Young at heart

That is all.

Earlier this summer, back when I hung out with The Nana every afternoon, we one day found ourselves en route to a swank retirement community to pick up her 99-year-old best friend, Gladys.

Nana had wanted to introduce us for a while and officially inaugurate me into the “ladies who lunch” club so I happily obliged, not knowing what to expect as I’d never hung out with a 99-year-old before. What would we have in common besides a love for a coral nail polish, Glenn Miller and a shared disdain for today’s youth? Turns out my knowledge of 99-year-old peeps (which doesn’t really extend beyond George Burns in that movie where he played God), was way off.

Right away I was surprised by how spry Gladys was. Sure, it had been ages since she’d driven a car and probably should have been regularly using her four-legged cane for walking, though she refused (I don’t blame her: all a cane does is date you, plus it’s much more satisfying using some nearby person’s arm if you ever need to break a fall). But “old” was something Gladys was not. Maybe she wasn’t going to be doing handsprings down her front lawn anytime soon, but she was young at heart. Though I’d only just met her Gladys still had the sharp, witty personality she most likely possessed in her formidable years -- plus she still had the energy to drag a full watering can from the kitchen to the back patio to water her hydrangeas, and still wore makeup daily. My kind of woman (age is no excuse to let yourself go).

With Gladys in tow and Nana behind the wheel of her Volvo station wagon, the three of us headed to Gladys’ favorite lunch-spot, Fresh Choice, which I was more than happy with. (Ever tried their chicken noodle soup? It’s exquisite.)

After a slight situation in the Fresh Choice parking lot that involved Nana’s Volvo lurching over a curb to nab the last handicap space from another circling car of famished senior citizens with what I can only guess was a hankering for all-you-can-eat cornbread, we arrived. During the car-ride there, when Nana and Gladys weren’t discussing ceramics projects and misplaced handicapped placards, they kept raving about the muffins at Fresh Choice.

“They’re incredible, darling,” Nana said over her shoulder to me more than once. I told her I couldn’t wait to try them.

“…Oatmeal, pumpkin, blueberry…” she continued, as Gladys nodded next to her in the passenger seat and I grew hungrier with each flavor ticked off. My flavor palate swings wide, from Taco Bell up to 6-course meals, so I knew these Fresh Choice muffins were going to be simply divine.

And they were. Until my lunching companions let me in on a little secret, or was it a ritual? Induction into the club? I wasn’t sure. I’d just brought back a plate of their beloved muffins for us to share when Nana stood up to get more food. She returned with a stack of napkins and another plate of muffins, many the same flavors I had already carted back.

Me (pointing at plate): “Oh, Nana, I already brought muffins for us…”

Nana: “I know, dear.”

Did they really expect we’d eat all these? Gladys had barely touched her salad and Nana had only one bowl of noodle soup, but thus far each had downed copious amounts of muffins. A feat in itself for a couple lithe ladies with weak stomachs.

Just as I was about to ask how we could possibly eat all said muffins, they both pulled napkins onto their lap from the stack. Without speaking, they reached for a muffin each and slyly looked around as they pulled the baked goods onto their laps and into the napkins, where they wrapped them up and slipped them discreetly into their purses.

Okay. Were we seriously doing this?

My days of poaching food from buffets stopped ages ago when I learned to get my adrenaline high from other places like robbing banks and stealing cars. (Only in my dreams.)

“Nana!” I whispered, in mock horror. “What are you doing?”

“Honey, grab a napkin,” she retorted back in a whisper.

Apparently this was how Nana lived on the edged.

“It’s ok,” I said. “I –“

“Just do it!” Gladys whispered, chiming in. “Here.” She pushed the plate nearer to me.

So that’s how these women stayed young at heart. It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford the muffins or that the delicate flavors of pumpkin spice were so breathtaking. Rather, it was akin to the rush you got as a teen from secretly nabbing an antenna ball off a parked car or sneaking alcohol from your parents’ liquor cabinet. Did you really need the antenna ball or the alcohol? (Nevermind, don’t answer that.) No, but it was the act of getting it that was the thrill.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken buffet food home in my purse but I thought, “What the hell.” You only live once. And maybe that’s what I needed to feel a little young again myself (recently turning 28 did a number on me, I confess.)

Placing the napkin in my lap I peered around, straight-faced, as I picked up a muffin and pulled it slowly onto my lap with “take more, take more” being urgently whispered in the background. Once outside, our purses full of just-for-the-hell-of-it muffins, we let out a laugh over our victory and hobbled back to the station wagon, Nana and Gladys on either side of me, our arms interlocked.

