Eighty Christmas Eve’s
ago, in the small town of Lužice, Czechoslovakia, a layer of thick snow had
blanketed the frozen ground by nightfall. Among those gathered in the village
church for Midnight Mass, was a 19-year-old farmer’s daughter and a 23-year-old
former-resident-turned-American-soldier on a 2-week leave to visit his mother
and sister. He was captivated with the chestnut-haired girl, the one with the winter-blue
eyes and scarf wrapped tight around her chin, seated beside her in the pew.
In
fairness, they’d met before. She remembered him as the neighborhood boy who’d
once asked her for a “tiny bite” from the slice of bread smeared with lard that
she held in her hand. She’d reluctantly agreed, only to have him steal half in one greedy chomp.
She’d
been aware he’d gone to America to work as a carpenter’s apprentice with his
father years before, but he was grown now—a man, standing proudly in uniform.
He walked her home that night, snow falling down upon them, crunching underfoot
like meringue, and she forgot all about her other beau. It would be two years
of letter writing across the Atlantic before she would sail with dozens of other
war brides to start a new life in America.
My
grandfather died on Dec 19, 2001, and a few days later, my grandma (Baba) and I
attended Midnight Mass down the street from their home in his honor. It didn’t
snow that night, but I remember her singing Silent Night. I always loved
her voice, but especially when she sang, the subtle lilt to it, the accent that
persisted sixty years later, hinting at her origin story. She told me she’d
been practicing to sing that very song—Tichá Noc (in Czech)—in the choir for Midnight
Mass back in 1944, but a cold sore had left her unable to sing and so she was seated
with rest of the congregation, beside Steve Novak, the solider.
But
for a humble cold sore, I may not be here.
Yesterday
evening, my family gathered for a memorial service for Baba, who died earlier
this month. Beautiful, loving people from all corners of our family’s lives
came to honor our 99-year-old matriarch. Many of them hadn’t seen her in years,
given that her recent disabilities had left her homebound, but they all arrived
with stories of remembrance and condolence to honor this inspiring woman.
Tonight,
late on Christmas Eve, after families have gathered around dining room tables or
congregated in bustling kitchens in the spirit of their own traditions,
rituals, and pastimes, I have been listening to the silence of this night and remembering
the sound of her voice hitting all the high notes.
Here
is the eulogy I wrote in her honor.
***
There is nothing
inherently tragic about the death of a 99-year-old matriarch. It follows the
natural order of things. She was ready. Her death was merciful. Poetic even, to
leave this world in the home that was hers and my grandfather’s for so many
decades.
Marie
Novak lived to see her great-grandchildren lose teeth, to marvel at their
personalities as they unfurled, coming into their own like images on a Polaroid.
She lived to see us tote around mini- computers in our pockets and marveled at videos
we showed her of the kids playing the piano or catching a football, despite her
never getting Wi-Fi. She lived to meet Maggie. She lived to watch Pride and
Prejudice, all twelve adaptions, at least a hundred times and was always
pleased when a Netflix DVD featuring Gregory Peck arrived in her mailbox.
She
outlived my grandfather. Her siblings. Her son-in-law. Her nephew. The Queen of
England and her 65-year-old stove. She never quite warmed to the new one unfortunately,
despite it being the most rudimentary and old-fashioned model we could find. She
witnessed it all. From the horrors of WWII to voting (twice) with such
optimism for the 1st female President. 99 and ½ revolutions around the sun. Nearly
a century. There’s nothing tragic about that kind of longevity. And yet, there is
sadness. There is a realization—a reminder—that sorrow and
celebration so often swim in the same pond.
Without
her, the world is that much more diminished. The sadness for me lies in losing
a kindred spirit, someone who knew my every freckle, fault, and fondness. The
sadness lies in knowing that our lives never perfectly overlap with the ones we
love.
When
I was a child, Baba nourished me with bone broth and rhyming Czech songs. Later,
she cheered from the sidelines whenever Amy or I struck out a batter from the
pitcher’s mound and often, muttered her discontent with the umpires whenever a
call didn’t go our way. When early on, Blake emerged as the grandchild with the
most culinary aptitude, she taught him how to prepare goulash and her infamous
Christmas stuffing—although each year, a new ingredient like saltines or mace
seemed to surface.
She
watched all three of us graduate from high school, then college, traveling to
both California and New York, and years later, she cradled all four
great-grandbabies in her arms. My daughters, my nephews, will remember
her. What a rare gift that is. We only get so many people in our lives who love
us unconditionally. And the vacancy she leaves behind is disorienting—a perplexing
sort of optical illusion as we struggle to process the absence of a presence
that had been so permanent.
And
yet, as she lay in her hospice bed those last few weeks, she urged me not to be
sad but to be happy that she would finally be at peace. After years of enduring
crippling physical pain and the stripping away of her eyesight and hearing and
all of the tasks she found tremendous fulfillment in—sewing, baking, even
washing clothes—she would, at long last, be at rest.
Rest
was not something that ever came naturally to my grandma. Her hands were always
working. Never idling. They ground poppy seed filling for baked goods and
pulled weeds in the garden. They threaded needles and crocheted papučky and
mended holes in her great-grand babies’ lovies. Her hands cared for my
grandfather in his final years and caressed our backs until we fell asleep when
we were kids. They shooed deer away from her rose bushes and skinned beets on
magenta-stained cutting boards. Her hands mastered the DVD remote (with the
help of some very large print directional diagrams), and whipped eggs inside
measuring cups before dribbling them in boiling broth to make homemade noodles.
