Grandma anticipated her first day of school in America as a very important moment in her young life. She knew that she needed an education to become a good citizen of her new country.
On the morning of her first class, Grandma excitedly rushed to dress. Though she didn’t have much of a wardrobe, what she did own was clean and well pressed. As she slipped her feet into her best pair of long black stockings, Grandma’s happy mood dissolved into sadness. Her stockings were riddled with gaping holes.
“Forget about your socks, Mama; you haven’t time to mend them now,” urged Grandpa. “You’ll be late for class. And, anyway, I have a surprise for you!”
A moment later, Grandpa handed Grandma her old high-button shoes. Only now she hardly recognized her timeworn shoes—they had been transformed. They gleamed with brand-new leather soles and shiny black laces. She could see her reflection in their brilliant shine. While she had slept that night, Grandpa had secretly worked until the wee hours to repair Grandma’s high-button shoes.
Grandma’s eyes welled with tears of gratitude as she placed a kiss on her husband’s cheek. “I will look like a fine lady in these wonderful shoes, Papa,” she said.
“Hurry now, Mama, hurry. Slip your feet inside these beautiful shoes, and no one will ever suspect you have holey stockings. It will be our little secret,” Grandpa promised.
Grandma had no time now to mend her tattered stockings. So she did as her husband had suggested and slipped her stocking feet into her high-button shoes. She quickly laced them up and rushed out the doorway, pausing only a moment for Grandpa to kiss her good-bye and to hand her two one dollar bills for her classroom tuition.
Arriving at school that morning, Grandma felt uneasy in a classroom filled with strangers. Standing at the head of the class was a stern-looking teacher by the name of Mrs. Peabody. In her hand she held a long, ominous-looking pointer stick, which she used both for pointing and intimidation. She passed a large, empty bowl around the classroom and instructed each student to drop the tuition fees into the container. Every student complied. One of the more affluent students paid his fee with a bright two-dollar gold piece.
After collecting all the money, the teacher placed the bowl on her desk.
Later that afternoon, when Mrs. Peabody tallied up the tuition money, she discovered the gold coin was missing. Convinced that one of her students had taken the gold piece, she demanded that everyone in the classroom empty their pockets onto her desk. The students promptly obeyed, but no gold coin appeared. Angry and frustrated, the teacher took her search one step further and demanded that everyone in the classroom remove his or her shoes. A small gold coin could easily be hidden in a high-button shoe.
One by one, the students removed their shoes. Everyone, that is, except Grandma. She sat there frozen with embarrassment, hoping and praying the missing coin would be found before she had to slip off her shoes. But a few minutes later, when the coin failed to turn up, Mrs. Peabody pointed her stick directly at Grandma’s shoes and demanded she remove them.
For what seemed like an eternity, the entire classroom stared down at Grandma’s feet. Grandma, who had been so proud of her elegant shoes, just couldn’t remove them now in front of her peers and expose her holey stockings. To do so would be a great disgrace.
Grandma’s reluctance to remove her shoes convinced the teacher of her guilt. Mrs. Peabody marched Grandma off to the principal’s office. Grandma, in tears, immediately telephoned Grandpa, who rushed down to the school. Grandpa explained to the principal why his wife was reluctant to remove her shoes. The understanding principal then allowed Grandma to remove her shoes in the privacy of his office. He soon discovered the only thing Grandma was hiding was a pair of unsightly, tattered stockings.
Grandma returned to her classroom, but all that day a shadow of suspicion hung over her.
Late that afternoon, just before the dismissal bell, Grandma was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing. When Mrs. Peabody raised her right arm to write the class assignment on the blackboard, the missing coin fell from the cuff of her sleeve and rolled across the room in plain view of the entire classroom. Earlier that day, as she counted up the money, the stiffly starched cuff of her dress had accidentally scooped up the small coin.
That afternoon, when Grandma returned home from school, Papa was waiting for her on the front porch swing. Exhausted from his night job, he was quietly napping. Cradled in his hardworking hands was Grandma’s darning basket. Inside the basket were all of Grandma’s old stockings that Grandpa had carefully and lovingly mended.
In later years, Grandpa would become a successful businessman. He took special pride in giving his wife stockings made from the finest silks and woolens.
Though Grandma appreciated these fine gifts, she often said they were never so dear to her, or so well-loved, as those old, tattered stockings, so lovingly mended by her husband’s callused, hardworking hands.
Cookie Curci
More Than an Heirloom
The world does not require so much to be informed as reminded.
Hannah More
Fifteen of us crammed into my Grandma Chesser’s tiny one-bedroom apartment a few days after her funeral. Even after her death at the age of eighty-one, her apartment was as it had always been—as neat as a pin. Grandma was quiet, austere; she dressed simply, almost plain, never drawing attention to herself. She hadn’t cut her hair for years and wore it in a single braid wrapped around her head. Only at night would we see the long silver mane.
She was meticulous about her meager possessions, tidy to a fault, and practical about what she needed and didn’t need. Because she had such a limited amount of storage, we thought that most of her keepsakes were thrown out or given away. But as drawers were opened and boxes searched, a whole mansion of memories unfolded before our eyes.
