Happy Birthday To My Favorite SOB

I've mentioned before that my maternal grandmother was a true character.

She was one of 18 children born in the US to parents who had immigrated from Italy. One of the 13 of those children who survived to adulthood. One of the girls in those 13 who had to quit school before they reached high school. (They were sent to work to help pay for their brothers' college educations.) One of the girls who worked all her life, took care of her own home and family, and then cleaned her parents' house on Sundays. One of the girls who was very happy to marry because it got her out of her parents' house and into a life of her own.

She made it through the 8th grade in school. That was more education than her older sisters received. Until the day she died, she educated herself to make up for what she'd missed. By her chair in her living room there was a basket that always held whatever book she was currently reading, a dictionary and a notebook. Any time she came across an unfamiliar word in her reading, or heard one on TV, she looked it up in the dictionary and wrote it down in her notebook.

The man she married was an only Italian son (he had three sisters.) In those days, in that traditional family, it meant that the sun verily rose and set on his head: He was the favored child, the beloved boy who got whatever he wanted. As an adult, he had a hard time holding a job because he couldn't take orders from a boss. My grandmother, with her eighth-grade education, largely supported the family as a department store saleswoman. And she was such an accomplished seamstress that the store finally forbade her to wear clothes that she had made to work because they were so much more beautiful than the store's offerings.

The family did not have a lot of money, so all three of her daughters put themselves through university. My grandmother insisted that they get a real education so that they would not grow up to be like her. I remember being a tiny, tiny child and having her tell me the same thing. Bypassing higher education was never an option for me: Grandma would without question have killed me first, right after she gave me an ear-blistering lecture about being too stupid to take advantage of the opportunities with which I'd been blessed. As a woman of her times, she also wanted me to marry someone who could support the family ("a doctor or a lawyer," as she usually put it) because she had not been so fortunate herself, but her bottom line was that we all needed to be able to take care of ourselves if push ever came to shove. That was just not negotiable.

Understandably, she was in many ways a hard woman by the time I was old enough to really know her, most likely because she had worked so tenaciously all her life for everything she had. Dear God, the woman could hold a grudge. For all eternity if need be. And she had a head like a rock. As a teenager, I called her the SOB (for "stubborn old bat"): it was a term of endearment, and she knew it. She was sharp as a tack, enjoyed an argument (not in a mean-spirited way, but the verbal sparring of it) and suffered absolutely no fools whatsoever. Even her wardrobe was severe. Everything in her closet was brown, black, navy blue, or white, and every single new article of clothing she bought was worn to church before anywhere else. No exceptions. She was a lady in the true sense of the word and always dressed like a queen.

She was also the kindest of grandmothers beneath the crust. Although she must have been well into her 70s at the time, I remember her allowing my preschool-aged little brother to "tow" her off her armchair and down onto the floor with one of his toy cranes over and over. She never said a word when I ate all the tomatoes and grapes out of her backyard garden or when my brother and I dug an enormous hole in a corner of her yard to use as a fort. She would plan for weeks before we arrived for a visit so that all of our favorite foods would be on hand for us. (This was a woman for whom love was often shown with food: a guest in her home could not be hungry for so much a moment. Ever.) There was invariably a homemade pizza cooling on the counter to greet us, because we loved them. That smell instantly takes me back to her house, even this many years later. She taught us all to make gnocchi and spaghetti sauce the "real" way. When I earned my driver's license at 16, she immediately handed me her car keys: she was so terrified that she would be responsible for something happening to me or my brother while she was driving that she preferred to have me do it, even as new and green as I was then. She loved us so very, very much, and we her.

She died the summer I turned 22. It is one of my greatest regrets that she did not live to see me finish graduate school or dance at my wedding or hold my children. I so wish that Himself and the children could have known her. I read the eulogy at her funeral, since I was the only one who could do it without breaking down on the altar. Our beloved monolith (her daughter's description) was gone, and the grief was staggering.

Today would have been her 104th birthday. Thinking of her and smiling today. She lives on in The Girl, who was named for her and is every bit as stubborn.

Rest in peace, Grandma. You earned it.