Grandma Eva’s Firsts
We all get different windows of opportunity to get to know our grandparents. Location and proximity play a role. Genetics impacts longevity. Generational demographics help shape the ages that our grandparents and parents may have chosen to have their children. The least fortunate among us never get a chance meet their grandparents. Some others enjoy grandparents well into their own adult lives. Three of my four grandparents had passed away by the time that I turned thirteen.
Most of us would never admit it out loud, but it is not uncommon to have a favorite grandparent or to have a special relationship with one. I did, too, although she passed away around the time time that I was eleven years old. It is very difficult for me to actually recall many things before the age of four or five, so that did not leave a long period of time for these particular memories to be made, but made in fact they were. My mother’s mother, my Grandma Eva, had two children who collectively gave her five grandchildren. I was the first and oldest, and the only boy, and that gave me some working capital.
Grandma Eva and her husband Grandpa Aaron who passed away by the time I was five, were a fairly affluent upper middle class professional couple living on the upper west side of Manhattan. He was a brain surgeon and she was a nurse. They lived in a long, large apartment on the fifth floor of an apartment building on Riverside Drive, overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson River. My Grandma Eva brought many “firsts” into my life.
Although I grew up in an apartment building in Queens and had been in many of my friends’ apartments, I had never, ever, seen a apartment like hers. Upon entering, there was a small den off to the left of the entrance, where Grandma Eva kept my uncle’s electric trains set up for me to play with. That was the first time that I ever got to play with electric trains and I played with them every time that I visited. Off to the right was a large living room where she’d actually have a seasonal Christmas tree. It was my first exposure to seeing a Christmas tree in a residence. Straight ahead was the longest, longest hallway that I have ever seen inside an apartment. Bedrooms and bathrooms branched off either side, and the hallway finally emptied into a huge dining room, behind which was another small den where I first experienced the emerging marvel of color television. I’d sit on the recliner there, watching Rocky and Bullwinkle, NBA Basketball, and that incredible NBC peacock whose sole purpose was to inform us that the upcoming program was being broadcast in living color. Adjoining the dining room was the kitchen, and behind that another bathroom. I could not believe my eyes when I noticed that next to the kitchen there was another entrance to the apartment. Sure, I had been in private houses and knew that they often had more than one doorway or entrance, but an apartment? Grandma Eva’s apartment was so majestic that it required two entrances at either end.
When we were ready to go somewhere, we’d depart her building, and walk around the corner into a parking garage where Grandma Eva kept her huge red and white Oldsmobile whose shape resembled an old time Checker Taxi. I had never gone into a garage before to retrieve a car, as my parents had always parked on the street. I had been growing up in a world where you never actually drove to your exact destination, even if you were returning home. You only drove to a general vicinity, and then you began the real part of your journey — the search for a parking space. Having your own parking space in a garage right around the corner was enlightening to me!
Grandma Eva took me to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, the display windows in the New York City stores, and coup d’etat, Santa at Macy’s. It was much more natural back then, not overly commercialized the way it is today. Back then, if you got there early enough, Santa would first appear in the Macy’s store window to address the growing crowd outside. After a hearty welcome, he invited us to race him upstairs to his Winter Wonderland for our visit. I knew that Grandma Eva was up to the challenge with me as I grabbed her arm and made sure that we were the first in the elevator up to Santa. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Santa’s face when I became the first child to beat him to his throne. But it was not to be. When we got there, Santa was already there, seated and awaiting his line of children.
Annual summers in the Catskills notwithstanding, Grandma Eva took me on my first real journey away from the New York City metropolitan area when I was in the second grade. We went to Washington, D.C. Here, two very notable memories were formed. First, there are 898 steps in the Washington Monument and together we walked up every one of them to the top to peek out of the windows. The second one actually happened on the ride down to Washington.
I was a notoriously fussy eater, disliking an incredible variety of foods. I became a “hamburger child.” Wherever or whenever I would be in a restaurant, I would always get a hamburger. Somewhere in Maryland, shortly before arriving in Washington, we stopped off at a roadside restaurant for lunch. Grandma Eva knew that I ate turkey at Thanksgiving, so she insisted that I try a hot open turkey sandwich instead of ordering a hamburger. I did, and I fell in love with it! The turkey was sliced, hot, covered with gravy, and sat atop a couple of slices of bread. I never did adapt to the cranberry sauce though. This was my first non-hamburger experience dining out and my first hot open turkey sandwich. Years later, when my teenage friends and I became regular patrons of Queens’ most famous diners, that dish became my staple.
Grandma Eva raised the bar when I was in fourth grade. This time, she pulled me out of school for a week, another first, and took me on an airplane, another first, to Miami Beach. We played on the beach and swam in the pool during a week in the sun. For the first time, I realized that you could enjoy the sun elsewhere while it was winter back home in New York.
Through my Grandma Eva, I experienced many firsts in my life: an apartment with two entrances, a Christmas Tree, electric trains, a parking garage with your very own parking space, color television, New York City’s Christmas scene, leaving the New York area to travel, flying on an airplane, sunning elsewhere during winter, and having my first hot open turkey sandwich. I don’t remember the details of her passing away other than being told that she had just returned from a cruise around the world when she passed away close to the age of seventy. But in that short time together, she forged memories in me that will never be forgotten. She opened up the world to me in so many ways. I have occasion to be in Washington fairly infrequently, but I cannot ever view the Washington Monument without reflecting on our climb. I’m in diners only occasionally these days, but when they bring me my hot open turkey sandwich, my heart is filled with warmth and a smile overcomes me.