It was official: I had been inducted into the club.

A tale of two women

Since I started work last Monday (I know you're wondering how it is but I'd rather speak of such things anonymously on an anon blog I'm starting this week), there are things I miss from my pre-work life. Waking up without setting an alarm the night before...writing in the afternoons...lunching with family...staying up late to watch Gone With the Wind (again) on TCM (even though I own it) just because I can. But most of all, I miss hanging out with The Nana.

That six-week period, between when we moved back to California and when I had to start work, was amazing (for lack of a better term, and I know I overuse that word often but I really can't think of any other way to describe it at the moment). Having the freedom of my daylight hours to reconnect with Nana (who I wasn't that close to growing up) was wonderful. Though she's much older now, it was like I was given a second chance to reintroduce myself to her (and vice versa). And all it took was six weeks to erase a lifetime of formality and acquaintance.

It was grand. We'd go shopping every afternoon and scour the aisles at stores all over the tri-county area, filling our carts with nothing we needed but everything we wanted. (Tubes of coral pink lipstick (all her), coffee mugs, dresses, giraffe-print tote boxes, sterling silver wine-stoppers, authentic Portuguese olive oil. You name it, we bought it. (Her cart, suffice to say, was always much more filled than mine -- this was before I had the job, after all.)

We'd leave stores toting our wares in giant plastic bags, laughing the whole way home in her Volvo station wagon or her Land Yacht (a ginormous black Lincoln that belonged to my late grandfather) about the four ceramic chickens (of varying shapes and sizes) that I'd talked her into buying because of her well-documented obsession with the animal (they're all over her house: chicken sculptures, chicken tablecloths, chicken-shaped candles, chicken-print doormats. Heck, she actually just bought a red wingback chair with little chickens embroidered all over it. Without me, of course. I had to work that day. *pouts*)

If we weren't shopping for ceramic chickens or olive oil, than we were doing our other favorite thing together: antiquing. We'd spend hours at consignment shops and antique stores, strolling through the aisles and running our hands -- first old, than young -- across the wooden finishes of old tables and chairs and benches, marveling at the potential in such things with just a bit of sanding and the right stain. It was during these days in particular that I learned a lot from Nana, who's like the Obi Wan Kenobi of antiquing and furniture refinishing. Seriously. I am but a young Jedi when it comes to her knowledge of such things; she's been doing it all her life, back to her Betty Draper years -- yes she was a platinum blond with piercing blue eyes -- when she used to put my dad and his siblings to work sanding down dressers and tables with her in the backyard of their big stately house on a red-brick, tree-lined road in Moline, Illinois.

Anyway, every day the lunching and shopping would draw to a close (usually around 3pm), and we'd make our way back to her house where she'd reminisce about her life over a couple glasses of her classic iced tea (the secret ingredient? Crystal Light). It was during these conversations that I learned far more than I'd ever known about Nana. Sure I'd seen pictures of her back when she was spry (including one of her in a swimsuit on a beach feeding a sandwich to a man, who I should probably add was not my grandfather, on the cover of a 1940s copy of Holiday Magazine), but I never really pictured her having a life before my dad.

It's funny, isn't it? How certain people -- older family members, teachers, etc. -- all get frozen to a particular time period we tether them too? There is no beginning or ending for these kind of people. They just "are" -- held in place in our lives by markers like fathers and mothers, birthdays or graduations, Thanksgivings or Christmases. And any pictures we see of them outside of our parameters don't seem real. Like the Holiday cover my grandmother was on. I see it, but can't conceivably see that woman sitting on the beach, laughing with the sandwich in her hand, is actually who I've come to know as The Nana.

But over our iced teas every afternoon, between our shopping and our furniture refinishing, I began to see Nana as more than just...well...Nana. She actually had a life before she had kids and she even had a life before her marriage in the late '40s. Memories from her go back as far as the Great Depression, when she remembers neighbors and others in the community who'd lost everything come by her parents' house asking for handouts, food, anything to survive. She recounted her parents giving out food (luckily my great-grandparents were never affected by the Depression), and she remembered those people leaving, marking the stairs up to her front door with the symbol that food was being handed out at that address for any other passerbys desperate to eat. (Much like that "Hobo Code" Mad Men episode.)

She'd talk about her vacations in Florida as a young woman (just before she met my grandfather), when she and her girlfriends would dance with WWII GIs returning from the war. Or she'd tell me how some of the most favorite moments in her life were back when she lived in Illinois, near her best friend who also happened to be her sister-in-law. The two of them would load their old Norman Rockwellian station wagon up with all the kids (I believe they had around 11, combined) and antique all day with their children in tow. Just two young women in the 1950s, enjoying their all-American lives full of antiques and picnics and summer trips to Lake Michigan before things got complicated (her SIL fell out of contact after Nana moved to California in the early '60s with my grandfather) and the kids grew up. It's these times, back before the world changed and the country lost its innocence in the mid-'60s and on, that Nana misses most. I can tell by the way she talks about it.

