Retro Post :: Ivory Slipper Satin
She sits on an armless desk chair padded with five or six thin blankets. It rolls, hence she rolls in small semi-circles in the small corner of what was once a kitchen and is now the anchor of the house, a room that holds the necessities, that leads everywhere. Fitting, as she's the core. Without her, he wouldn't make it, he's so skinny these days--although lately I've noticed that without him, she might not make it either.
And she might not be quite as happy as we've all always believed she would be.
My grandmother's face is transformed when she starts to speak, to tell me about her childhood. The subject sort of bloomed from how are you today to why does he insist on watching crime television shows over and over is something I will never understand to please take these tomatoes home and enjoy them to let me tell you about my mother and Chelsea. And I couldn't be more delighted--neither could she, but then she's always excelled at looking delighted in even the most awkward and humiliating situations in her life.
She's a natural, they'd say, at so many things, but in this I am always in awe.
She grew up in Chelsea, nine of eleven children and, as I found out this evening, one of twenty-four in a two-floor apartment above the laundry they owned on Broad Street. "There were always people around," she can't help but laugh. And she precisely draws a line on the table with her finger--she's always precise, by the way, from the way she grasps a mug by the tips of her straightened fingers to the way she folds napkins to keep in her faithful tote--she guides me through the layout: the school that had a Chin every year, thanks to her family and her cousins; the playground the little ones toddled to every day to keep them out of the way; the T she hopped on and off for her job downtown at Filene's Basement. She's always loved to travel, to learn. Was in the first class of women, by the way, to enter Northeastern University as a chemistry major, she tells me, if you can believe it.
I can.
When we were little, her red satin coin purse was always filled with dimes, dimes and pins for just in case, because all it took was a dime to get a grandchild on the commuter rail to Boston, to sailing for a dollar a summer, to shopping the bargains in the tourist strips. And when she was little, barely out of high school the little smiling wisp of a thing, but then she did skip the third grade, she took the trolley everywhere: to the lab, to work, to school, to visit cousins and go to the cinema and come back to Chelsea to listen to the Red Sox on the radio and keep score for her older brothers who were off to work themselves. But it was a stolen season, I think.
At twenty, she married my grandfather. "Not sure why I made that decision," she says to me, and it's at that point that I realize the room has taken on a very police-like outfit: the desk lamp poking out of piles of papers on the kitchen table is casting a stark, sharp light on us, just the two of us. Probably doesn't help that he continuously keeps the police radio on, a habit from decades as a Lynn Item photographer. It caws and snaps at us from the corner. Dead bodies are ubiquitous white noise as he does his exchange upstairs, filling one bag while another fills him, the cycle interminable.
But she is, as always, happy. Even after the aneurism that almost stole her, even after sixty-three years of always being underfoot, yet mandatory, in her own house. After losing her mother because of a disappointing marriage, after losing all those languages she learned because of a disappointing marriage, after every day of just making the best of it because of a disappointing marriage--and rising up to take each day as it comes, as she so often says. And I can't help but want to tell her how much I love her, and not just her, all she's crafted and cared for: the famous blankets, the beach and Boston summers, the five children, the hand-made wedding dress of "ivory slipper satin" because "we didn't have the big bucks back then", the instilled ethics of saving and suffering and getting by with a genuine grin.
It's all from her, I'm realizing. Yes, there is so much of my mother and father and other grandmother and grandfather, and even Poppa, in me. But the Chin resilience--I'm hoping at her age I also have it in spades.
I want to tell her I love her.
But we've never said I love you, because she doesn't say that. And it's all right, so long as she knows that I do. And so I do say it, and she thanks me and looks down like she always does. And I remember once more that all this, this every day, it isn't about weekends in the city and brand new must-have's. It's about family and gratitude and peace.
And so we make an exchange: I leave them fresh vegetables from the co-op; they give me tupperware full of his homemade Chinese soup. They wave me off on this humid night as ambulances park across their street in Lynn to revive some victim surrounded by a hollering crowd that scares the cat. He sits on the porch rail and yells at her to turn up the radio. She scurries inside to do as she's told. And I back out of the driveway, as always, worried for them, but so grateful that for once I skipped the gym for something truly important.
