not clamping down on the cigarette. "Get back here. One's missing."

I swiveled around and handed over the cigarette. Grandma's acusing eye as she struck the match alive made me want to cry, but I couldn't in front of Liz, she'd make fun of me.

"I wasn't going to smoke it," I said. "Honest. I wanted it for Buddha."

, Grandma took the cigarette out of her mouth. "For what?"

Her question helped me control myself. "Don't people burn stuff in the little ash tray that sits in front of Buddha? I figured that, a cigarette could make some real good ashes for a god. More than them skimpy ones from those punk sticks."

"You leave my cigarettes alone, you hear? They're for me."

I slouched into a corner of the couch.

Liz asked, "Why were they in the bathroom, Grandma?"

"To help me relax in there."

"When you're...?" Liz began.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." Grandma dropped the lit match, and stomped her foot on it. "You made me burn myself. What's with all the questions anyhow? What do I look like? The Dalai Lama?"

Liz and I chanted, "No, Buddha."

"Do you hum and meditate in the bathroom?" I asked. "Don't you always say that happiness is a good bowel movement?"

"What?" Grandma's deep scratchy voice came from one side of her mouth as she finally lit her cigarette. "I just make that up for laughs."

"Buddha must laugh a lot," I said. "He's always smiling. He's got no teeth, like you, just a dark space."

Grandma squinted at the smiling god across the room, and sighed at the dark screen below him.

The doorbell rang.

"Elizabeth, go get the door." Grandma readjusted her dress, burped (not the chair this time), and sent more puffs of her goddessness into the air.

Mrs. Moores and Ms. Perry, the neighbors, came into our living room. If the TV was working, their noisy, silly words would've bumped higher than its volume.

They handed Grandma a box of Marlboros and a gold Buddha statue. Liz ran upstairs when they waved at us.

"Dawn, go put the tea water on for my worshipers." Grandma laughed.

I slid on purpose across the waxed kitchen floor, and caught myself at the stove. It seeped gas because the pilot light would never stay lit. I never got used to the nasty smell, even though I tried to because it was always there in the kitchen.

The mugs without handles worked good enough for the neighbors; Grandma's flamingo one for her; a flowered one for me. I counted out the tea bags. They made my nose happy.

My bag ripped so easy. The dry brown stuff was like the tobacco that I emptied from a cigarette box Grandma had asked me to throw away. How could two things that looked alike, smell so different?

I served the tea in the living room, and went back to the kitchen to drink mine. Liz came down to check on her penicillin experiment.

"Liz, did you ever learn about tea leaves in Mr. Boykins' science class?"

"What?" Liz asked, closing the bread box. The four day old bread smelled almost as bad as the fresh gas from the stove.

I lifted my mug with leaves floating in the steaming water and put it under Liz's nose. "We can read them like Aunt Bebe used to. Do you want me to make you some tea?"

"I'll fix it myself."

The dark nasty pieces stuck to my tongue. Liz hy-poth-e-sized that if we waited, all the leaves would sink to the bottom.

The adults still talked and laughed in the other room. Brown Buddha smiled from the counter above a ring of drying glue around his thick neck. My con-clu-sion: finding pictures in the soggy brown mess at the bottom of our mugs turned a boring Saturday into mystical, scientific fun.

I lifted down the teapot my mother-in-law had given me from the top of our microwave for my granddaughter. Her three-year-old frame scuffled into a kitchen chair wide-eyed as I placed it in front of her face that was flush with the table. The fat flowery thing sat on a wide-mouthed over-sized tea cup, which served as its base. I separated the two in front of her.

She chose the only triangular tea bag amongst the boxes of teas on the table. With pinky up, she dangled the bag by its tab, submerging the bag into warm water I had run into the pot. After bobbing the bag, she poured the weak tea. Palming the cup with both hands, she could have been a guest at the Mad Hatter's tea party, slurping from the bowl-like ceramic.

She giggled, squeezing lemon juice into her teacup from a yellow plastic container. After each squirt and sip, she added a honey stick by pinching and sliding out the sweet stuff. Tea splashed onto the table when the stick slipped from between her fingers, causing her hand to hit the cup. More juice, more honey, splash. Juice, honey, splash.

A childhood memory of having tea with my grandmother inspired me to push the sloppy stuff aside with a magical flourish of hands. “Let's do an experiment,” I said with my eyes widening now. No objection from my guest as she sat expectant.

I got our shot glass from the cabinet. We typically use it for rinsing paint brushes when water-coloring. This time I reached behind my granddaughter, opened the refrigerator and added milk to the tiny glass. My elementary school science process mingled with the childhood teatime memory.

“First, take a look at the milk.” Feeling more like a poor magician, I gave the second step. “Okay, squeeze the lemon juice into the milk.”

I bent my head close to hers and we both said, “Eew.”

“It curdled,” I explained, repeating the word.

As with the tea, she added more and then more juice, stirring the mixture. It separated into larger chunks of curdled milk. “Let me empty it and you can start again,” I assured her, taking the brimming glass. I rinsed it and poured more milk. This time, she dipped her face towards the glass before she lifted the plastic container. The science process had already set in.

“What do you think will happen?” I asked.

“It's gonna curdle,” she said and shot a stream into the glass.

Knowing that my granddaughter has a natural interest in science prompted this fun event. Not especially scientific, I patted myself on the back for coming up with this idea. But it really came from adding lemon to tea with milk while tea partying with my grandmother. As a writer, I also loved introducing, “curdled” to my granddaughter and repeating the funny-sounding word.

Simple, precious incidents like this recur through generations, mixing nostalgia with learning and laughter. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than experimenting with shots of curdled milk and spilt tea? I basked in the childish magic that turned a modest kitchen from a recent painting studio to an English tea house, and then into a laboratory.

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A Sheltered Childhood

Uncle John Introduced Aunt Erma

Resurrections

Faith, Science, Cigarettes, and TV Tea Leaves

SIPS and SHOTS with GRANDMA

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featured Slider

A Sheltered Childhood

Uncle John Introduced Aunt Erma

Resurrections

Faith, Science, Cigarettes, and TV Tea Leaves

SIPS and SHOTS with GRANDMA

About Me

Popular Posts

Search This Blog

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