Tag: Bubbie

I hate money

~ Christi ~ 1 Comment

I know that sounds ridiculous. Maybe you don’t believe me; I mean, money has never been a huge concern for me as an adult. I owe a debt of gratitude to Geoff for working so hard to make that possible.

But trust me when I tell you that money is a struggle for me. Or, rather, it used to be a huge concern. I grew up dirt poor. Because of her anxiety, my mom couldn’t work outside the home. She didn’t much go outside the home, remember? She received disability, food stamps, Section 8, and occasional gifts from my Bubbie. She sewed small things for a lady with a craft shop.

I grew up poor to the point where not-money had a lot of power over me. I carpooled to school because my mom didn’t have a car, and I lived in fear of being left behind. I was embarrassed about receiving FREE lunch at school. I never had any new clothes unless my Bubbie bought them for me. I missed field trips because my mom had no money for them.

My mom did an amazing amount with the small bit of money she had every month. But the fact was that every single grocery item got tallied up before getting in the checkout line, and the fact is that paying too much attention to money to this day makes me panic.

When I was a kid, I never starved but I did go hungry. There were no snacks and meals were small. My mom did her absolute best. She did better than that. She made our bread, she made all sorts of things from scratch. My mom showed me just how much you can make from almost nothing.

When I was a kid, Bubbie would periodically swoop in and take my mom and me to restaurants or to the mall for shopping sprees. Money was how Bubbie showed her love. She redecorated my mom’s apartment twice. On my birthday every year, she’d buy me a large savings bond, until she stopped.

Bubbie made me hate money. She didn’t mean to, but it happened anyway. She made it so I still don’t trust people giving me money. To this day, I’d much rather give a gift than sell something. And I only buy what I absolutely need. I hate the mall, hate shopping. I barely ever make a grocery list, let alone count up what I’m buying before I get in the checkout line.

Luckily, I have a fairly good, but not perfect, sense of what I need, of what my family needs. I kind of emotionally gauge my purchases and I resist many of my urges to buy things. It’s not a failproof system. But I have kind of insulated myself against money.

In my dream world, there is no money and everyone barters for what they need, because I like to negotiate and I hate money.

Did your Grandma ever make you pee in a bucket?

~ Christi ~ 7 Comments

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, but once my Bubbie made me pee in a bucket. I was, what, maybe eight at the time? I can’t remember how old I was. I only remember that I was over at her house on one of my visits. I’d spent the night and it was the following afternoon. My aunt, who lived with Bubbie at the time, had a date. Or maybe it was a meeting. Or a doctor’s house call, maybe. I don’t remember. All I remember is my Bubbie and me waiting in her bedroom for the strange man to leave. I think we watched The Price is Right while we waited. I sat on the bed and she sat in her rocker.

Bubbie had outfitted a bucket with a potty seat for such occasions. Is this normal old-lady behavior? I don’t know, but I hope not. I have no idea why we couldn’t leave the room to use the bathroom. The bathroom was right next door. It was strange, that’s for sure.

In any case, I think I peed in the bucket. Maybe I’m remembering wrong, though. I might be remembering another time, when I was much younger. All I know is, my Bubbie had a bucket-potty. All I know is, one time I peed with my Bubbie there, and somehow I got pee on my hand. I got pee on my hand, just like I did when I was two and I fed my baby doll water and she peed on me. I cried when I was two, and I cried that time I was with my Bubbie. The time with my Bubbie, Bubbie laughed her bitter laugh and told me to get over it.

“Stop crying, it’s just sissy,” she probably said. I don’t exactly remember. I was probably younger than eight. The bucket-potty was probably some other time. Memories are funny. The thing is, when you’re a kid and your mean old grandma tells you not to cry, you don’t cry. At least I never did. I just got over it.

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Encore

~ Christi ~ 13 Comments

My mom was murdered by a used-car salesman.

If my mom were telling you this story, it would be a comedy. She would twist her heartbreak into dark tendrils of humor until you were on the floor laughing. But she’s dead, so I will try to do it justice.

My mom died under mysterious circumstances but she was not murdered. In retrospect, her death fell at the end of a long line of clues, as well documented as any stack of stolen credit card receipts shoved in a dresser drawer could hope to be.

My mom liked creeps and I suspect that she knew a lot of them. Three creeps in particular she knew intimately. She married one at nineteen, my sister’s dad, and she had a run-in with one at 35 that left her with me. She found the worst of her creeps in a phone-sex chat room in early 2002. She was 64 and ten years older than him – you can do the math.

