Category: Memoir

JULY 11, 2023 – (Cont.) Grandpa died at 92. He’d been ailing for four years after he failed to negotiate an unusually high curb on his way to the post office on the other side of Lincoln Park in Rutherford.  He fell and struck his head on the pavement.  Grandpa fought back valiantly, but he …

JULY 10, 2023 – (Cont.) Back there in the dining room as I found it in 1980, I didn’t realize the full extent of the iceberg that had upset my perception of Grandpa. After all, what did I know? I was but the inexperienced grandson with a liberal arts education from a fancy school but …

JULY 9, 2023 – (Cont.) Not long after that, Gaga and I agreed on the next cleanup target: the dining room, which Grandpa had long ago commandeered as his evening office.  Back in those days, no one—not even UB or Mother when she visited—questioned what it was that Grandpa was doing in there every evening …

July 8, 2023 – (Cont.) Feeling confident, I asked Gaga, “So, what do you think about my tackling all the junk in the driveway along the side of the house?” “Go right ahead!” she said.  “For years I’ve been waiting for someone to get rid of it all, but no one listens to me.” In the …

JULY 7, 2023 – (Cont.) There was nothing more emblematic of the long history of the Holman business than a petrified banana that Grandpa had found one day in the drawer of a dresser, which had been abandoned close to 75 years earlier—and which Grandpa was only then in 1980 getting around to moving out …

JULY 6, 2023 -(Cont.) By this time (autumn, 1980) in the course of my evolving inheritance, Mother had been making regular trips back East.  The stated reason was to “give [UB] some relief in caring for Gaga and Grandpa,” but in truth she was on a major guilt trip for having left her family and …

JULY 5, 2023 – (Cont.) The other memorable example of Grandpa’s utter unflappability came about a month later (see 7/3 post). By that stage of Grandpa’s life, his business was a faint shadow of its former significance. In reality it had been reduced to hobby status, a familiar diversion for a man who had known …

JULY 3, 2023 – (Cont.) In a way, I felt sorry for Grandpa.  Despite being an organization man, he didn’t have any what I’d call personal friends—people in whom he could confide on a personal, not just business level—but perhaps that was a more general characteristic of his generation.  Yet even within the family he …

JULY 2, 2023 – Except for Mother, who called Grandpa “Dad,” and my three sisters and I, who called Grandpa, “Grandpa,” the rest of the world (including Gaga) called Grandpa, “Griz”—short for Griswold—or “Mr. Holman.”  I never heard UB call him anything except “Grandpa,” and that was only when UB was talking about him. Gaga …

JULY 1, 2023 – (Cont.) My thoughts returned to the moment at hand as the driver pulled up to a bus stop.  “Here you go,” he said.  “You just cross here and climb the hill and on your left you’ll find the hospital.” Soon I was inside the place.  A short time later, I reminded …

JUNE 30, 2023 – Blogger’s note: A loyal follower of this series who knows “more of the story” about my mother expressed surprise and curiosity as to why PART I: MOTHER didn’t reveal the full story, as it were. My response was, “Stay tuned!” The structure of INHERITANCE introduces Mother’s family via representative, anecdotal impressions, …

JUNE 29, 2023 – (Cont.) Gaga was kind and generous, and she displayed these attributes best at Christmas time.  A good two weeks before the big day, a large box would arrive bearing a shipping label with Grandpa’s company name and logo—a moving van. Inside the package were a dozen or more wrapped gifts for …

JUNE 27, 2023 – (Cont.) I always wondered what this prejudiced woman thought of Kristina marrying a Jew.  Gaga never said a word about the fact that he was Jewish, and accepted him as if he were one of her own. I never had to wonder, however, what Gaga thought about Dad’s ethnic background.  The …

JUNE 26, 2023 – (Cont.) Gaga was quite a reader, but she kept to the genre of old-fashioned mysteries.  She’d send UB on regular expeditions to the public library, and he’d go to the mystery section and pull two or three books off the shelf on each visit.  Gaga’s system for avoiding repeats was to …

JUNE 25, 2023 – I never heard anyone call Gaga anything but “Gaga,” except for Mother, who called her “Mother.”  The name came from my oldest sister, Kristina, or “Nina,” as we called her, because Nina called herself “Nina,” since she herself couldn’t pronounce “Kristina.”  She couldn’t pronounce “grandmother” either, or any derivative thereof, so …

JUNE 24, 2023 – (Cont.) Over the years, I tried to establish the origins of Mother’s religiosity—apart from her association from early childhood with old Grace Episcopal Church in Rutherford, New Jersey.  Her mother was an avowed atheist, who said of Mother and her devout faith, “She certainly never got it from me.” If Mother’s …

JUNE 23, 2023 – If church is what had connected Mother to Cyril Hanney, it was not he who connected Mother to church.  As the years passed and rectors came and went, Mother became about as active at Trinity Episcopal Church as anyone could be.  Once the new church—an architectural monstrosity inside and out (the …

JUNE 22, 2023 – (Cont.) Later in the summer, there was another unusual encounter with Cyril.  Jenny and I had been staying up at the lake for the week with our Nilsson grandparents.  Dad and one of our other sisters were scheduled to join us for the weekend.  The hour grew late Friday evening, however, …

JUNE 21, 2023 – (Cont.) The next day, I remember, Cyril waxed eloquent and humorous about the notion of reading tea leaves.  He claimed that he had even “gone to school” to learn the secret art of reading tea leaves, and with a hearty laugh as he drew on his pipe, he said that if …

JUNE 20, 2023 – (Cont.) For reasons I wasn’t told or didn’t understand, the Hanney’s up and moved to California when I was about seven years old.  They owned an old, dark green car, small-finned car manufactured by a company that no longer existed.  When moving day came, soon after the end of the school …

JUNE 19, 2023 – (Cont.) My earliest memories of the [church]—before Mother volunteered as choir director and thus, before I myself was in the choir—emerged from the first pew back from the junior choir box, my sisters on one side of me, Mother on the other.  Straight ahead of us on the other side of …

JUNE 18, 2023 – I remember a day in fourth grade when our teacher went down each row of students, asking what denomination—of Christianity—each of us belonged.  Hard to believe in this day in age, I know, but it happened.  About two-thirds of the kids said “Lutheran” and the rest said “Catholic.”  When my turn …

JUNE 17, 2023 – (Cont.) If I could laugh at Mother wearing a crash helmet at the cabin, I was wholly annoyed when trying to read in the living room up there with Mother.  I don’t think I ever cleared a page without her making a random comment or asking a question about one thing …

JUNE 16, 2023 – (Cont.) While Mother asked what I’d been up to lately, I rose and approached the bench, ignoring her question, and inspected the crash helmet.  “What on earth is this for?” I asked. “Have you heard about Skylab?” Mother answered. “That it’s slipping out of orbit?” “Yes,” said Mother. “They don’t know …

JUNE 15, 2023 – (Cont.) Spanning Mother’s many projects and even preceding and outlasting her piano study was her love for painting.  For a time, she took oil painting lessons, and if she didn’t produce great art, she wasn’t the least bit self-conscious about letting us see it. A good number of pieces went on …