Over the River and Through the Woods
A few weeks ago, Peace Corps Guy (PCG) took me on a date to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which I had never seen. It was a beautiful place and we spent a few hours wandering among rose gardens and it was all around delightful. Afterwards, we decided to walk through Prospect Park to get to Park Slope for some dinner. I casually mentioned that my grandmother’s house was nearby and that I hadn’t seen it in over thirteen years. (She died when I was in the 9th grade.) PCG suggested we go take a look and I took a deep breath as he led the way down 11th Street.
…
My father and his six siblings grew up in a four story brownstone on Prospect Park in Brooklyn which today, would be worth quite a few million dollars. As the children grew up and moved away, my grandparents didn’t have a need for all that space so they sold it in the late 70’s. For $30,000. I am still slamming my head against my desk about that.
My grandparents on my father’s side both had 8th grade educations and were 100% strong Polish stock. My grandfather did anything to make money and according to my dad was both a wedding photographer and a subway conductor who often got dressed up in farmer’s clothes and played the fiddle for his children in the living room on Saturday nights. When he wasn’t slapping them across the butt with a belt and calling them worthless, of course.
He died in his sleep while visiting my parents, of all people. They woke up and there he was, dead on the couch of a heart attack soon after they were married. And so my grandmother lived the rest of her life out alone on the top floor of their second brownstone, her sister living downstairs, her sister’s husband, my great Uncle Joe, getting bombed with a six-pack at 10 AM on the stoop.
I think I’ve documented before how rarely we saw my grandmother since there was a bit of family squabbling and then financial hardship for my parents. The tolls and the gas and four children packed into a minivan made visiting a bit difficult but at least once or twice a year, we would pile in and go. I loved driving into the city, the sight of the tall Verazano Bridge in the distance, the tree-lined streets of Brooklyn, the looping around and around for a parking space.
We would dutifully walk up the steps of her house, waving hello to drunk Uncle Joe on the stoop, filing neatly up to the third floor and into her apartment. The floors in the hallway creaked and there was a musty smell that never seemed to fade away. She had a claw-foot tub in the bathroom and an old washing machine from the 1920’s that didn’t work sitting in a corner of the kitchen for no reason at all.
Lined up on the kitchen table were small bowls of chocolate pudding, one for each of us, with a tub of Cool Whip next to it that we would eagerly pile on top and shovel into our mouths. Naturally, our mother would make us eat sandwiches first but it was always so hard to wait. We’d sit on the green and blue embroidered couch of the living room hungrily eating up pudding while my grandmother sat in her chair, thick black-rimmed glasses perched on her nose with a bemused smile on her face.
I remember playing with the few toys she kept for us, remember playing games that we brought from home with my siblings. She would chat with my mother and father and occasionally shout out the answer to a question on Jeopardy which played on the small television set. She kept a little red chair for us that we would move underneath the third floor bedroom window which faced the street. One by one, we’d take turns sitting on it and watching the traffic below, squealing with excitement when a firetruck went by. I suppose to a young child, New York City and all its busy-ness is rather exciting.
Randomly, the furnace would begin to clank and hiss, startling me and making me think of ghosts. It was creepy and unfamiliar and I never got used to it. The furnace, however, was nothing compared to an eerie picture of Jesus Christ that hung on the faded blue plaster wall as you walked into the bedroom. His eyes were closed and his head was bleeding from the crown of thorns. It was a black and white sketch and it looked awfully out of place juxtaposed next to so many colorful crayon drawings from various grandchildren. Jesus looked scary and sad and haunting and thirteen years later, I can see the entire thing rise up in my mind when I close my eyes.
Grandma Agnes was religious, an obedient Catholic woman who gave birth to six sons and a daughter. She was sort of racist and paranoid, especially after being mugged on 5th Avenue. She rolled down her stockings to her knees and wore orthopedic shoes. She wore flowered house dresses and a cardigan, gray hair thin and limp to her shoulders. We never really spoke but when I look through pictures of her, I get glimpses of her essence and time spent that I can’t recall. I am sitting on her lap as she reads me a story, I am coloring a picture in my coloring book, I am anxiously waiting for my dad and older brother to get back with Chinese food from Sun Bo Bo down the street.
My grandmother died in late summer when I was fourteen and the only thing I felt was selfish fury that due to the funeral in Jersey, I would have to miss my VERY FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL. How would I know where anything was? How could my parents DO THIS TO ME?!
I thankfully changed my tune once we showed up to the wake and subsequent funeral and I realized that family is much more important than finding out where my locker was. All my dad’s brothers, huge Polish men standing as high as 6′5 were sobbing at the loss of their beloved mother; my father was no exception. It was the first time I saw my dad cry and he did so, openly as he leaned into the open casket and kissed his mother on the cheek. I cried then, for his pain, for his outpouring of emotion, his vulnerability and the very startling way I realized that stoops and pudding and Chinese takeout are all only temporary.
…
The facade of my grandmother’s house is different now. Her house and the neighboring brownstones have all been redone in reddish brick, probably fake. I wasn’t exactly sure how far down the street her house was and so when I came upon it, I was only half paying attention. Suddenly, it was in front of me and before I could help myself, tears poured down my cheeks. The memories of the little red chair and the creepy Jesus Christ and the Cool Whip container on the counter came flooding back to me.
I did not know my grandmother in the way that some children know their grandmothers. We never had one-on-one time, no deep conversations, no baking cookies together in the kitchen. She was too old and I was too young but I never doubted the love that was there. I never doubted that if we were closer in age and had more of an opportunity, we could’ve shared that strong female Dlug bond.
I do know that I am still eternally grateful to her for giving me the gift of my father. The tall clumsy Polack who remains sensitive and vulnerable as he ages, who cries more easily and openly now, who shares stories about her and about his father when I ask him, who loves to reminisce for my benefit. And after he tells a story about her, about Brooklyn, about childhood, he gets quiet and a mist settles over his eyes and I can sense how much he misses her. And how that never goes away.
I sat down on the stoop where drunk Uncle Joe once sat, resting my chin on my hand. I glanced down the street at the sound of a firetruck and smiled. Even though brick facades change and tenants die or move out or move on, some things are worth revisiting. They bring a sense of peace, a memory of what happiness is, what family means, a puzzle piece that snaps into place in your heart, reminding you of where you were, where you are and where you might go.
