Whenever I think of Thanksgiving, I think of my Grandma Barber.
I never did like Grandma Barber.
We had to spend Thanksgivings with her in Buffalo. She was my mom’s mom. My siblings and I would have much preferred to spend the holiday with our other Grandma. She was cool. But Thanksgiving with Grandma Barber was an obligation, so every year, we were required to shuffle off to Buffalo.
The drive always seemed interminable. We’d pick Grandma up at her dreary apartment. It smelled dank and musty. The drapes were pulled so tightly, no light seeped in. It made me feel sad.
We’d rush her off to a restaurant with a Thanksgiving buffet, make awkward conversation, eat as quickly as possible, and dump her back off at home before heading back to Rochester, relieved we’d made it through another year.
Grandma Barber was not a particularly warm person. “Black Irish,” she had black hair and blue eyes. Grandma was small and thin, but big in personality. She was assertive, and cutting, and critical—nothing like a real Grandma was supposed to act like. My mother had acquired similar traits. They were both “tough broads.”
Mom reminded us that Grandma hadn’t had an easy life. Grandma’s husband—my grandfather—had left her in the midst of the Great Depression for a 16 year old schoolgirl he’d knocked up. My mother was only a toddler. In 1935, Grandma and Mom moved from Oklahoma to Rochester, NY to make a fresh start.
Divorced single mothers were rather unheard of at the time, and certainly not accepted in mainstream society. Grandma had to take a job as a waitress to make ends meet. She got a job at the then-illustrious Hotel Cadillac in downtown Rochester.
But Grandma couldn’t leave her little daughter alone, so was forced to give her up to foster care. A nice childless couple who owned a horse farm in the country took Mom in and raised her as their own. Grandma would visit her daughter every Sunday afternoon—undoubtedly feeling like the outsider—then go back downtown to work the dinner shift. It was surely a lonely life.
I pondered this backstory. Yes, that sounded awful. But who would give away their own kid? And only see her once a week? I didn’t understand, and I didn’t like Grandma much for not loving Mom enough to keep her.
Later, when Grandma’s health worsened, she moved from Buffalo to an apartment in Rochester to be closer to us. I was 12 years old. Mom told me that she and I would be visiting Grandma every Tuesday during the summer months. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of spending any time with this old, bitter woman. On top of that, it turned out to be more of a series of home health aide appointments than “visits”—me being the home health aide. Mom would dump me off and escape for hours, while I took care of Grandma.
I’d start out by helping Grandma take a bath. I would help her undress, then lower her fragile, wizened body carefully into the bathtub. The first time, I was worried that I would have to soap her up and touch her breasts. Thankfully, she was able to do that herself. She was only skin and bones. I felt embarrassed for her, but she didn’t seem to mind. That might’ve been because she just appreciated being touched and cared for. Grandma had been quite a looker, and had prided herself in her appearance, I could tell from photographs. It was alarming for me to see for the first time, up close, how age takes its toll.
After her bath, I would set Grandma’s wiry hair in rollers, and dust and vacuum the apartment. Then it was time for us to settle in for The Young & The Restless. I had always been very uncomfortable around Grandma. We really didn’t have much to talk about. But we really enjoyed our favorite soap opera, gossiping about Victor and Nikki and Peter and what trouble they’d get up to next. After a while, I almost started looking forward to our weekly visits.
Grandma Barber died a couple years later, of heart failure. It was a very small funeral—Grandma didn’t have any friends. After the funeral, Mom and I worked on cleaning the apartment out. We found a number of large manila envelopes underneath the rug in the bedroom. We looked at each other quizzically, then tore the envelopes open. Out fell, all told, more than $100,000 in cash. Grandma had never trusted banks since the Depression.
With this unexpected gift from Grandma, Mom now had the resources she needed to turn her life around. She had been miserable living with my father. She found a beautiful old farm in the country, and spirited me away with her to try to give me a new start. As she settled into her new life, Mom was able to conquer her own demons, and live out her days in peace.
When you’re little, you don’t understand the big picture. Here I had thought all along that Grandma gave Mom up because she didn’t love her enough. But it was because she loved her too much. Grandma was a tough woman only because she had to be. She overcame tremendous hardships in order to give her daughter a better life. I am so grateful for Grandma, the sacrifices she made, and the example she set.
My two biggest regrets: that I wasn’t able to tell her this when she was alive, and that my name wasn’t on some of those manila envelopes under the rug.
[Photo: Grandma and Mom, 1937]