Mike was an on-again, off-again used-car salesman. He’d sell you a used car whether you wanted one or not. He’d sell you a used car if you asked him about the weather and he’d sell you a used car on your birthday. He sold used cars so well that he went to jail for it several times, the last time just weeks after he married my mom in 2003.

My mom waited patiently for his return a year later. I won’t tell you about how I paid her rent and her expenses while he was in prison. It’s beside the point how much I worried that Mike the used-car salesman would return, or worse, that he wouldn’t.

Mike the used-car salesman returned shortly before my Bubbie died. He timed his reappearance well, and made off with my Bubbie’s life savings, an act that revealed his great ingenuity and patience. He spent his treasure trove on scummy motel rooms and gifts for younger, hotter finds from the sex chat room.

In 2006, my mom fell on the grass while she was walking their Yorkie. She waited hours on the ground for Mike to return from the used-car lot cum scummy motel room. My mom died a few days later in a crummy hospital ICU, her organs shutting down because of drug complications. My mom was not murdered by a used-car salesman, but she may as well have been.

In a cruel twist of fate like most twists of fate are, Mike the used-car salesman died two months later in my mom’s bed of all places. When I got there, I found all of his receipts and bank statements stuffed in a drawer and I had to laugh.

 

A revision of last week’s Yeah Write essay. Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Obed, I do think this post is a lot cleaner now.

My mom was murdered by a used-car salesman

~ Christi

It dawns on me that I don’t know how to tell you about my mom. Should I start with her untimely death or with her sad beginning? Should I tell you about her mistakes or her million miniscule victories? Should I start with the day she wished her father dead when she was five or the one when I stood in the shower at five a.m. and wished her back to life? Tell me what you want to know.

My mom did everything in the wrong order. She was a bad girl and then a good woman. She was a mother and then a girl on her own again, twice. She was a slut before she was a virgin and then she was a slut again at 60. My mom gave up everything she wanted for herself and then fought to get it back only to lose it again and again.

If my mom were telling you her own story, it would be a comedy. Somehow she would twist her heartbreak into dark tendrils of humor until you were on the floor laughing. One day I hope to tell her story like that.

Today I think I will start with the end, because one of you asked me to. My mom died under mysterious circumstances but she was not murdered. In retrospect, her death fell at the end of a long line of clues, as well documented as a stack of stolen credit card receipts shoved in a dresser drawer.

My mom liked creeps and I suspect that she knew a lot of them. Three creeps in particular she knew intimately. She married one at nineteen, my sister’s dad, and she had a run-in with one at 35 that left her with me. She found the worst of her creeps in a phone-sex chat room in early 2002.

Mike was an on-again, off-again used-car salesman. He’d sell you a used car whether you wanted one or not. He’d sell you a used car if you asked him about the weather and he’d sell you a used car on your birthday. He sold used cars so well that he went to jail for it several times, the last time just weeks after he married my mom in 2003.

My mom waited patiently for his return a year later. I won’t tell you about how I paid her rent and her expenses while he was in prison. I won’t tell you how much I worried that Mike the used-car salesman would return, or worse, that he wouldn’t.

Mike the used-car salesman returned shortly before my Bubbie died. He timed his reappearance well, and made off with my Bubbie’s savings. He spent his treasure trove on scummy motel rooms and gifts for younger, hotter finds from the sex chat room.

In 2006, my mom fell on the grass while she was walking their Yorkie. She waited hours on the ground for Mike to return from the used-car lot cum scummy motel room. My mom died a few days later in a crummy hospital ICU, her organs shutting down because of drug complications. My mom was not murdered by a used-car salesman, but she may as well have been.

Mike the used-car salesman died two months later in my mom’s bed of all places. When I got there, I found all of his receipts and bank statements stuffed in a drawer and I had to laugh.

 

 

Mean girls come from mean grandmas

~ Christi ~ 11 Comments

Hear me out, I have a theory. Girls end up like their moms, right? If your mom is a neat freak, you will probably be one too. You probably still remember the little red dress that your mom slipped on for date nights. Maybe you were unlucky enough to have a crazy mom who didn’t get out of bed in the morning to see you off to school; maybe love feels like making your own PB&J in the dark kitchen on a cold morning.

No, I don’t think so. Girls reject their moms. Somewhere around twelve or thirteen, moms start to gross us out. Even if your mom is beautiful – and perfect – you start to hate her beauty. It’s confusing. Somehow the very existence of your mom feels annihilating. Maybe this goes both ways, maybe the fact of her daughter’s becoming a teenager feels annihilating to the mom as well. Maybe they both reject each other.