Grandma had utilized every available space in her tiny apartment; we found boxes under her bed, hidden behind blankets and stacked in closets. Dozens of pictures and letters spilled out of small shoeboxes. I even unearthed some cards and letters with my childish handwriting, my first attempts at letter writing. Stacks of letters, cards and all kinds of papers included report cards from the 1930s, World War II ration books, postcards from forgotten vacations.
Cries of delight rang out when my sister and cousins found long-forgotten handmade gifts made fifteen to twenty years ago. Then I found practically all of the presents I had made for her, too. Simple boxes and trinkets most people would have thrown out one week later, she had safely tucked away for her pleasure.
All those gifts—needlework, shellacked plaques with trite sayings, macramé potholders and scores of other items made by her seventeen grandchildren—filled the spaces of her home. When I had given her gifts and crayon pictures, she had smiled pleasantly, never one to make a big fuss.
Box after box, we searched in wonder. There were crocheted baby hats, leaving us to wonder whose tiny heads they fit at one time. Seven sons had been born to my grandparents. She never said much about the two who died at young ages.
Nestled with the pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses she must have worn as a teenager were Grandfather’s rusted fishhooks. She had even saved his old shaving cup, razor and razor strap. His death came at the beginning of their “good years,” after all the sons had left and life was slowing down. She stoically lived another twenty years without him, yet we always knew she missed him.
In her jewelry box, scattered among the costume jewelry, was a small, rough, gray rock. But it had my father’s name on it, written in his own childish handwriting in black ink. As he rubbed and examined it, his eyes searched the stone for details of its past. He couldn’t remember its importance, but she must have. He was her youngest son, the one she tended to spoil.
We laughed when we discovered a paint-by-number picture hidden behind a door. I claimed it as mine, but my brother said it was his. Why either of us would want to claim it, I don’t know. It is the ugliest painting in the world, yet she saved it. From a dist
ance, it looked like a dog; closer up, it was a swamp of mottled green and brown paint.
I saw the valentines first. It was like finding treasure. All different sizes of bright red cards, 1930s vintage. Chubby-cheeked children, angelic faces, with cute cartoon sayings: “How’s chances?” and “You’ve got me all busted up over you!” Most were addressed to my father, each from a different girl. There were a few re-addressed to another brother, apparently some early attempts at recycling.
But most of all we found letters. Page after page that recounted everyday life, heartaches and unexpected joys.
“I think the kids have the flu.”
“Guess we’ll be coming home for Christmas.”
“We’re having pretty good weather today.”
“I’m tired of camp and want to come home.”
Grandma faithfully answered every letter.
I have heard many stories of families fighting tooth and nail over an antique bedroom suite, a piano or a diamond ring. Grandma wasn’t able to hand down valuable heirlooms like that, but what we found were more precious than Victorian pianos. Her memories were her keepsakes, important enough to save for decades, even as long as fifty years.
I’m sure that on her loneliest nights, these treasures gave her—and now us—the greatest pleasures.
Susan Chesser Branch
A Leap of Faith
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin
In the early 1900s, when thirteen was, sadly, far from a tender age, my grandmother escaped the pogroms of the tsarist regime in the Ukraine with her father, baby brother and sisters for the “gold-paved” streets of New York City. It would be ten years before she would see her mother and her other brothers again.
To help her father begin to squirrel away enough funds to send for the remainder of the family, she endured the stifling summer swelter and finger-numbing winter cold, the severe eyestrain, and the loss of many precious days of her youth in the pursuit of piece work in the garment industry. What differentiated her from many immigrant girls and women in similar circumstances was the specific “sweat shop” in which she worked: the ill-fated Triangle Shirt Factory. For on March 25, 1911, shortly before her fifteenth birthday, my grandmother would become the instrument of her own survival, when the building would burst into flames, ultimately killing 146 of her coworkers. Almost seventy-five years later, I had the opportunity to learn more about this infamous day, right around the time I was facing major challenges in my own life that would test my mettle, resilience and courage—just as the great fire had tested my grandmother’s.
In the mid-1980s, when my grandmother was nearing ninety, declining somewhat physically but still as sharp mentally as the needles with which she so lovingly continued to sew and repair our family’s clothes, I read a human-interest article about the “last known” survivor of the Triangle fire. I knew the premise to be false, but rather than contact the reporter and diminish the fifteen minutes of fame of the brave subject of that story, I set out on a personal quest: to find out the details of the peril in which my grandmother found herself that day and the circumstances that enabled her to survive to enrich my mother’s life and mine in so many ways for so many years afterward. I studied the history of the event and interviewed my remaining great aunts and uncles, but my best source of information was my grandmother herself. Although her short-term memory had declined over the years, her long-term memories were still intact and richly detailed.
