Grandma

I've mentioned in a few posts that my maternal grandmother lived with us when I was a child. The mother of the mother. She was a special lady. I wrote my college essay about her.  It detailed how she had a dirt floor as a child in Russia, came to America alone when she was nine, and worked in a factory to save to bring her family over. She had all the makings of a great immigration story that should be on the wall at Ellis Island. I think a man with a pencil mustache tried to steal her money on the ship ride over from the old country.

By the time I knew my grandmother she was in her late 70's/early 80's. This was in the early 80's when old people seemed really old. By the time I was five my grandmother already had had a series of strokes and was in the late stages of dementia/Alzheimer's. With that, some strange things happened in my house. In no particular order here are a few:

• In Yiddish she asked my mother if she found me in the street.
• Also in Yiddish she said I was a pretty girl (shayna maiden)
• She gave me a screw driver to play with in my crib.
• She wandered out in the middle of the night and my neighbors had her returned via the police.
• She sometimes would wear a skull ring from a gum ball machine.
• When I was five my mother left me to watch her. Sybil came back to a dark house. I was asleep with my grandmother sitting next to me.
• My mother kept my grandmother's long red braid that was cut off 50 years ago in a drawer in the basement.
• On multiple occasions she tried to cook using plastic bowls as pots. They melted like crayons all over the stove.

And the strangest of them all:

• She took a shit on a plate in her bedroom and put it in a drawer. The house keeper waited until I got home from school to show me.

I wish I was making some of this up.