AUGUST 20, 2020 – She was born on this day 124 years ago. We called her “Gaga” because at the babbling stage, my oldest sister called our other grandmother just plain, “Ga.” When confronted with a second grandmother, my inventive sister simply doubled up.
Gaga’s name was “Orrell,” after the village of “Ore Hill” in England, home of Gaga’s Pilgrim ancestors. Gaga was upper crust, as revealed in the photographs she took, then meticulously labeled and arranged in an album—salvaged from a devasting house fire that would burn most of the record of her life.
If Gaga was “high class,” she was also down to earth. I can personally attest as well that she was a stickler for manners. Gum-chewing, for example, was strictly verboten. She lived to be 100, and if you’re going to live that long, you have the absolute right to forbid your grandkids from behaving like savages.
Gaga didn’t suffer fools lightly, and when our grandpa, a brainiac at many things, did something foolish, like drifting into the Indianapolis 500 lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, she wasn’t afraid to speak up. As my second oldest sister observed, Gaga was a cross between Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill. But in reality, she was a loyal American: though she voted Republican, she maintained in her home a portrait of the current president, and if that happened to be a Democrat, so be it.
Our grandmother “Out East,” was not a cuddling or spoiling sort, but she was kind, generous, and honest in expressing her opinions. For example, after a visit by one of my sister’s best college friends, Gaga remarked, “Mary Ann is such a nice girl. Too bad she’s Catholic.” This startled me: Gaga was “signed up” as an Episcopalian, but she was neither a church goer nor at all religious. What I learned from my mother’s verbatim transcript of a long interview with Gaga when Gaga was in her late 90s, people of her generation held to many deeply rooted prejudices of the post-Gilded Age.
If Gaga wasn’t college-educated, her mind was razor-sharp right to 100. My sisters and I have fond memories of losing to her at Scrabble. She referred to a big word score as “making lots of money,” and she landed big hauls. Often as I helped set up a Scrabble match, she’d offer a Hobson’s choice: “Do you want me to keep score,” she’d say with a glint, “. . . or do you want to win?”
Gaga exhibited a command of proper English, and to her I owe my love of writing. For Christmas when I was in third grade, in addition to “fun stuff,” she gave me a box of stationery imprinted with my name and address. The moment I opened it was the instant I learned the difference between “fun stuff” and “real stuff.” With that gift she initiated a lively correspondence with me, which continued through college and beyond.
With this writing I remember on this day, our family’s “Lady Gaga.”
*BLOGGER’S NOTE AND READER’S ALERT: After hammering out this post, I realized that it was my inimitable uncle who was born on this day—98 years ago; “Gaga” was born on August 14! (But otherwise, my memory is intact—at least to the extent I can remember.) Stay tuned for the post about what made my uncle . . . “inimitable.”
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
