Bubba’s Legacy

Her smell always comforted me. It reminded me of warm, soft, freshly cleaned blankets. When I was seven and eight years old I would get into bed with her if I had had a difficult day or felt sad. She never asked me why, but she always had open arms. Only five feet tall, with long gray hair, she was my comforter and protector through most of my childhood. It seems fitting to write about her as we near Mother’s Day.

She wore her hair combed back and wound into a bun, held secure with long gray hairpins. Sometimes she let me make two braids that I pinned to the top of her head. She never seemed to mind when I fixed her hair that way, but always took out the braids and returned her hair to its usual style before leaving her bedroom.

Bubba, the word for grandmother in Yiddish, was my maternal grandmother, and lived with my family from the time she came to the US from Poland in the 1920s, when she was in her early 50s, until she entered a nursing home in her final year of life, about thirty years later. She was born in Krasneshiltz, Poland, a two-day buggy ride from Warsaw. As a child, hearing her stories, I often wondered if almost every place in Poland was a two-day buggy-ride from Warsaw.

Bubba had nine children and was widowed at thirty-nine when her husband died suddenly. She came to New York to live with my mother and our family after all her children had left home. My mother asked her to come to take care of her newborn, my older sister.

I was the youngest of three children and we lived above my father’s dry goods store in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Bubba never learned to speak English, so Yiddish was the language at home, but she did have an American-sounding given name: Dora (Devorah in Hebrew).

She helped my mother with childcare and housekeeping activities, as my parents often worked in the store together. I remember her cabbage soup and stuffed cabbage, but I never recorded those recipes. I do still make her noodle pudding, and before I entered the recipe into my computer, I kept it in my calendar book under “assets.”

Bubba enjoyed watching television in the evening and believed that because she could see the people on TV, they saw us too. She became very upset if I started to undress to change into my pajamas while watching evening TV. “Vus tist dee?” she would ask. What are you doing? “Gay arois.” Go out. She didn’t want the man on the TV to see me.

My mother bought a black upright piano when I was about four or five. Piano lessons were first given to my older sister and brother, and when they both refused to continue these lessons, it was up to me. I didn’t feel I had a choice, and in addition to the weekly lessons, I was expected to practice one hour daily. I never enjoyed practicing; I wanted to do my homework or play. If my mother thought I had not practiced for a full hour she would yell at me: “Practice.” Bubba would say, “Luhz er tsri.” Leave her alone. Then she told my mother that I had finished one full hour of practice before she came home. This appeased my mother, and I loved Bubba for her protection and the secret we shared.

For most of the time she lived with us, until walking became too difficult, Bubba went to the Orthodox Synagogue every Saturday. When she could no longer go she would sit in her rocking chair reading her prayer books, at peace in the world. She was always peaceful.

In the last two years of her life she had dementia. Although she had been our primary cook, she now began burning food on the stove. I was surprised when I saw her open the refrigerator to drink from a ketchup bottle. As her condition deteriorated, she would go out on the street and forget her way home. The police department would call and my mother went to the station to bring her home.

No longer at peace, often distressed, some evenings she would put her head out of our apartment window calling for my brother, concerned that he was out with a “shiksa,” a non-Jewish girl.

Bubba’s behavior became very difficult for my mother to manage at home, especially after my father died. About a year after his death, my mother moved Bubba to a nursing home. Although I visited Bubba in the nursing home, I only have a vague recollection of those visits. I remember that it was crowded and smelled bad. She died within a year of that move. I was fourteen.

I never told her how much she meant to me. I like to think that she knew. When my daughter was born, almost forty years ago, and more than twenty years after Bubba died, I named her Dara. Dora and Dara both have the same Hebrew name, Devorah. Dara is as loving and protective as her great-grandmother, my Bubba, Dora. Their similarities are striking and I see them every day. Dara with her family, friends, and her international work, especially in the Peace Corps. But I also realize that growing up around the turn of the 21^st century, Dara has had many advantages Dora could never have had. Still, the thread of connection is there, and although they never met, Dara has inherited the legacy of Bubba’s love, through me.

It’s not too late to say it. Thank you, Bubba. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.