In their mutual rejection, mother and daughter reach out, grope for another connection, an alternate link to life. I suspect that fathers often fill this role for the girls, but for me it was my grandma. If you’ve read here awhile, then you know that my Bubbie was mean. She made me rinse with Listerine before I’d even lost all of my baby teeth. She blamed me for my older sister’s mental illnesses, and she regularly withheld her love for me. Still, she had a huge effect on me. I couldn’t help myself from loving her anyway, from seeking her approval and even trying to be like her despite her despicable ways.

My Bubbie was incredibly strong. She knew how to protect herself, which my loving, kind, honest mom never learned. She set her limits and didn’t let anyone cross them. My Bubbie showed me how you can love people who you don’t like. She demonstrated that meanness is just another form of admiration, that it is the recognition of dangerous difference.

I’m not defending my grandma, nor advocating meanness. I’m only noticing two decades into my adulthood how valuable that alliance has been for me. At 36, I am probably more like my mom than my Bubbie, but I learned from the best how to be mean. On a daily basis, I let my mean side temper my loving side. I use it to demand the most from my friends, and I use it to set my kids free from unhealthy expectations.

My Bubbie taught me how to protect myself. What about you? Did your grandma give you a secret super power?

Thanks to this guy for inspiring my title. So, Jack B, is it true for men, too? Do mean guys come from mean grandpas? 

Maybe I had it right all along

~ Christi ~ 3 Comments

We visited her at the nursing home just a few days before she died. I was 25, yet I remember it so clearly. Geoff drove, and my aunt stayed back because there wasn’t enough room in the car.

Bubbie had sent instructions, of course: Bring Hershey bars. We stopped at Rite Aid on the way, but they were out, so I picked M&Ms instead. The nursing home was in a small, tidy building with a garden in front. The bright, colorful lobby felt almost cheerful. As we moved past the entrance into the patient area, we said hello to the patients lining the hall in their wheelchairs. Some responded but some were sleeping, their minds elsewhere. The intense smell of pee and beeping machines reminded us of illness and imminent death.

Bubbie waited for us, sitting in her wheelchair just inside the door to her room. I don’t remember why, but she couldn’t talk. Perhaps it was an effect of her recent stroke, maybe her voice escaped her body ahead of time. Nevertheless, I remember her mumbling for Rose Ann, my aunt, incoherently. My mom explained that my aunt had stayed back at the house. Bubbie also asked for my uncle, Norman; Norman who was her favorite child, who deceived her so coldly in the end, my uncle, who had fled back to his home across the country just days earlier.

So Bubbie made due with just us four – my mom, her sketchy but well-meaning husband, Geoff, and me. We kept our visit upbeat, chatting and laughing the whole time. Bubbie eyed us as though she wasn’t quite sure who we were. But maybe she was just angry at us, at me. I handed her M&Ms one by one from the package, hoping that my last-ditch effort would make her love me in the end. Who knows if it worked? She accepted the candy like a child, but still her face stayed as locked up as always.

Here’s the thing about having a grandmother who hates you, or one who at least withholds her affection for you even in the face of your own attempts at loving her: You learn how to handle others’ disapproval. You learn that you can’t ever control someone else’s emotions, even when you try. You learn how to seek your own approval from within yourself before seeking it from others, even from your family.

When you see your grandmother reject your achievements and reward your sister’s failures and illnesses, you learn that not everything is as it seems. No, sometimes love is hate and hate is love. When all that your grandmother offers you is anger and hatred, you learn that sometimes emotions are their opposite. You accept the paradoxical, the impossible, the ambiguous.

When your grandmother serves you a big plate of rocks instead of cookies, and when you are a good girl like I was, you eat up those rocks, smile, and pretend they are cookies. You just accept it. And years later, you might find yourself, as an adult, in a tough situation. You might one day feel broken down in some way, challenged. If you really focus on what’s going on inside you, you’ll feel those rocks still in your belly after so much time, and you’ll know for certain that everything is going to be fine.

If I could go back to that day in the nursing home with my Bubbie, I would thank her for always knowing how much I was capable of, for demanding the most from me, and accepting nothing. My Bubbie always made me work harder.

It looks like I have a secret admirer! Thanks to whomever nominated me for this awesome linkup.

Five Star Friday

 

Maybe I hated her, too

~ Christi ~ 20 Comments

I was almost 18 when I knew for sure that my Bubbie hated me.

I was visiting her on a sunny Saturday at the end of summer, days before I started college. Earlier we had gone shopping for dorm room supplies: pillows, a trash can, a shower caddy, that sort of thing. The purchases sat by her door still in their bags.

