Grammy and Grampa

I never knew of my grandparents on my father's side. His father was a candymaker and whenever we would get boxed chocolates my father could tell you what was inside each one from the swirls on top. That's the only thing I know about them.

My mother's parents , however, were a big part of my childhood. I knew that they had come from County Kerry in Ireland. It was only a few years ago that I learned that my grandmother was sent here to help take care of the children of a relative. The story is that when she got off the train my grandfather was with the relatives that were there to meet her. Just like in the storybooks they said it was love at first sight. He knew that he was going to marry her. They never knew each other in Ireland. It was destiny, Marie and Eugene. They had Mary, Rita, Eugenia, Pauline (my mother), Eleanor, Gail and Joe. There were also one or two others who had died presumably at birth, but no one ever talked about that. They lived in a big house in Belmont and my grandfather was a streetcar conductor. Grampa had a huge garden that took up most of the back yard. When he wasn't working in the garden, he would often sit in this ornately carved chair and read books in gaelic while smoking his pipe. He had this impressive full head of white hair till the day he died.

Every day my grandmother would wave goodbye to Grampa, from the porch, as he went off to work. She kept us in gales of laughter telling about the next door neighbor who thought they were better than every one else. The woman would stand on the porch and in a very loud voice, which my grandmother would imitate, she would shout out "don't forget the Ballown" to her husband as he went off to work. You have to get the sense of this Julia Child voice. I can hear it to this day. I guess she thought balogna was what rich people ate and that was how rich people talked.

Grammy loved life and loved people who were "gay". To Grammy gay meant happy. She would have been mortified if someone had told her otherwise. She would not have understood it as the lifestyle that the word conotates today.