I am sitting here, working, looking at my half-decorated Christmas Tree. My mother called last night and wanted to know if I ever finished it.
“No,” I told her, “I have a Nana Tree.”
My grandmother Froehlich was one of those legendary grandparents. Aside from being a very soft touch, she was a great sport, had a wonderful sense of humor, and was a great cook. But she was also quite spoiled. Having come of age in Charleston when it was “Charleston,” one of her great claims to fame was being engaged to three other men when she met my grandfather, who simply confiscated the three rings.
After their first or second date, my grandfather talked Nana’s younger sister into snooping around for addresses. Lucille was always ready to make mischief, so she willingly obliged. (Lucille’s claim to fame was the time she was making frozen daiquiris with her new blender. She was talking so much she simply tossed the entire can of frozen limeade into the blender.) My grandfather wrote to each fiancé telling them my grandmother would be marrying him, and returned their rings. He and my grandmother were married shortly after that. Their marriage lasted for 65 years.
Nana never really did much ‘work’ unless it was power shopping. She had a succession of housekeepers until Mae came to work for her when I was 10 days old and remained with her until the day she died. By that time Mae, was so old she had two assistants who did all her work. (I talked to Mae about two weeks ago on the phone. She’s pushing 85 and doing great!)
The housekeepers did all the heavy lifting, laundry and vacuuming. Before they left for the day the table would be set for dinner, the potatoes peeled, etc. Nana would cook dinner, do the dishes, have dessert, then sit down beside my grandfather, hold hands, and watch television. Ten minutes after sitting down she would be asleep. So there wasn’t much time for her to get around to decorating the Christmas Tree that would inevitably wait, naked, in the Florida Room.
Once in awhile a tree would be completely decorated before my sister, our parents, and I arrived from South Carolina around the 20th of December. Usually my mother would end up decorating it late in the evenings after we were ceremoniously put to bed. Most of the time, though, Nana would put the lights on it over one or two nights. A few days later she would put on a few ornaments. Usually by Christmas morning a few silver ice cycles would be dribbling off the now yellowing branches. By then, no one cared.
You see, my grandmother had a problem. She was a control junkie when it came to her Christmas Tree. No one could decorate it to suit her, and grandchildren were not allowed to touch her ornaments. When it came to the multi-colored lights that always outlined her wonderful two story house on Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach, just anyone would do as long as the lights were up in time for her to turn them on (all night, much to my grandfather’s chagrin) so we could watch her turn them off when we arrived at dawn after a twelve hour road trip from South Carolina.
Article comments