We had just returned from lunch and my mom and my aunt were talking quietly in the kitchen.

“Come with me,” Bubbie said. “I have something to show you.”

“Okay,” I said and followed her as she shuffled into her bedroom. The bedspread laid smoothly over the bed, her knitted afghan over top. Her rocker sat in one corner. Sun streamed through the lace curtains.

“Sit here,” she said, motioning towards the bench at her vanity table.

I did. She opened her jewelry box sitting atop her vanity, her hands shaking slightly. “Look at these,” she said, lifting out a pair of gold earrings.

“They’re pretty,” I said. Bubbie loved jewelry almost more than she loved shopping. Ever since my grandfather died in World War II, she had saved carefully to buy herself rings, necklaces, earrings. At 82, her large collection was her pride.

I ran my fingers across the rows of pretty necklaces. I loved when Bubbie showed me her things like this; sneaking off felt secret and special.

“I like this one,” I said, lifting a large ring with a swirling pattern of diamonds out of the box. I smiled and looked up at Bubbie, expecting her agreement.

No. Suddenly something was wrong. Her face had turned stony.

“Don’t touch that,” she ordered. “That one belongs to your sister when I’m gone.”

Her words froze me. The ring dropped back into the jewelry box. For a long minute I tried to make sense of Bubbie’s words.

I didn’t want Bubbie to be gone. I never wanted any of her jewelry if it meant that she was dead. I hadn’t asked for the ring, I hadn’t even wanted it. But even if I had, why would she choose to reward my sister over me? Why reward a no-good drug addict who deserted her family and not me? I had always worked hard and received a scholarship to college. I visited her each Saturday, not Kim. I always did the right thing, unlike Kim. I loved my Bubbie.

All of a sudden, a blinding rage came over me. I jumped up, pushed over the bench, and ran out of the room. I ran to the front door and grabbed my new pillow and a few other shopping bags and slammed the front door behind me. I could hear my mom calling me from the kitchen, but I ignored her. I ran to the bus stop and sat, clutching my pillow, crying.

A few minutes later, my mom arrived. As we waited for the approaching bus, she told me, “Whatever you just did, Bubbie will never forgive you for it.” I looked at her in disbelief.

You know what? My mom was right. I apologized many times, but my Bubbie never did forgive me. You’d be surprised how old she was when she died.

Losing my religion

~ Christi

When I was a kid, we celebrated all the holidays. Our menorah went next to the Christmas tree, and our Easter dinner often included ham and matzoh. Go ahead, laugh. Just don’t judge me.

Let’s generalize and say that I was formally, publicly, Catholic. I attended Sacred Heart Elementary, where I learned to love Jesus, to recite Our Father and Hail Mary, and where I colored xeroxed copies of the stations of the cross. At home, my mom, my sister, my Bubbie all cursed in Yiddish and ate corned beef. I didn’t question it until much later.

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As a teenager, I abruptly decided to give up Catholicism, and celebrate only Jewish holidays. I felt that the main point of religion was to honor your ancestors, never mind spirituality. I still agree with this to a point, but I have long since realized that I wanted my Bubbie to love her more. I thought that if I were more Jewish, like her, that she would. Did she? Did it work? I don’t know. She was inscrutable.

On Christmas as a kid, my mom would take me to midnight mass. I remember one year seeing a young couple kissing in their pew. That beautiful image has stuck with me all this time, that joyful and spiritual togetherness. Sometimes the memory is sweet, sometimes it breaks my heart. I never talk about it.

My mom taught me that all religions are just different paths to the same God. I agree, but I still grew up feeling confused and slighted for not having one singular religious identity like my friends did. Why did my mom choose to walk two paths at once while raising me, between the Judaism that she grew up with and her chosen Catholicism? If she were still alive, I would ask her. In her absence, I have to guess that those childhood memories are powerful and it was her instinct to share them with me. But what I would like more than anything is to experience that shared faith, that certainty in that which cannot be seen. My mom found her spiritual source in church, but she chose not to force that source on me. I understand why, but I can’t help feeling that that intangible piece of religion, the faith, is lost to me.

I’ve long since made my decision on religion, and Geoff and I basically agree: We’re happy to belong to our synagogue, to send the kids to Sunday school, and to see them developing their singular religious identities. They deserve it. And even though their Grandma does occasionally take them to church, they know they are Jewish. I’m glad to offer that certainty to them. But as for the other piece of it–the faith that I’ve only ever felt in church–how can I ever share that with them?

