My Grandmother

We called her “Nonna.”  She was my mother’s mother, and she dominated our lives. 

She was only 42 when I was born, a  little, black-haired woman, round as a barrel, who brusheled about that big, brick house, telling everyone what to do. 

I knew why I called her “Nonna” instead of “Grandma.”  I was a baby, just beginning to talk.  One day I stood up in my crib and began to cry.  When my mother came to pick me up, I pushed her away, saying, “I don’t want Mamie.  I want my Nonna.” 

My grandmother told that story many, many times.

My grandfather died in the 1918 flu epidemic.  My grandmother was left a young, penniless widow with two young children: my mother, 12, and her brother, 10.   Her sister, Lena, was married to a prosperous Fort Worth lawyer.  Aunt Lena had tuberculosis.  Uncle George asked my grandmother to move in with them and help care for their three little girls.  Uncle George and Aunt Lena both died, and my grandmother, although not the legal guardian, stayed on as housekeeper and caregiver of the three little orphans. 

To justify her position my grandmother made herself indispensable.  My mother was relegated to fifth place in her affections, after the three girls and her son.  Of course, I did not understand the family dynamics when I was young.  As a child I accepted all the family relationships as normal and natural. 

I was an adult before I realized why the baby called her grandmother “Nonna.”  My parents lived with my grandmother.  The baby heard the names they called each other.  I could not speak clearly.  I said, “Mamie” instead of “Mary”; that was what everyone called my young mother.  I said “Nonna”, trying to say “Mama”, because that was what Mary called her mother.   I never heard the words “Grandma” or “Granny.”    

Now I see how cruel it was.  My grandmother puffed up her own ego by repeatedly telling how the baby preferred her to its own mother.  I heard it time after time.  No one ever mentioned how hurt my young mother must have been by this rejection by her baby. 

How did my mother react to this situation?  She spent her life trying to please her mother.  When I was born, my parents continued to live with Nonna because my mother was considered “too delicate” to care for a baby. My brother Lyle was born a year later, and suddenly Mother was able to care for two babies. We moved into our own home, half a mile away. 

My mother continued to spend every day at Nonna’s house.  When Lyle and I started to school, Mother transferred us from our neighborhood school to one near my grandmother so that we could go directly Nonna’s house every day after school. 

“The girls” grew up, married, and moved away.  They sold Nonna’s house to my parents.  My grandmother stayed with the house.  She continued to live with my parents, dominating the household, until she died at age 89. 

I was in Chicago when the call came that my grandmother had died.  I flew to Texas to be with Mother.  She and I were in the kitchen washing the cups and saucers used by people who came to the house after the funeral.  Her hands deep in soapy water, this 70-year-old woman turned to me and said, “I wish Mama loved me as much as she did the girls, but she never did.”