They led me to a picture I hold deep in my mind’s eye and in my heart: a young woman with long, auburn hair, strong legs and a determination to survive that led her veritably to leap across tall buildings in a single bound. I envision her with a heavy, patched apron, high black shoes and a set jaw as she refused to take the death leap like so many of the young girls with whom she worked. Following her instincts instead, she trusted the one supervisor in whose honesty and compassion she believed, forming a human chain with others from her work crew. I can see that chain weaving through the smoky haze as he led them around doors locked to “cut down on employee theft” to the one door they could force open and, ultimately, to the roof. There, she and her cohorts made the leap to the roof of the next building intact, defying their potential fate.
It was that image that sustained me when, at the age of thirty-five, I underwent heart surgery, and once again a month into my recuperation when I entered premature menopause and learned in my first year of marriage that I would never be able to conceive. And I would summon up her figure in midleap a year and a half later when I learned I had breast cancer, and throughout my year of ensuing chemotherapy treatments as well.
Now, at age fifty-four, a successful professional counselor, writer and adoptive mother of two young children, I know that my second mother and best friend, my inspiration and my rock, provided me with one of the most precious legacies a granddaughter could ever receive: the courage to take her life into her own hands with self-reliance and positive resolve.
Hannah Amgott
The Locket
Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life.
Jean de La Fontaine
Lydia went up into the attic to get the old dehumidifier for Grandma Ruth’s bedroom. Once she’d opened the trapdoor and climbed the rickety old ladder into the crawl space, she couldn’t resist rummaging through some of the family heirlooms stored up there. Her attention was drawn to an old locket resting on top of a photo collection, stacked neatly in an attractive but faded hatbox. Lydia’s curiosity got the better of her, so she carefully picked up and examined the tiny piece of jewelry. It didn’t look expensive, but it was well made and charming. She knew it must have been a special present to a child.
She gingerly snapped the clasp open, taking care not to break the delicate hinges. Hidden inside were two miniature photographs of smiling little girls, perhaps eight or nine years old. One of the happy young faces looked just like her Grandma Ruth. But who was the other young lady? Could it be that Lydia had a secret, long-lost great-aunt? Who was this stranger in the locket and what had become of her?
Forgetting the dehumidifier and clutching the locket, Lydia scurried down the ladder and burst into Grandma’s sewing room. Grandma was busy at work on her entry in the town’s annual quilting bee.
“Grandma,” Lydia exclaimed, “look what I found. Is this you?”
Grandma slowly took the trinket from Lydia’s hand and cupped it gently in her palm. She examined it quietly for a moment. A sad, wistful smile passed over her face. “It’s me,” she nodded.
“But who’s the other little girl? You look so much alike. Was she . . . was she your sister?”
“Oh, no,” Grandma laughed, “No . . . but we were as close as any sisters could be, Emma and I.”
“But who was she?” Lydia asked eagerly.
“We grew up together right here in town. Went everywhere together—we wore the same clothes, rode the same bikes. We even got the same haircut. I remember the day these photos were taken, down at the old Imperial Theater—of course, that’s a laundromat now.”
“Sounds like you two had a very special friendship.”
“We were like peas in a pod,” Grandma agreed, “until Emma’s family moved away to Akron. Her father was a doctor, and he took a job at a clinic in the city. We wrote every day, then every week, then a few times a year—all through high school, and even after I met your Grandpa Bill. But somehow we lost touch after that. It’s been more than fifty years since I’ve heard from her.”
Grandma’s story made Lydia think of her own special friendships, how much they meant to her and how she would hate to lose touch with the “Emmas” in her own life.
“I wonder whatever happened to her,” sighed Grandma, “I guess I’ll never know.”
But Lydia was never one to give up hope, and seeing Grandma’s reaction to the locket, she was determined to find out. She spent the remainder of her stay poring over Em
ma’s old letters—she didn’t want to miss a single one.
Fortunately, Grandma had saved many of them, pressed between the pages of a heavy copy of the young friends’ favorite book, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Like the book, Emma’s letters also told a moving story—the story of two great friends coming of age together. But the story of Ruth and Emma wasn’t a tale of fiction; it was all true.
Lydia was struck by one letter in particular. It was among the latest in Grandma’s collection, and it contained a clue she thought might help them learn of Emma’s whereabouts. One of Emma’s last letters announced that she had taken a teaching position at a school in the city. Perhaps that school still existed and might have some record of Grandma’s old friend.
Some amateur detective work on the Internet quickly revealed that the school was still in operation, but had relocated to a new building in 1963. Lydia was worried. Had Emma’s records survived the move? It was time to make some phone calls.
The principal was reluctant to share any details over the phone, but when Lydia explained the unique circumstances, she agreed to meet in person. Lydia bought a round-trip bus ticket and was on her way to Akron later that same week.
Lydia’s meeting with the principal was more successful than she had dared to hope. Emma had retired before the principal had come to the school, but a few of the older teachers had fond memories of her. The French teacher still visited with her regularly. She could arrange a meeting.
Two weeks later, on the day of the annual quilting bee, Emma made the journey all the way from Akron, driven by her son Steve. Lydia had spent the morning calming Grandma, who paced nervously about the house, straightening and restraightening the doilies.