Christmas 1975

Christmas 1975

Philadelphia, PA

December 25, 1975

No matter where we lived, my grandparents lived near us.  When we lived in north Philadelphia, they lived, two miles away in Cheltenham.  When we moved to West Philadelphia, they moved, two miles away to Wynnewood. Because of this proximity, we saw each other almost every day.  

They lived in an apartment but loved to play cards.  So my grandmother would frequently host multiple friends at my mother’s house and play bridge all day long.  Three tables full of white haired women in dresses and pearls would sit upright and intently in our living room.  I would come home from school and my grandmother would call out, “who just came in”.  After announcing myself, she would instruct me to come in and say hello.  And then I would be instructed to sit down to play Gladys’s hand while she ran to the bathroom.  So off she would run and I would find my seat at the table. As a ten year old, I nervously played her hand. Money was involved, a penny a card and the pressure was on.  When Gladys returned, I went and made myself scarce so that I would have to fill in for Phyllis or another else at the table.

Jack fixed everything for us.  He had been an engineer. My father was not good at this at all.  He couldn’t do anything mechanical.  So he surrendered this part of his manhood to his father in law. Jack painted the walls and fixed the toaster and unclogged the sinks.  He worried about our safety so he always seemed to be adding locks and bolts to our doors and windows.  The front door alone had four locks. He helped us with most of our science projects.  He showed us tricks and he always took our side, no matter what, when we got in trouble at school.

We loved to go to their apartment.  Sometimes we would shop at Wanamaker’s and then we would drop by their apartments, right across the street.  We came unannounced.  They were always gracious and glad to see us.  We were always welcomed.  And on great, rare occasions, we got to sleep over.  Ida would let us wear one of her satin nightgowns.  And Jack would make us milk shakes and we got to stay up and watch the Johnny Carson show with them.

When I was 19, Jack died in December, right before Christmas.  And we were devastated.  And Christmas was a very tough day for us and not just because of the holiday.  But Ida and jack were married on Christmas day.  They would have been married 49 years this year.  We could barely celebrate the day.

The year quickly came and went and now we are coming up to the first anniversary of Jack’s death.  And we were approaching what would been Ida and Jack’s 50 wedding anniversary. We didn’t speak of it.  But we worried about it.

Then Ida announced that she was going to Florida for Christmas.  Her friends, all widows, had invited her to join them.   We couldn’t believe it.  She said she thought the day would be too sad for her and she didn’t want to ruin the holiday for us.  We tried to talk her out of it.  But she was adamant.  So off she went and left us to fend for ourselves for our first Christmas without a grandparent.

Prior to this announcement, there was an undercurrent of unspoken sadness and now we spoke openly about how we worried about Ida.  She was going to miss us.  She was going to regret her decision.  She needed us.  Why did we let her go?  And one of us should have joined her.

The day arrived and as we gathered in the living room, we noticed an envelope in each of our stockings.  Ida had left all of us a note.  One by one, we opened our letters and privately read the note.  Also enclosed was a check, a generous check, a check to make up for not being with us.  We all sat in silence and read in silence and then sat deep within our loss.  I looked to my older brother.  He was 21, a junior in college. He sat on his pajamas, on the floor by the fireplace. And he cried.  Not a deep cry, just a sob of grief, for my grandfather and now for the absence of my grandmother.  And maybe, for the first time, realizing that someday we would lose our parents as well.  The harsh reality of life seeped in to all of us.  And so now, we all wept for a little bit.

And then the phone rang.  And it was Ida and we were thrilled.  We all seemed to jump into our ‘put on a happy face’ mode.  We didn’t want to upset her today.  We had to be strong for her.  We knew she was going to be sad so we had to be positive.  We all ran to different phones around the house and listened in as my mother asked her how she was doing.

“Just grand.  I’m having a marvelous time.” Her voice was light and joyful.  She gave the overview of the week and told us it felt as if she has been at a party all week.  And then she dropped the bomb. “And I think I want to move down here if it is ok with you.”

We were speechless.  We were startled.  We must  have heard wrong.  So my mother quickly clarified what was just said, “You want to move to Florida.”

“If it’s alright with you”, she added.

We spent the rest of the day in complete bewilderment.

It took me a long time before I understood Ida’s courage.  For the first time in her life, she was now going to stand on her own two feet.  At 75, she had the courage to start anew.  She was tired of her grief.  And she had the opportunity to move on.  She knew it and she grabbed it.

Thirty five years later, I still marvel at this act of courage.  At a time when she could have sat back and relied on us to take care of her, she didn’t.  She was a living lesson in resiliency.  We loved her and we loved our grandfather and we would have done anything for them.  But at what cost to her. She saw her move to Florida as a way to start over, to pick up and continue to live life rather than passively continue in a puddle of grief.  And I am forever grateful for a lesson well learned.