Today is Good Friday. Well, at least I think it is. We’ve been self-isolating and living the #coronaquarantinelife for over a month now so the days are all blending together. But earlier this week, an interviewee on the news made reference to this being Holy Week, so by my calculations that must be right.
For those of us who are Christian, Good Friday is the day that Jesus died. It is also the day my grandmother died 19 years ago.
I think about my grandma often. How she used to make my sister and I tank tops out of old hand towels when it was too hot in her apartment, how she always served my grandfather “steak and potatoes” on one specific green plate, and how she used to hide scissors in between the couch cushions because my father “was always taking them away from her.”
My grandma was definitely one of a kind. She had a squishy thumb and a gemstone ring with the birthstones of all her grandchildren. She wore housecoats and slippers and kept her hair curls pinned with large silver clips until she was ready to the leave the house. She traveled by car service (the Brooklyn version of Uber back in the late 1980s and 90s) rather than taxi, and kept money in her wallet, but also in her two front pockets (she only wore dresses with pockets) and each cup of her bra when she went out shopping. She didn’t care what anyone else thought of her, but she refused to leave the house without bright lipstick on (even the three times she left on a stretcher).
She was a whip — stubborn, sarcastic, opinionated, and blunt. The safest place to be at the dinner table was next to her because you could hear all the funny, snide remarks she’d make under her breath and because you were safe from being ridiculed. If you sat next to her, you became her trusted audience and her accomplice. But she was also big-hearted, funny, insightful, and perceptive. She was generous beyond her means, always slipping candy or a 20-dollar bill in my pocket when we hugged goodbye. She was a good judge of character and “called a spade a spade,” (as it was described, back in the day). She put others ahead of herself and loved her family, almost to a fault.
I’m named after her — sort of. My middle name is Jeanne, which was her name — but not really. Her birth name was Genevieve. She changed it to Jeanne because “[she] wanted to,” she once told me — just like she had changed her birth date. We didn’t learn about that one until her surprise 80th birthday party when she surprised us by telling everyone she was really only 79. That was my grandmother to a tee.
I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. It’s been 19 years, but many of my memories are still so vivid. I think of her when I’m making homemade applesauce (without the lemon peels that she so frequently neglected to removed before serving to me), or chicken soup from scratch (she’d be appalled that one of my kids doesn’t like rice in his), or just watching my kids out the window (she used to lean out her kitchen window to wave goodbye and watch us leave). Over the years, my dad has given me random plates and bowls of hers to use, most of which are too toxic for my sensitive system to handle. But there’s one blue ceramic bowl I keep on my counter to hold tomatoes. It’s symbolic in a way: A “tomatah” is the term my grandma used to describe an inappropriately dressed, “loose” lady. A “floosy,” she would explain if asked. She was a full of expressions and terms that I didn’t realize growing up weren’t well-known or commonly used. “It’s as gray as the cat’s ass in May” was her way of describing bad weather and “Up the cow’s ass for a milkshake” was her reply to an inquiry about where she was going when she had no intentions of telling you.
It makes me sad sometimes to think about how she never got to meet my kids — although I’m sure she would have had a few things to say about some of their recent hairstyles and wardrobe choices. I tell them stories about her whenever they pop into my head and make reference to her so they have some idea of who she was — a woman of family and a woman of faith. She believed in her Catholic upbringing (never letting us forget that we went to a “Protestant” (read: public) school rather than a Catholic school), read from a mini Bible and a pack of prayer cards nightly, and never missed a Sunday service. Needless to say, Holy Week was a big deal to her.
With all that’s going on in the world right now, I wasn’t planning on celebrating Easter this year. Thanks to the quarantine, it’s just the four of us here and, to be honest, family dinners are losing their cache now that they occur nightly. But thinking about my grandmother has me second-guessing the decision to bypass Easter Sunday. In my family, “WWJD” doesn’t just stand for “What would Jesus do?”. It stands for, “What would Jeanne do?”. Jeanne would find a way to celebrate the holiday — together. Of course it won’t be the same as in years past, but in her honor, and with the help of Zoom, we’ll make it work … from a safe, government-approved distance.
To all those who celebrate, Happy Easter. And to all my readers, be safe and smart.
-LJDT