And she might not be quite as happy as we've all always believed she would be.
My grandmother's face is transformed when she starts to speak, to tell me about her childhood. The subject sort of bloomed from how are you today to why does he insist on watching crime television shows over and over is something I will never understand to please take these tomatoes home and enjoy them to let me tell you about my mother and Chelsea. And I couldn't be more delighted--neither could she, but then she's always excelled at looking delighted in even the most awkward and humiliating situations in her life.
She's a natural, they'd say, at so many things, but in this I am always in awe.
She grew up in Chelsea, nine of eleven children and, as I found out this evening, one of twenty-four in a two-floor apartment above the laundry they owned on Broad Street. "There were always people around," she can't help but laugh. And she precisely draws a line on the table with her finger--she's always precise, by the way, from the way she grasps a mug by the tips of her straightened fingers to the way she folds napkins to keep in her faithful tote--she guides me through the layout: the school that had a Chin every year, thanks to her family and her cousins; the playground the little ones toddled to every day to keep them out of the way; the T she hopped on and off for her job downtown at Filene's Basement. She's always loved to travel, to learn. Was in the first class of women, by the way, to enter Northeastern University as a chemistry major, she tells me, if you can believe it.
I can.
When we were little, her red satin coin purse was always filled with dimes, dimes and pins for just in case, because all it took was a dime to get a grandchild on the commuter rail to Boston, to sailing for a dollar a summer, to shopping the bargains in the tourist strips. And when she was little, barely out of high school the little smiling wisp of a thing, but then she did skip the third grade, she took the trolley everywhere: to the lab, to work, to school, to visit cousins and go to the cinema and come back to Chelsea to listen to the Red Sox on the radio and keep score for her older brothers who were off to work themselves. But it was a stolen season, I think.
At twenty, she married my grandfather. "Not sure why I made that decision," she says to me, and it's at that point that I realize the room has taken on a very police-like outfit: the desk lamp poking out of piles of papers on the kitchen table is casting a stark, sharp light on us, just the two of us. Probably doesn't help that he continuously keeps the police radio on, a habit from decades as a Lynn Item photographer. It caws and snaps at us from the corner. Dead bodies are ubiquitous white noise as he does his exchange upstairs, filling one bag while another fills him, the cycle interminable.
But she is, as always, happy. Even after the aneurism that almost stole her, even after sixty-three years of always being underfoot, yet mandatory, in her own house. After losing her mother because of a disappointing marriage, after losing all those languages she learned because of a disappointing marriage, after every day of just making the best of it because of a disappointing marriage--and rising up to take each day as it comes, as she so often says. And I can't help but want to tell her how much I love her, and not just her, all she's crafted and cared for: the famous blankets, the beach and Boston summers, the five children, the hand-made wedding dress of "ivory slipper satin" because "we didn't have the big bucks back then", the instilled ethics of saving and suffering and getting by with a genuine grin.
It's all from her, I'm realizing. Yes, there is so much of my mother and father and other grandmother and grandfather, and even Poppa, in me. But the Chin resilience--I'm hoping at her age I also have it in spades.
I want to tell her I love her.
But we've never said I love you, because she doesn't say that. And it's all right, so long as she knows that I do. And so I do say it, and she thanks me and looks down like she always does. And I remember once more that all this, this every day, it isn't about weekends in the city and brand new must-have's. It's about family and gratitude and peace.
And so we make an exchange: I leave them fresh vegetables from the co-op; they give me tupperware full of his homemade Chinese soup. They wave me off on this humid night as ambulances park across their street in Lynn to revive some victim surrounded by a hollering crowd that scares the cat. He sits on the porch rail and yells at her to turn up the radio. She scurries inside to do as she's told. And I back out of the driveway, as always, worried for them, but so grateful that for once I skipped the gym for something truly important.
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