All dads should play pony

~ Christi ~ 11 Comments

“Where’s my brown-eyed princess?” he called as soon as he set his hat on the rack and tossed his coat over the banister. His voice reverberated throughout the small house, now all the more a home because of his arrival.

He kicked his wet shoes off into the mat and loosened his tie, unbuttoned two buttons on his white shirt. “Come on, princess, let’s play!” he called, waiting. Usually she was sitting by the door, but today she was off somewhere, immersed in a game.

He quickly ran a hand through his hair and got down on his hands and knees. “Come ride your pony,” he boomed.

“Daddy!” she cried, running from the kitchen, through the house, and vaulted into his back, hugging him. “I love you, Daddy! I missed you!”

“I missed you, too, princess,” he said, beginning his loop around the living room. “Where to today?” he asked, as he did every day.

“Can we go to India?” she asked, her voice hopeful and excited.

“Of course, princess,” he agreed, rounding the armchair and nearing the fireplace. “Which way is it to India?” he asked.

“Oh, Daddy, I don’t know. Don’t you know the way?”

“Well, I’m not sure, but I think we need to go south, and over oceans.” He paused near the fire for a few moments.

“Oceans, Daddy?” she asked as she tightened her grip on the collar of his shirt.

“Yes, princess. But ponies cannot ride over oceans, so we’ll need to take a ship.”

“A ship? Really?” she was so excited that she nearly fell off of his back.

He stopped while she climbed back on, “Yes, my love, a huge ship! Would you like that?”

“Yes, Daddy! Let’s go! Mommy and Norman can come, too, right?”

“Yes, princess,” he laughed his deep laugh, pausing to lean against the sofa. Little did he know that in a few short months he’d be boarding a plane without his family. Ships were no longer the only way to cross oceans.

“Oh, Daddy, I can’t wait to sail to India and meet the Indians!” she cried, climbing off of his back and onto the sofa. “When do we leave?” As he sat up, she grabbed his hands.

“After dinner, my love, after dinner,” he laughed, turning to smile and wink at his wife—my Bubbie—in the kitchen doorway, who was holding a dishtowel and wearing the same slightly displeased expression that would come to be her usual expression years later when I was born.

“Dinner is ready,” she said.

Today’s math lesson: Money = Love

~ Christi

“I’m not going to be able to give you your birthday money anymore,” Bubbie announces over egg rolls. Her announcement has a finality to it. As always, Bubbie is not messing around.

I look at her blankly, say nothing.

It’s my twelfth birthday. I’m celebrating with my mom, my aunt, and my grandma at the neighborhood Chinese restaurant. We’re Jewish – we celebrate many family occasions here.

Twelve-year-old me understands that Bubbie’s “birthday money” is the U.S. government savings bond that she gives me each year for my birthday gift. I know that the money is for my college fund. I also understand that when she says she won’t be able to what she means is that she’s not going to. She’s punishing me, but I don’t know why.

Two weeks earlier there was a fight. I’d like to tell you that it wasn’t physical, but it was. I lost. My sister, then 30 years old, won, in more ways than one.

“Mother,” my mom sharply protests. In her defense, she did try to speak up for me, this time. Two weeks earlier it had been a different story. “It’s Christi’s birthday. Let’s enjoy our lunch.”

“Fine,” announces Bubbie, shaking her head self-righteously. So the subject is dropped. But it still hangs there, above our table, clouding our wonton soup. Lingering.

At 12, I had no idea why my sister attacked me, frightening me, hitting me, blaming me for her failures. I had no idea – then and now – why my grandmother could have possibly sided with my sister. It was my first sign of their unbreakable and dysfunctional bond. I had no idea how money equaled love to my Bubbie, and how she could only show her love for her first granddaughter – her rightful granddaughter – by taking it away from me, her last granddaughter, her only illegitimate one. I only knew that I must have done something really wrong to make everyone hate me. But I had no idea what it was.

I stare at the fish tanks and wish that I could get in, get away from my family, this family of only women who seem to want to tear each other apart. I don’t want to be 12 if this means no one loves me anymore, that by simply being me I’ve done everything wrong. I can’t even say anything. I have no idea what to say. So I eat my soup and stare silently at the fish.

This meal was one of many Chinese restaurant meals with my family, similar in menu, décor, and introspection. I spent my teenage years floating in and out of my relationship with Bubbie. Sometimes I worked hard to please her, sometimes I tolerated her quietly, sometimes I fought back. But I always knew that no matter what I did, it would never be enough. And true to her word, she never gave me another birthday bond.