Matriarchy

Those of you who know me from Before, know how important my grandmother is to me, was to me. Is to me. For though she is gone, and has been for quite some time, her memory is so strong within me, her legacy so thick, that while she may no longer breathe, she continues to influence.

My grandmother, Gramma, my mother’s mother, my Gram, the grandmother I got to keep— she was really something.

My other grandmothers were as well, one I lost at age five, my father’s mother, Darlene, a performer. She had my dad as an unmarried teenager, a drop out from Hollywood High. She sang and danced (ballet and tap), from a very young age, spoke French, and dreamed enormous dreams. Then Dorothy, my Gramma Dot, my dad’s step-mom, was just amazing. Grandpa was her second husband, she was young, they got married the year after my parents and had a son the year after my sister was born. This fabulous woman, who was probably just a few years older than I am right now, joyfully jumped into the role of Gramma Dot, spoiling the shit out of my siblings and me. She was stolen from us, by cancer, far too young. I was in 6th grade. Moving forward, through life, Gramma, my mother’s mother, was the grandmother I got to keep.

And boy did I ever. This woman came to every play, game, and recital that I ever gave. She took me to our local theatre, both at San Luis Little Theatre (now SLO REP) and PCPA, she sat through the ballet recitals where I waved a garland for 2 minutes, and she and Poppa muddled their way through my singular season in water polo, when none of us really knew the rules.

My grandmothers are gone. Gramma lived into her 90’s, remaining sharp and engaged, living at home due to the incredible attention of my mother. Poppa passed in August of 2011 and she followed in April. She was born in 1920, the year white women could finally vote. She lived to see microwave ovens, and a space race, a man on the moon, women in Congress, Madam Speaker, a woman primary for President, a Black man become President (I so clearly remember her scraping off her Hillary bumper sticker and replacing it with OBAMA ’08), great grandchildren be born, so many new branches…

And I’m grateful she hasn’t had to witness recent history. That the free press, she and her husband worked for, was still relatively free and respected when she left. I think back to that warm afternoon of Poppa’s service, and this tiny, giant woman, standing throughout the entire reception line. Refusing to sit because these people had come “to honor Bob,” so she stood.

She stood. Through so many chapters. I think of the high schooler, watching her sweetheart graduate and go on to college while she stayed behind to graduate, and then working for another year to save up for school (I also vomit at the thought that one year working in a department store used to be enough to then pay for COLLEGE), but she did it. She waited and worked and then went. She graduated and got a job and then when they got married right before he shipped out for basic, she was FIRED for being married. Because married women were not welcome in the workforce.

So she hopped a train and left Colorado Springs forever, moving in with her sister-in-law, her new husband’s, brother’s-wife, also left behind while he fought in Europe, up until the Battle of the Bulge.

I think of my grandmother, younger than I am now, watching her sister-in-law receive the worst news ever. A preemptive haunting, a warning of what might be, the ever present threat of grief.

Poppa always downplayed his own role in WWII. He told me about fool’s errands around England, driving miles to pick up arm bands for the superior officers, things he felt really silly about having done. As we both grew older he told a few more stories, about the French women who taught him a few phrases, and the Christmas he spent there, about a guy he knew who was part of liberating the camps, “He never spoke again after that day.”

Poppa was a gentleman of a mold I cannot describe. The youngest of three, all boys, born to a German-American woman and a Norwegian-American man. He delivered papers as a boy, and after the war, came back to write for, and eventually edit and publish for the same paper. The dude lived the American dream. Married his high school sweetheart, had three daughters, sent them all to college, lived through Nixon and changed parties, lived to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

From Depression-era children through marriage equality, my grandparents, my mother’s line, they really saw it all. They got to evolve with the times– to see another World War, and the Red Scare, and Civil Rights, and Space Exploration, and I think of all the things that have happened recently, the times I’ve thought the thought I never thought I’d think, the times I thought “Thank goodness they’re dead and don’t have to see this.”

And then… I think of this week. I think about Kamala Harris and my grandmother. I think about all the merch she would have bought. I picture Gram in chucks.

I wore her pearls when I volunteered at the polls. I wore her shoes when I primaried for Elizabeth. I carry her with me always.

I may live under a Patriarchy, but a Matriarchy lives in me.