100 Years of Fortitude

My grandmother is older than television. She is older than bubble gum. Older than Band-Aids. She is older than sliced bread, frozen food, and stainless steel. 

When she was born Woodrow Wilson was president. No one had yet used a Q-tip. And a stamp was two cents. Milk, six. 

My grandmother is older than the old Yankee Stadium. Older than Radio City Music Hall. Older than the Russian Revolution. She is older than a woman’s right to vote and saw Prohibition come and go. She was born the same year as Joe DiMaggio and Jonas Salk, Dorothy Lamour and Gypsy Rose Lee. Rudolph Valentino died when she was twelve.

My grandmother is older than “The Great Gatsby.” Older than “God Bless America.” She is older than talking movies, parking meters, chocolate chip cookies, Winnie the Pooh, penicillin, and Pyrex.

My grandmother in 1930. 16 years old. 

When I was a kid, my grandmother scared the shit out of me. Even her name seemed designed to frighten children. Mildred. My sister and I called her Grandma. She looked like a cross between Bette Davis and a water buffalo, and she had little patience.

“Peas or corn?” she said to me one evening. I was about eight years old. My sister and I were spending the night at her house with our two cousins, and Mildred was making dinner. When I passed near the kitchen on my way to the bathroom she stopped me, wanting to know which I preferred. “Peas or corn?” she said again, with the freezer door open and her hand inside, hovering over the bags of frozen vegetables. 

Corn, I thought. No contest. I want corn. I hated peas. And that should have been the end of it, but my flaw was in always trying to make other people happy. What about my sister? I thought. What would she want? And my cousins? Maybe they don’t like corn. Maybe my grandmother doesn’t like corn. As I stood there, thinking about corn and peas, I could feel my grandmother growing more and more impatient. “Oh for God sakes,” she finally said, “I’ll make peas.” And she dismissed me with a flick of her wrist.

She was, I’m certain, less annoyed at having to wait for an answer than she was by my inability to make a decision. 

Looking like Bette Davis. 1943.

Later that night, in the middle of it, I fell out of bed. I was still half asleep, piled on the floor, when I made a very quick decision: Get back into bed before she comes in here and yells at me. I could practically hear the terry cloth whipping through the air as Mildred wrapped a bathrobe around herself in her room just down the hall. 

Mildred was all business, 1960s

My plan, once in the bed again, was to pretend to be asleep, as if nothing had happened. And if, in the morning, let’s say, she asked about a thump in the night, I would act like I had no idea what she was talking about. I don’t know, I’d shrug. I didn’t hear a thing. I fancied myself a good liar. I was certain I could pull it off. But no sooner had I formed the plan when there she was, filling the doorway and looking down at me, annoyed. "What are you doing?" she said, as if I had chosen to be on the floor. “Are you hurt?” she asked. I was not. “Alright, then get back into bed and try not to fall out of it again.”

She said it as if she fully expected me to fail at that effort.

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November 4, 1994

1. Turn the Beat Around, Gloria Estefan

2. December ’63, The Four Seasons

3. Living in Danger, Ace of Base

4. All I Wanna Do, Sheryl Crow

5. I’ll Make Love to You, Boys II Men

6. Get Over It, The Eagles

7. I’ll Stand By You, The Pretenders

8. Endless Love, Luther VanDross & Mariah Carey

9. 100% Pure Love, Crystal Waters

10. Another Night, Real McCoy

In 1994, not long after her 80th birthday, around Christmastime, I took my grandmother for breakfast to a local Niagara Falls restaurant called The Goose’s Roost. As a kid, when I’d only heard people say the name, I thought it was called The Goose Says Roost, as if there were some deranged talking goose inside who went around saying “roost” to everyone. What a crazy goose, I’d think to myself, and hope that one day I’d get to meet him. 

When I pulled up to my grandmother’s house to pick her up, she stepped out in black leather, head to toe. Knee-high boots, a pencil skirt, coat, gloves. All of it leather. All black. It was ten o’clock in the morning. 

At the restaurant, I asked her if she’d like me to hang up her coat. She’ll appreciate this, I thought. I’m taking charge. Making a decision. Being a gentleman. “No, I would not,” she said, as if she’d been anticipating the question and was now giving her prepared statement. She clenched her hands tightly around the lapels of her coat, keeping it firmly in place in case, I don’t know, I tried to pull it off of her or something, and she said: “This is my Christmas gift to myself and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone take it.” 

In her younger days, at 84 years. 

As I got older, I came to find my grandmother’s temperament less intimidating and more amusing. I was able to navigate it, even appreciate it. Perhaps it’s the screenwriting, which demands brevity. There is no room for excess. Like a screenplay, my grandmother does not have time for your bullshit or indecisiveness. She will do what she wants and cares little for what people think of her. Maybe that’s why she’s lasted as long as she has. Maybe that's why I admire her. She is, after all, older than Mount Rushmore. 

Now and then we talk on the phone. The conversations are never too long. In fact, they’re exactly as long as she wants them to be. And when they're over she says I love you in a garbled voice, the result of a bout with throat cancer from many years ago. But I understand her. Better than I ever have. And I know she means it. And I say "I love you, too, Grandma." 

Happy Birthday.