This is my favorite picture of the Other Women in my life. My grandmother, Martha, on the left, my eccentric aunt Helen in the middle.... and my mom...in her early twenties before she married.
.
They were the opposite of my Lithuania grandmother....the expensive leather shoes, the mink tails tossed over shoulders, the look of upper class American ladies rather than peasant.
.
The Polish ladies of my family wanted nothing to do with the old country. They wanted to be new and modern and American. Although my grandmother spoke Polish to me...she never allowed me to speak Polish back to her...only English. Martha was an excellent cook and an admirable seamstress but she never taught me to cook or even to thread a needle for the simplest of stitches.... I was to be totally American.... and in her eyes womanly practical skills... belonged to the servant class.
.
Whereas my Lithuania grandmother wanted me to take up my place in a line of feisty women unafraid to roam the woods looking for herbs.....my Polish grandmother wanted me educated and pressed into the mold of society's elite.
.
The tug of war between these two lines of women was a constant in my life .....and perhaps my Polish ladies would have won......except for the death of my uncle....my grandmother's youngest child whom she had late in life.
.
His name was Eugene. He drowned during a family picnic by a lake at age 16. He stood up to change positions in an old row boat, lost his balance, slipped, hit his head on the edge of the boat and sunk like a rock to the bottom. My dad....an excellent swimmer....who won medals in the army for swim meets.....dove in.... but could not find his body in the murky lake water.
.
My mother and my grandmother.... sunk into the type of total grief that consumes spirit and heart. They were often so distracted by their sorrows and memories.....I escaped from their ambitious plans.
.
Throughout my childhood, I thought my uncle died just before I was born....because his death...his life story....and the sadness draping our house seemed so fresh....happiness....good times....roll on the floor belly laughing....was an insult to his memory and legacy in the family. It's only when I acquired some decent math skills in 5th or 6th grade ....and read his tombstone....I realized he had died not a year or two before I was born...but six.
.
That's why I like this picture....of the women.... taken before Eugene died...when my Polish grandmother still had sparkle and an impish smile. I never knew that grandmother. I only knew ...a soft sad...woman....who never forgot her son's death.
.
So it was this grief, this ever present mourning....that gave my Lithuanian grandmother a chance to influence me.....because the Other Women were weakened by their constant presence in the past....where Eugene lived.
.
When I look back at my maternal line....especially my mother who still lives in Chicago....I often feel a sadness for their social naiativity. They poured so much effort and had so many dreams and hopes for securing a place in the upper crust through me...(trust me...I had a hundred dresses, little matching shoes and hats)..... but they never really knew the true requirements for the social status they wanted for our family.
.
When I left for college and left the old neighborhood....I could see what they couldn't......... we didn't have an address with a "Cove" or "Shore" in it ...I went to a university out on the prairie instead of an Ivy or Almost Ivy school.....and our family had names like Zigmund and Rudie and Irenka.
.
The Other Women didn't understand the nuances of old money....or the educated elite ....and so they were aiming a canon with me in it.....without realizing.....that only people shot from specific canons with specific proportions reached the promised land of society.
.
In the end..... my Other Women thought I had done "well enough".....they never understood....why I had so little ambition for the things they wanted so badly.....in fact...my mother's greatest insult....was "You're turning out just like her"...a reference to my Lithuanian Grandma who preferred prowling i the woods than prowling the aisles of Neiman Marcus.
.
Living in the south has reacquainted me with status and society.... the right addresses... the right side of town.....the right connections...even the right color blonde....
.
but it is of no consequence...
.
I'm a hybrid....someone who is educated and worldly enough to see one side....yet my tongue can forget to say the th in words ....and I actually eat kielbasa.....now and then....
.
I used to be angry at Eugene.
.
Hated him actually....a dead guy who saddles me with his masculine name....a guy who stops me from having a good time in my own house.....a guy we must visit every week at the cemetery....
.
but....in the end....the weirdness of living with a dead relative....sort of skews your perspective....
for better or worse there's lots of stuff in life I view as societal hokey pokey....for better or worse....I have a timer on my shoulder that says....hey life and time can run out....and when you feel this way.....each friend or love that leaves....each thing you fuck up hurts a bit more....because the clock in your soul is going tick tock.
.
One group of women put a clock in my belly and one woman...put flames in my cheeks....not the easiest combo....but certainly an interesting one.
~~
