I knew my grandmother well. Her characteristics and mannerisms were known to all us children. She hated children. She was dangerous and she needed to be studied.
Who was she and what was it that caused her to be who she was? We would study and analyze her carefully and remember what we learned.
The family owned a brownstone in the city and we spent a lot of our time there. The home was big. It had five stories and a basement. Auntie Annie lived in the attic. Her daughter was there. Joe, an uncle, was somewhere in the house. My grandmother occupied the rest of the building and spent most of her time on the first floor, the piano nobile. Our grandfather was in the cellar. It was a maze of brick rooms and housed the kitchen, the boiler room, the coal room and a sitting room. This is where we spent most of our time. It was warm and smelt great and Pa was a gentle, hapless, guy. (or was he feckless, I can't remember) and Mamie, the grandmother was with friends upstairs. She was connected to the Church, the newspaper and local politics, in that order.
She was affected and a bit of a social climber. She was very proud and accomplished, I think, with a touch of desperation. She was a professional in a male dominated world. She was tall and serious, with a round face and gray hair. She looked a lot like George Washington, to me.
My mother grew up in the house and she would tell us stories about her time there. It was almost as if we could gain a sense of what my grandmother's childhood was like, through my mother's stories and Mamie's allegiances. I carry those with me and, through my habit of thought, characteristics and mannerisms, relay them, unintentionally, to my kids. Who knows, maybe something of Mamie, good or bad, is still around.