My grandma Jane was always proud of me. I called her Daddamama because, well, she was my daddy's mama, and that name always stuck.
She was a stern, Jewish woman who was used to having things done her way--at least, that's how I remember her. She grew up in a wealthy family, married a really nice guy who was also lazy and an alcoholic, raised her sisters' kids when their parents died, and also raised her own two kids, my ne'er-do-well dad and my aunt. Then she divorced my grandpa and married a very wealthy man who had little patience for my dad, but who seemed to adore my grandma and felt bad for my mom. I never got to know him very well. He wasn't much for little kids. When we would visit, he'd sit in his den and watch the stock market channel, and I couldn't think of anything more boring.
He died when I was in grade school, and I began periodic overnight weekend stays at my grandma's place in Chicago. She had a corner apartment downtown, with a view of the lake on one side. On clear nights, you could see fireworks going off at Comiskey Park when the Sox won. It was a leisurely walk to the Magnificent Mile and a quick taxi ride to the Art Institute, where we shared a love of the Miniatures on the lower levels. She loved to walk, and I could never keep up with her brisk pace. She'd sigh heavily, then eventually get a cab for us.
She wasn't a warm person. She expected a quick kiss on her slightly-wrinkled, very dry cheek upon greeting her. She fluffed pillows every time you got up off the couch, and I always felt guilty sitting on anything in her apartment. It was honestly easier to just sit on the floor. She sat with her ankles crossed and smoked cigarettes in a long cream-colored cigarette holder, her lipstick mark at the mouth. She always wore lipstick. For all you young people, everyone smoked in the 80s. It was no big deal for her or anyone else to chain-smoke in the house. I don't know anyone who smokes in their own home now, but she never would have taken the time to smoke outside. It would have been beneath her.
Anyway, this unflappable woman was always highly impressed by me. It started, as far as I can remember, when she learned that I knew how to read before I started school.
"Prove it," she'd said when I told her in passing that I liked to read. She grabbed a thick end-table-type book of poetry. She opened it to a random page. "Read," she commanded.
So I did.
She smiled big--she had an ear-to-ear smile, which all of us Shloss gals kind of have, but hers most closely resembles my sister Mary's. Sometimes Mary smiles and my breath catches a little, and I wonder when Mary will start fluffing pillows. It's funny because Mary is probably most like Daddamama of all of us. They are both Marines, both smart with money, both really impatient and brisk walkers. I guess that's it personality-wise, but when you put their smiles side-by-side, it's quite remarkable.
Soon after, she had friends over and had me sit on a chair in the middle of her group of friends and read. I can't begin to imagine how boring that was for them all, but they humored her and humored me and oohed and ahed appropriately.
From that moment on, Daddamama was kind of obsessed with me. She was always asking about my grades, which, in my younger days, were perfect. We'd watch Wheel of Fortune together and she'd wait for me to guess the puzzles early. She talked to me often, even in elementary school, about going to college and doing something big with my life. It was weird. I was smart, but most of my siblings were much smarter. I only read early because my mom read to us kids constantly and I memorized words and figured out letters. I wasn't really a genius, but you couldn't tell my grandma that. She bragged about me to anyone who was forced to listen.
Soon visits to my grandma included visits to the Waldenbooks, where she would tell me I could pick out any book I wanted, and which would generally turn into me picking out two or three or four books I wanted. "I don't care as long as you read them," she would say, and I savored the smell of my new little paperbacks. I devoured them while she played bridge with her friends in the next room.
If I stayed the night on a Sunday or Holy Day of Obligation, she would walk with me to Holy Name Cathedral. She wasn't interested in becoming Catholic herself, but she wouldn't have dreamed of allowing me to disobey my mom's wishes. She sat there while I went through the rituals of Mass, and then later she would ask little questions about it.
"Always make the bed before you leave your house," she would tell me. "What if you get in an accident and someone comes back to your house and they find that your bed is a mess? Won't you be ashamed?" To this day, I still make my bed before I leave my house, even though the rest of my house is a total wreck.
