TO ETHEL WITH LOVE

The last time I drove to Millville I visited Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  I read the carved name on her stone - Ethel May Watson and 1 thought about my grandmother and the good times...

And I couldn't get over the fact that I have no bad memories of my Nanny.

My first memory. . . Nanny in her big black coat hanging white sheets that instantly froze on the lines as she and I would walk and hide between the hard frozen rows. Nanny was very clean.  She "kept house" every week day.

But on Saturdays Nanny and I loved to go downtown. 

We walked sidewalks where everyone knew each other. Nanny showed me off I suspect. She was proud.  After some shopping we would take in an early Saturday movie, and then walk to the "Ladies Lounge" in the Eagles Fraternal  Aerie building and wait for "Pop Pop". 

Usually after what seemed like hours to me, a man would always come, peep out of a small door in the locked entry way and say "Herb will be down in five minutes, he's got a real hot hand Ethel!" (This was repeated by different messengers each week.) The they would disappear behind the locked door labeled "Members Only. " 

Some smoke would escape, some harsh laughter of workingmen relaxing. And sometimes the sound of chips being stacked or coins tumbling into a metal tray below a very illegal machine.

 Nanny was always patient.

We waited. This night there was only one old Life magazine in the waiting room to look at. The next revelers would come and go.  Then eventually, Haley as his brother birds called him would come and drive us home in the big Buick. 

We sometimes would stop at the ice cream pallor off Smith street.  It had wire chairs at small white tables and a jukebox that cost 5 cents.  Attached to the music machine on a shelf above was a miniature bandstand with a lame' curtain which would open when a song played to reveal animated wooden musicians weaving to the melodies.   

Nanny and I would do the 2-step she taught me.  

(This ice cream store was just like the one on the way to Ocean City.  Same white wire furniture.  And always on a trip there with Pop, after a sign from me, Nanny would be afflicted with a serious cough. "Herb, I've got a tickle, " and  he would be compelled to stop as only a drink at this store would cure this. Besides the Soda pop remedy, I would usually add a "novelty" toy from the big glass case filled with balsa wood guilders, rubber knives, wax bottles filled sweet colored liquid and an ice cream cone of course - Nanny was a natural actress.)

But I digress - On occasion, back to the Eagles Lodge.  Once the big guarded door was wide open and we could go that night into a large smoky taproom through for a "Ladies Night".  

My grandmother was not opposed to "having one" as she always told me . (I never saw any effect on her from an adult drink!) She particularly enjoyed a "highball".  I got to taste beer and learned the two - practice the 2-step on these regular Ladies Night. Nanny was a 2-stepper.   It remains today the only dance I really can do.

For a large person Nanny was light on her feet.  We walked a lot.

When I started school Nanny walked with me, first to see that I made it safely, later to make sure I stayed. One time she left me at the kindergarten only to find me home waiting for her when she go home. Walking me more than twice one day was pushing it. She said the dreaded "I'm going to tell your mother when she gets home.  (She rarely did tell. .. but this was important. I had to go to school and stay. And I knew she would tell - so I did go back that day -  and didn't miss another day for years except when I was down with every kid disease then known.  

But staying with Nanny was more fun.

Nanny only went to the eighth grade. She left to work as a "bobbin—girl" at the Millville's mill,  Her family which included eight brothers - needed what she could earn.  Later in life she worked in a sewing factory.  I never thought of her as dumb because of her lack of high school education. She read well, remember what she read, and knew more about book keeping, cooking, sewing, medicine and current events than most. 

She really listened to the news   (I watch television like I listen to elevator music... on the surface. ) Nanny was pretty smart.  My Grandmother had an opinion on most every subject. 

And late in her life she'd repeated her opinions between related facts about the  maladies of old age. Nanny suffered from the generic South Jersey disease "Artherrightis and gall. (And if she actually had all the diseases she thought she had she wouldn't have rnade 60 let alone 83.) 

Nanny had a very strong sense of right and wrong.  And she instilled a true philosophy that has remained important to me for 60 years or so. 

She had a code of common respect for others and self.  And She would quoted "Bible" verses that probably never existed. 

"Man will only know the seasons by the turning of the trees" meant the end was coming if Spring was late or Winter early on any given year. "The seas will claim their own" indicated that the erosion of beach in Ocean City meant the end was coming  also. 1 wondered for years if all Bible verses foretold the coming of the end or just the ones Nanny remembered.

Nanny watched nearly every episode of the soap opera,  Search for Tomorrow for over twenty years !    I didn't miss many either. I used to come home from school for lunch in time to see this daily 15 minutes and the never ending problems of the Tate TV family.   Each episode always ended on a question.  "Will Dr. Bill find happiness?  Tune into Search for Tomorrow...at noon Monday through Fridays...brought to you by DUZ, laundry detergent....(organ music theme up and fade to black)

A real treat for lunch was "homemade" pea soap - warm milk, potatoes, bread and margarine. It always seemed to me to be potato soup with peas, but I didn't argue.  Nanny also made meat cakes, potato cakes, salmon cakes. (In those days a fried "cake" didn't seem like leftovers as it does today. ) My kids would throw  things out before reheating anything. 

Nanny would tie my scarf when I left. She was there when I got home. She was always there .

She watched me I practiced my trumpet (worse then dancing), baseball, a minister in a Christmas play, a snowman in a winter play, a violet in a spring play. Endless innings, quarters, halves. She stood on the sidelines, waited in hospital halls. 

Nanny was my best fan.

Now, mother was there too. But my Mom had to work. in fact, many thought Nanny was my mom and my mom was my sister or my date later on, but that's another story! 

I had two mothers. A day one and an evening one.  Round the clock mother-ing. 

Nanny waved good—bye on my first trip away from home. The patrol boys go to Washington. She pretended that the cedar box souvenir I brought back was just what she needed. I think she knew that once I left, like walking to school, there was no turning back in growing up. 

I got older, so did Nanny. She took a back seat to cars, girls, home runs, colleges, brides, divorce, jobs, operations, moves. But she didn't stop loving me. 

Time skips and Nanny is now "Ethel!

I loved to say "Well Ethel" and she would look at me and say "Now Calvin" in a mock threatening tone. This was our secret code from teens to middle age. It was shorthand for I 'm here, how are you, sorry its been so long, got anything good to eat, got to go soon, bye .

I once appeared on television everyday, five times a day. 4 shows were repeats of the same program. She watched them all. I said "Ethel, if you just watch the first one then you don't have to set your watch by the other repeats. She said, "I like watching them all. . . its like having you in the home again! 

Nanny waited for me to come. I didn't come often enough,

Oh, the power this grandson had. The power to brighten. Just by being.  Power to make her proud, happy. What an undeserved power.

She came to stay with us for the last time. She beamed when she saw me .1 must admit we talked all to seldom toward the end. Like grief. . . failing is something you try to not to see.  Nanny'a wearing out made me angry. If I didn't see her; see Millville...see my friends...1 didn't see me growing older with them.  So I stayed away.

Even when she was sick in the hospital that last time, she seemed happy, smiling, enjoying the attention. She came home for Easter. But returned the next day to the ICU.  After several days not conscious, on her last day I am sure she waited for me... I came and whispered "Ethel you can go now."  She couldn't reply. . . but I believe she heard.  Then quietly, alone she left us that night. 

Hopefully, we shall walk again someday between frozen sheets and I can tell her a simple thank you.  If there is a place for her where conversation is possible...I know she is very happy telling a whole new world about me.. . her grandson Calvin and remembering the good times. . . waiting for us all to come home and visit again.

But for me a big part of  Millville was Nanny.  And Nanny was home.