Clara, the Woman Who Raised Me. I Salute You.

 

 

This picture was taken September 16th, 1970…ten days after my father died.
After a horrendous car accident, he lingered in a coma for two weeks and then, mercifully by my estimation, passed.
This is the kind of life event that literally is the beginning and end point in a time line, the source of many bad dreams, the topic of a lot of therapy, a lifelong trauma that attaches itself to most of your relationships…friend and otherwise. It is…it is…it is everything.
No hyperbole.
Even if you were only just about two years old when it occurred.
Serious bummer type stuff (to say the VERY least), but THAT is not what I am here to write about.

I am here to write about the woman who is beside me in that picture, on my second birthday…making sure that I HAVE a birthday, ten days after my father died.

I have had this picture in my possession my whole life, tucked away in a envelope in a drawer. Taken with me everywhere I have lived…but hidden away.
That picture used to make me feel very sad…sad that everyone in my life at the time had to make me a birthday in the bomb crater of our family, two weeks after all of our lives changed forever in a terrible way…and I was too two-years-old to notice it.
So, they made a cake, pink and purple freshie (it you know, you know), bought me some dolls and had a party…AND took pictures…which still floors me, to this day.
And what a day that must have been.
But that woman?
She is Clara, my grandmother.
Some people used to call her Sarah, as a nickname…and I never got that…how Clara could become Sarah.
But every day of my life, I was and am a 100% grateful that Clara was my grandmother.

It is SHE that I celebrate on this Mother’s Day.

She was the one who kept me safe, who cleaned my clothes, who took care of my skin (my excema was terrible), who spent time with me, who picked me up at school, who made my costumes, who made my lunch, breakfast and usually my dinner…who kept me safe.
My mother went back to work after about twenty years of being an at home mom to four children. She went back to work to support us all, at a minimum wage job that took up almost her whole life. As it would.
But Gramma kept me safe.
She kept me loved.
And I never doubted either.

A couple of months ago, when I moved to my new home, I found this picture and for the first time in my life, I put it up…out…out where everyone (everyone who is in my bubble…so three people so far) could see it and when they did, I would tell them about her.
50 years later.
The emotional and spiritual journey of this life never fails to amaze, surprise me and spend me.
Every time I open the fridge, where it hangs proudly on the front in the middle of ALL the other people I love, I look at it and poke around the edges of my feelings to see where it leaves me…where displaying it puts me.
And I love it…it gives me back my history…it gives memory to Clara, the warrior.

The photo makes me sigh somedays but mostly, I realized that I put her away after she left this world…like I also put away my dad, when I was old enough to try and take him out again.
Like they were secrets that I couldn’t talk about.
Growing up, I learned that when people died, we put them away and didn’t talk about them…because it was easier.
But no more.

Clara Wood was a passionate bowler, knitter, macrame-er, a passably good cook, a card shark, an excellent dresser, a wearer of wigs (as you can see, she is sporting one in this picture), a master wall paper-er, and a deep lover and protecter of her gold, plush accent chair in the corner of our family room.
She taught me to sew, to find joy, and to really appreciate the three hours of ABC TV between the hours of 1:00pm and 4:00pm.
She came to all my recitals and shows.
Also, as I have written previously, she had a silent relationship with my grandfather till the day he died. She never talked to him.
At all.
They moved into a house one block away from us after my dad died, and then moved into our house.
When she lived at that first house, I guess he tried to hit her one day, and she hit him over the head with a frying pan.
Not lethally…that wasn’t what killed him…unbelievably.
He never tried to hit her again, though.
And they never talked again. BUT they stayed together.
That shit is old school deep.
Clara was not to be fucked with…but was weirdly loyal. Which taught me some weird boundaries that I am still trying to shake and restake.

I think she was a bit of a witch…not like a bitch…but a WITCH.
All of her remedies for me were different from what my friends got when they were sick.
Got a cold? Mustard wrap on a sock around the throat.
Got an allergic reaction? Spent Lipton’s tea bags on the eyes.
Got an ear infection? Some warmed oil in a cotton-ball placed in your ear and lie on your side, feeling it drip inside your canal.
And so many more.

She told a ghost story like no other…and they always involved actual members of her family. As I got older and rolled these scary stories all around in my mind, I wondered the truth behind them. She made them ALL seem so real.
She was a fabulous story teller.
She was highly superstitious, went to church because that’s what you did just in case God was real, and clicked her tongue at every love scene that happened on TV between 1:00pm and 4:00pm…and there were A LOT of them.

Born in 1903, she lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, till she got old enough to go away, I think.
This is where her life story becomes sketchy to me. The middle part.
I wish I had asked her what made her leave home…because she did leave home before she met my grandfather.
She had a life in the middle of eighteen and twenty-five that I have no idea about…as a woman might have now…but not so much then.
This thought always intrigues me…that she was out there living a solo life for a while, back in the 1920’s/30’s, that was her own.
Her story picks up for me again at the Klondike Hotel in Niagara Falls, where she was a maid and then became the head chamber maid.
The Klondike was where my grandfather was a bartender…this is where the met…another story she kept to herself.
After that, she worked for a family called the Graham’s as their maid…something she did till she stopped working out in the world and came to take care of our family.
Always caring, always minding…ALWAYS there. ALWAYS fiercely loyal…my mother would say to a fault.

She and my mom did not totally get along.
There was a strain…you could feel it when they were together.
There was never an outward love of each other…nothing gregarious in their relationship…just…duty? There were never chats that had joy and laughter.
There was never a…friendship.
It’s hard to put a name on what their relationship was.
This was another history that we weren’t allowed to know…secrets, secrets, secrets.

But my gramma loved me…of THAT there was no doubt.
And I loved the fuck out of her.
And that’s what I hold to my heart.
She died when I was 26 years old. In a home. It was devastating to see her there.
When I was 17, she went to take care of my aunt, and soon after, she started to show the symptoms of dementia.
I have been silently convinced my whole life that if she had stayed with us she would have been fine.
When she left our house, when she exited my daily life, it was like a blow to the solar plexus that you never recover from. You just grow around it. Like that tree that someone leaned a bike against, and the tree just incorporated it.
Somehow, it made her passing easier…which is terrible, but true to say.

Clara Wood was amazing.
Her mother’s day story is not perfect…but it’s true.
She changed my life. She was literally mine.
She held my life in her hands like a baby bird, till I was old enough to fend for myself.
This is also true.
I will love her forever and ever…and I am happy that I have brought her into the light of the present.
She deserves to have her story told.

And my story is not singular.
There are millions of people out there, who on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, look at social media and decide every year who these people were in their lives…and how they were affected by them…and how to celebrate them.
It is not an easy day for many.
It’s complicated day for me, to be sure.
So, I decided to tell the true tale of the woman who raised me.
I hope she looks down on my life, and is proud.
She was the person who taught me to finish what you start, no matter how long it takes.
Slow and steady wins the race.
The more hurry, the less speed.
And if someone threatens your life…where’s the fucking frying pan?

Happy Mother’s Day, Gramma…I love you for-fucking ever.
And yes, I DO talk to my friends that way.

Happy Mother’s Day to all. Find your joy today, in someone, somewhere…who did you right…especially, if that person is you.
Love love love. Xoxox

S.M. May 9th, 2021

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