Feminists

My grandmother was friends with a mayor. A mayor! A LADY mayor, too.

Nana was so pleased that her friend was reinstated for the day so that she could officiate at her son's wedding. She told me all about it.

The whole time, I was thinking, "There are lady mayors who are Nana's age?!" First, I had to understand that mayors can officiate at weddings. Who knew? But I found it completely amazing that Nana was friends with the mayor of a nearby town.

She was a great mayor, too. As it happens, I now live in the town of which she was formerly mayor. When I go to the Town Hall, I pass a courtroom named after her. They're planting a tree in her memory this weekend. And when we first moved here, when she was still alive, every Democrat in town sought her endorsement.

And she was friends with MY Nana.

See, my Nana was a quiet lady. She was, in fact, a librarian. That's how quiet she was. But she was also that smart. Usually, I think of her and her generation as old-fashioned. After all, they were the parents of the Baby Boomers. They defined the Generation Gap. But the women my Nana chose as friends were all smart. Many of them (including my Nana) had careers. And many of them were active Feminists. (After all, Betty Freidan was only a few years younger than my Nana.)

I love to hear about the Vassar alumnae who went out and faced the world, breaking down gender barriers as they went. But I forget about the women closer to home--the Teachers and Librarians and scientists and businesswomen who faced down sexism to reach their goals.

I'm proud of my Nana and her friends.

It's been thirteen years since I've seen her

My grandmother understood me in a way that nobody else ever has. We could spend a whole day together and never disagree about anything. That's partly because I was her granddaughter and she adored everything about me in that special way only grandparents have. But it's also because we had a lot in common.

Sure, we liked many of the same things--books, children, Fred Astaire movies, gefilte fish--but it was even more than that. We just...were together. When I was in my twenties, I would call her up sometimes and take the bus out to New Jersey to spend the afternoon with her. We'd pick up her best friend Leah and go see a movie and then eat dinner at a diner. Sometimes we'd just hang out and watch TV together.

I remember the day my parents moved when I was about twenty-five. I offered to help and they asked me to take the pets over to Nana's house and keep an eye on them and then bring them to the new apartment when the move was done. I spent the whole day with Nana, hanging out with the dogs and the cat and watching TV. We didn't really do anything in particular, but it didn't matter.

It was amazing to have someone like that. Someone who understood me. Someone who could tell if I was sick by the look in my eye. Someone who thought that everything I did was completely amazing, and who would love me and be happy to see me no matter what.

When she died, I remember saying that nobody would ever love me like that again. Nobody ever will.

On making beautiful things

I don't come from an artistic family. Nobody in my family is very good at painting or drawing or making things from wood. Our creative talents are more in the realm of performance--I act, my mother does puppetry, my father sings, my brother makes people laugh and we all write.

Hopper's family, on the other hand, is visual. His father and grandfather were painters, and they all draw and paint in his family. Over the past few years, I've been experimenting some with collage, and I think I have a pretty good eye, but I really don't have a history of making beautiful things.

In the past, I have used my talents to move people. I have made them laugh and cry, and through children's theater I have helped children learn a great deal about emotions, and responsibility, and how to perform. I'm proud of that. But performance is ephemeral, especially on stage. A video doesn't fully capture the moment we created.

But now I'm knitting, and it's really easy, if you buy beautiful yarn, to make a beautiful scarf. I've made a few using the knit stitch and experimenting with different needles. I like the open weave of really big needles. But yesterday I started one using two different sized needles and some really beautiful yarn, and I'm amazed at the fact that I can now make beautiful things. At the end of the day, there is an object that I can hold and wear or give to a friend, and it's a beautiful object that I made with my own hands.

This is a new experience for me.

I also find it interesting that the older I get, the more I find I have in common with my grandmother, whom I called Nana. My Nana was brilliant with handwork--she mostly crocheted--and I still have some afghans she made for me. So maybe I have the ability to be really good at this. Who knows?

This evening, I started a basket weave scarf. It's my first work with a pattern and it's tricky, but so far it's working. Okay, it took me three tries to figure out how to purl correctly, but now I've got it, so it's working.

Anyway, the journey is fun.