The years passed and she became very sick with cancer. The doctors told her she had three to six months to live at the most. I remember her turning to my dad and saying, "Billy, I'm not going to die anytime soon, so just get that out of your head." I was uncomfortable and sad, and that continued as she became thinner and weaker and balder.
Many more years passed, and Daddamama was still alive. Of course she was. She wouldn't give in to some short-term life diagnosis. Her cancer would come and go, and she began volunteering at Northwestern Hospital, where she was getting her cancer treatments when she needed them. I was busy with the life of a pre-teen and then a teenager, but she would let me make long-distance calls to my boyfriend (we used to have to pay big money for these kinds of calls, kids) when I spent the night.
Whenever she had a chance, she talked to me about my future, especially college and what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never knew. My grades had gone from excellent to sort-of-good. Science and math were hard. I started out wanting to be a vet, but then it became actress. To her credit, she never once tried to talk me out of it, even though she watched her son waste his life and her money trying to be a musician.
"You absolutely have to go to college," she would tell me, and I would nod, because I didn't know how horrible student loans were and it seemed like an easy thing to agree to. I did know that college was expensive, and something I had to pay for by myself.
"Don't worry about that," my dad told me. "She's set some money aside for you for college."
So I didn't worry. I didn't visit as much, either, but her cancer came back strong my senior year of high school. When I did see her, she was bone-thin and frail and forgetful. It felt like it happened overnight. She had a devoted nurse whose name I have completely lost in time, but who was incomparably compassionate to her and kind to me. I wish I still knew her.
I will never forget when the nurse brought my grandma to my graduation party. She had to travel to East Chicago, Indiana, to the sketchy neighborhood where my church was and where my party was being held. She climbed the steps with considerable effort. She was dressed well in clothes that hung off her body, her bold lipstick on her pale face. She smiled big, spoke with effort, but clasped my hand and told me she was so proud of me, and was I still going to college? I assured her I was. I don't think she would have loved it if she understood that I was going to a small Minnesota Bible college instead of to study acting at Northwestern University, but it was too big of a concept for her at that point. She just smiled her wide, lipsticked smile, too big for her gaunt face, but also perfect.
Daddamama died a few months later, shortly after I'd started college. My dad called to tell me, and I accepted it with very little emotion. Honestly, I'd been homesick, and I was looking forward to an excuse to go home. In my mind, Daddamama had been gone for a while. But at the funeral reception in her apartment, the sadness consumed me. I remember looking at my eight-year-old sister who would never really know Daddamama, and at my dad, who was now an orphan. I looked at all of the people who Id never met but who were gathered. Were they there to see what she'd left them? My dad had told me that my grandma's fortune had dwindled considerably as she'd paid for years of cancer treatment, and that there wasn't much left to go around to all the family.
People took trinkets and costume jewelry. Someone handed me some amethyst jewelry that I have sadly misplaced. Her nurse was there and took pictures before she was yelled at by my uncle; apparently there was some Jewish superstition or custom that forbade photos at funereal settings. But the nurse was always so kind, and truly loved my grandma, and I found her and comforted her.
I never got any money from my grandmother. My completely untrustworthy dad, chosen by her to be the executor of her estate for a reason I will never understand, used it to develop a cocaine habit. I eventually got three bachelors degrees and a masters degree, which I'll be paying for until I die. I still read as much as ever--maybe more.
But I don't know what she would have thought of me as an adult. I have mostly worked in non-for-profit, poorly-compensated professions. Maybe she would think of her genius granddaughter as wasting her life. But then I think about her time volunteering at Northwestern. Maybe she would just be glad that I went to college, used my brain, stayed mostly out of trouble.
I have a lot more memories of her that I treasure, and many that make me laugh. I just wish that I would've gotten to know her better, or appreciated the pride that she carried for me.
