In the Time Between the Glory Days and the Golden Years She Did the Work of Twenty Able Men

Story time. I tell stories about my Nanny all the time. She is a different breed. She comes from a different time. She's tiny and wiry and made of stuff I can't understand. She's a paradox walking. She's loving and judgmental. She's strong, but she weighs a buck ten soaking wet and fully-clothed. She's never had money, but she's always had taste. She's demure, but she has a gift for a one-liner that will make you blush. She's a lady, but sometimes she's surprised me with a "shit" hissed between her teeth. She can't spell to save her life, but she earned a 96 in high school algebra. She's Black Irish if there ever was such a thing, maiden name of Conner with hair almost black and green eyes. She was Scarlett O'Hara come to life.

The thing about Nanny is that she is sneaky and shrewd and you don't expect even though you know her. Many years ago, I was away from the house for the day. Could have been college, could have been one of the two jobs I was working to make the ends meet at the time, I could have been out with my friends. I came home and sitting there on my bookshelf was this humorous tag like folks put on the fronts of their cars "Possum...the other white meat." Y'all, I cannot make this shit up.

This was in the days when I was still a little resentful of that nickname. No woman in her early twenties, taking herself entirely too seriously wants to be named after an ugly, albeit entirely unique, marsupial. All of this back when possums were vermin. They carried diseases and they were mean. Even after having witnessed my father extract one from our basement, scared to (fake) death and docile and silent. And no one got rabies even though we were allowed to touch it on the back, far from its mouth, where the dangerous, scary, pointy teeth were.

So I stood there, indignant, wondering who thought this was so damn funny. I thought maybe one of my siblings, mean as snakes, or my mom, whose sense of humor tends toward cruelty sometimes. Turns out it really was a tumor. I never suspected the tiny deacon's wife. But it was absolutely her. And when I emerged from my room, aggravated and not at all behaving as my namesake when threatened, asking who the hell thought they were a comedian, she cracked this smile and then began giggling uncontrollably. Even then, I didn't realize it was her doing. I thought she was just really amused by someone else's antics. She stood there laughing at me looking under her eyelashes for a solid thirty seconds before it dawned on me. The covert comedian was her. This was before I knew she'd been a life-long practical joker. Oh, she managed some good ones.

I couldn't not laugh at that point. Probably that same slow smile that she had and then laughing. Laughing because it was absurd. Because it might be perceived as a little dirty (don't look at me like that, she's always had it in her). Laughing because it was funny and I was way too serious about establishing my identity beyond this house, beyond this hill, beyond this town. And it took me until only recently to really just accept that this is me. My identity is all of this in this house and all of that out there in the bigger world. Pieces of me.

I hope that I hang on to those pieces for the rest of my life. I hope I always remember that my sense of sneaky humor and my tendency to say something funny even if it will make me blush. I hope that I hang on to my "Cadillac taste on a Ford budget." I hope I manage to always squeeze a penny until it squeals, the long-lasting effects of growing up in the Depression raised by a single mother who was the steel bones in a corset. I know I will always have the skills she taught me: preserving and fiber art and how to cook a meal without even thinking of meat. I hope I cling to the tendency to love everyone, even if I don't understand them. I hope I keep that joy in small moments. I hope I remember her practical jokes and the way she can't be mad if it's funny. I love her. I am her. Part of me. Part of her. And I'll keep this tacky thing on my bookshelf as long as I have space and room to let myself be myself.