Shortly before I started work, on one of the last full days I had with her before we'd be rescinded to weekends (if that), she told me in the car that she didn't see me as a granddaughter.

"You're more than that," she explained, laughing in disbelief that she even felt that way. "I don't know how to explain it, but I don't feel like you're my 28-year-old granddaughter. I look at you and I don't think of an age; I feel like we're the same age. We get along so well, that you're more of a friend. A good friend." She smiled, and I smiled back.

"Well, age is just a number," I said. "There's no reason why our age difference should be a matter. 20s, 80s, who cares? 'Cause I feel the same way. You're not my grandmother; you're a good friend."

Finally. Not only had we reconnected, but we'd moved past that onto a different, higher plane.

I still see Nana here and there. I try to make it over for dinner once a week and if I have time I stop by on the weekends, but because I work 40+ hours a week it'll never be the same. Then I start feeling differing shades of blue throughout my workday because of it. True, we have that bond that at this point is impervious to time, but still. It's different. I feel -- since starting work -- that there isn't enough time...and Nana's not getting any younger. I sit at my desk in SF, wishing I could be back in that station wagon across the bay, en route to some antique store or new Italian restaurant, listening to her stories. And then I feel sad, as though in a way I'm losing her all over again.

The Nana and moving day

Today is moving day -- again!

It's hard to keep up with my nomadic lifestyle but to recap we've been staying with my grandma (aka "The Nana") while figuring out where exactly we should live in the Bay Area (read: waiting to see if I got that one dream job. Wah-wahhh. With that offer off the table not only can I now breathe easier, but I can live practically anywhere in the region.) Since all our earthly possessions are just down the street in a public storage locker we decided to stay local in Walnut Creek and recently found an adorable one bed/one bath apartment in the heart of the downtown area, which means I'll end up spending copious amounts of money window shopping and imbibing often at Nordstroms slash H&M slash all the other cute stores and restaurants that are basically 500 ft. from my new front door. (In the inimitable words of Rachel Zoe: "I die.")

Though I'll only be one freeway exit away from my nana, I'm a little sad about leaving since living here for the past three weeks has been more hilarious than I expected. Why? Because I realize, staying here, that my 84-year-old grandma is essentially the Fruit Cake Lady:



Perhaps everyone's grandmas are like the Fruit Cake Lady and it's just dawning on me now, but there is something highly comedic about a sweet old lady who tells it like it is. No nonsense, no bs, no concern for political correctness. I guess when you get to a certain age you simply don't give a damn anymore -- and I love that. The shock factor is magnificent.

Take last week when hilarity ensued in the form of her two shitza-poo puppies, who she took out in her car to run errands with. As nana was in TJ Maxx cruising the home goods aisle, one of the puppies ended up getting into her container of medicine in the front seat and ingesting all 30 pills. The dog (of course) needed its stomach pumped and all my nana had to do that evening to describe the day's events was plop the empty, chewed-up, orange pill bottle on the dinner table with her shaky hands in front of J and I. This was followed up with a comment from her about the "damn" dog being suicidal.

And this is how it's been. Over the last three weeks my nana has uttered dozens of gems, but unfortunately I can only remember a few that made me laugh out loud:

On methods of eradicating Bluejays from her garden:

"If I had a shotgun he wouldn't be so happy, plopping around in that bird bath. We've got too many Bluejays in my garden."

On Justin Bieber's performance on the Today Show:

"Who is this Bee-bur person? He looks like a little girl. Frank Sinatra would be turning over in his grave if he could see this."

On Christina Aguilera's performance on the Today Show:

"Well I don't know about you but I think she looks like a tramp. Who wears their underwear outside their pants? A tramp..."

On Marilyn Monroe:

"She was pathetic."

On sleeping with a 12-gauge shotgun (my late grandpa's gun) next to her bed every night:

"I hope I never have to use the thing. I've never shot a gun before, but the world is a dangerous place. You never know."

On an obese young women in a tight, short dress walking past our lunch table:

Muttered under breath: "Oh honey. That dress is doing absolutely nothing for you."

On whole-milk ice cream she insisted I eat:

Me: "This scoop probably has, like, 1,000 calories in it..."

Nana, after a brief pause: "So what. It's milk. It's good for your skin."