My mother was born in 1918. Her father had been born on a farm in Iowa and had walked to the big city of Des Moines, knocked on doors to find lodging, ended up going to law school and becoming senator of Iowa. He was beloved by the people. My mother entered the world pre depression, thus her early years were filled with culture, elegance and affluence. As she was one of four children, an English nanny was brought into the family to ‘manage’ the young ‘uns. Nanny’s own love had been killed in World War I and so at the age of 18, here she was…soon to become a roving nanny through-out the Washington elite, including Adlai Stevenson’s family, but she was really OURS, a family member.
When the depression hit, our family was impacted dramatically. Being devoted to Iowa, its land and people, my grandfather had invested the entire family fortune in Iowa farmlands and POOF…everything was lost during the 30’s. Nanny could no longer be employed but she stayed. When my mother became a mother, Nanny was our ‘hands on’ grandmother, where our ‘real’ one was aristocratically distant.
When we sailed off to India, Nanny was left behind, and now, at this stage of life, I wonder about this. She lived alone for her remaining twenty years. My father helped her financially but with the passing of time she was quite blind and deaf. She was not a social butterfly, and so she lived alone in Concord, New Hampshire, in her little apartment, occasionally watching Ed Sullivan, and what else? I do not know.
We are so incredibly fortunate to have the means to communicate with each other as we do….….to have medical assistance for our eyes and ears…to be entertained if we need to time out from life and/or to grow our worlds through visual story telling…sometimes we forget the simplicity of this, as we are so immersed in the twisting and turning of the world. Those on whose shoulders we grew…who contributed humbly to who we and what the world is…we need to quietly thank them.
Nanny loved her snifter of brandy…and to make the most lusciously delicious shortbreads and pastries that live on in our holiday repertoire…and way before we went to India “Holy Cow” was her favorite expression. THANK YOU, NANNY.