It never ceases to amaze me how responsive my oracle cards are to my thoughts and feelings immediately prior to making a blind pick. This morning, I was trying (as ever!) to keep my thoughts empty and meditative, but for some reason they were drifting to my maternal grandmother, Agnes, who lived in Schenectady when I was growing up. I'll tell you about the cards in a second.
But the gist of what I was thinking about was, not only is my life absolutely about the photo negative opposite to hers by the time I was conscious of her presence (probably when I was two or so, and she was 67). But secondly, life in general is so radically different. I was literally feeling nostalgic. Can't we just go back, for a few days, months, years? Back to an "easier time"?
Grandma lived in a large Victorian brownstone on lower Union Street. The front doors of the building must have been about nine feet tall, and the musty Victorian smell hit you as you walked through the entryway and then climbed up the long staircase. Her rented apartment was on the second floor, and the front two rooms were spacious and light. As I think I might have mentioned in an earlier blog, she was a painter (self-taught by copying the Masters), and several "Reniors", "Degas" and "Turners" adorned the walls. In the dining room, she displayed her collection of Vaseline glass, and art books were scattered throughout the apartment. Her oils, pastels, needlework, knitting, tole painting, rug hooking, and other supplies were in her bedroom closet and dresser, I think, because if she wasn't working on a project, her house was remarkably free of clutter. Her bathroom towels had pink roses on a ground of white, and the smell of her rose-scented soap is still with me. My grandfather had died by about 1951, and on the desk there was an early photograph of him in his World War I uniform. But apart from this, this was her apartment. I've never thought about it before, but she had an unusually solid sense of who she was, and that was reflected throughout her space, which she lived in until a year before she died in the early 1980s.
I think Grandma was one of the only people, to this day, who always welcomed me literally with open arms. Starting around the time I was eight, I would often walk from church choir rehearsal to her house to wait for one of my parents to pick me up, and sometimes she would make me early dinner. That hug...it wasn't a bear hug, but it was genuine and loving. She was about 5'6, of medium build, with short wavy grey hair (treated with bluing) and she never, ever wore pants/slacks/trousers. Usually she wore a blue or blue flowered dress or skirt and blouse (she called it a "shirtwaist"!) Sure, she had a TV, but it was a small portable black and white on a stand that she kept rolled out of the way. Once in a blue moon we would watch the local news, but usually, as I was her only granddaughter and the only grandchild who shared her interests, we'd sketch, or look through art books, or just talk. If we ate dinner, it was at the dining room table with real silver and china.
Even for the time, she (and her space) had a slightly antiquated aura. Her trash went to the basement in a brown paper bag tied up with twine. Her only concession to "junk food" was goldfish crackers. Any cookies or meals were homemade, no fast food. I appreciated then -- and now -- the fact that she literally was a being of the 19th century, as all my grandparents were. She had a car (a light blue Chevrolet with metal trim), and did drive, but even that seemed wrong somehow. There was a photo in her apartment of Grandma and her sister Anna, two little Bronx-born girls, in a small pony cart in New York City's Central Park probably circa about 1900. Even as a 1960's youngster, I related more to that era than my own, and still do.
So what cards did I pick this morning? Seven of Bows (Wildwood cards) -- Clearance, and Six of Cups (Rider) -- Nostalgia. It didn't feel like a critique (as in, "what are you doing, starting the day off woolgathering?"). But it did seem more like a reality check. Grandma's life and journey are not mine, and this is a very different era. She came to earth to achieve different things than I did. Remembering, appreciating, and gratitude, are appropriate. Actively wishing that I could return to that time or have the relatively easy post-65 life that she had is not, just simply because it cannot be.
I feel her with me today, and I can hear her saying, "Eat your beanies!" (I didn't like canned green or lima beans.) Thank you for being so genuinely you, Grandma. You were an excellent role model, and to this day, one of the most solid, stable, and loving presences in my life.