Her hands molded dough into tiny envelopes of precision and tightened layers of
traditional Czech skirts around the waists of my sister and me before our Moravian
dance performances. Baba was so adept at this task that one year, I fainted while
singing Czech songs in a stifling, 87-degree nursing home, only to be revived
with tepid ginger ale and a box of Fig Newtons. It was very on brand.
She
never failed to want to know the price of things and took great pleasure in
saving money and stretching a meal. She thought it abhorrent that I once gifted
her department store gingerbread cookies for $12.99. The next time I returned,
she’d not only eaten the cookies—after remarking that they really were quite
dry—but she had repackaged her own homemade gingerbread inside the box—price
tag on full display.
Another
time, she launched into effusive detail for nearly a half hour about what a
delicious ham I’d brought her the week prior. I hadn’t really brought her a ham
though. I’d delivered a bone my family had already picked the meat off
of so she could make bean soup with it. And yet, she somehow extracted two pork
dinners off that thing. When I admitted I’d purchased the ham at Whole Foods,
she looked at me, nodding, as though this was mildly disappointing, then sighed,
“Well, no wonder it was so good.”
In
her last days, she commented on the smooth texture of the pudding I’d bought
her. At this point chewing and swallowing had become difficult, and she was
getting frustrated that death was still eluding her after a week in hospice.
“It’s
high end,” I told her. “Some French company I found at Whole Foods.”
She
rolled her eyes and asked, “How much was it?”
But
before I could answer, she added, “Maybe you should drive me there and wheel me
in to see the prices of everything because that might—just about—do me
in.”
The
woman was tough. My husband, who administered flu shots to both Baba and me
over the years, will confirm that my grandmother, throughout her nineties, had
far more arm muscle than I ever did. This was a woman who relished
accomplishing tasks. Of being industrious and independent. She hardly ever
complained, even when anyone could see the physical toll it took for her to
simply rise to her feet.
Her
talents were boundless. Her mind, sharp as a whip. She could make Spam taste delicious.
Plants were reborn in her care. Her seamstress abilities rivaled those of
Cinderella’s mice. Or, more accurately, the fairy godmother. She once
transformed a much-too-petite bridesmaid dress to accommodate my swollen
pregnant belly. She was an artist, even painting the Moravian patterns atop her
kitchen cabinets and designing her own greeting cards.
She
had a beautiful way of saying things—of stringing words together in the English
language that sounded almost poetic. Recently, she recalled a memory from when
I was a toddler, standing with her, holding hands in the swallow waters of
Marco Island, shuffling our bare toes in the sand. “We were looking for
shells,” she said. “I remember the glow of the sun that day. It was like silver
on the water.”
Baba
loved being outside. The simple pleasure of hanging laundry in the sunshine.
“It’s
exercise for me,” she insisted in the summer of 2019. “They say it’s good for
your mind too. To be outside. That’s why I’m here, alive, for so long.” Then
she paused. “Maybe I really need to quit it.”
This
past summer, she scrubbed the cuffs of her house coat and hung it out on the
porch to dry, no longer able to venture down to the clothesline.
“It
was a beautiful day,” she said. “Windy, but beautiful and I was tired, but so
pleased I did it. I gave myself a pat on the shoulder. Your grandpa used to
tell me to do that when I did a good job. I may’ve even deserved a Manhattan.”
In
addition to a well-mixed Manhattan, Baba loved BBC romances, period pieces on
channel 11, and Anne of Green Gables, the original. Apparently, the
remake is lacking. She drank her coffee weak with a splash of half ‘n half,
likely just to be frugal. She detested skim milk, comparing the stuff to blue
water as though the liquid was so thin and diluted that you might actually see
veins. She adored butter, especially on croissants already laden with it and
the crusts of fresh bread. She stayed sharp watching Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy,
and The Nightly News. She loved my grandfather, perhaps because he
was known to defer to her and offer her the heels of that previously mentioned crusty
bread. She loved to be right. And she usually was.
She
was stubborn as all get out and astute until the end. You could not win an
argument against her and she may’ve even been a touch clairvoyant. The summer
before I attended college, my parents left me at home so they could drive my sister
and brother to some out-of-state sport’s camp. I was newly graduated and had
never done anything rebellious in my entire life, so naturally, I concluded it was
as good a time as any to host a keg party. Baba and Grandpa dropped by
unexpectedly that afternoon, and she took one look at the neatly arranged
pillows in the basement before asking me point blank if I was throwing a party
later. I was stunned speechless.
She
knew me to my CORE. A couple of years ago, she asked me to adjust her trash
cans so that they weren’t blocking the alley. When I returned from behind the
garage, she was waiting by the side door as she always did to wave goodbye.
Knowing what a germophobe I am, she asked if I wanted to come in and wash my
hands, but I told her I’d used my feet to kick the cans back into place. She
smiled and said, “Well, then you can wash the soles of your shoes when you get
home.”
I
was thinking about the last time she waved to me from that door. Over time it
got too difficult for her, but for decades, she stood there, without fail, no
matter how tired she was, waving from the porch as though she wanted to extract
every last moment of our visit. The kids often rolled down the windows, blowing
her kisses from their car seats. Every time I drove away, my heart split in
two.
It's
true that when my siblings and I were growing up, our grandparents were at our
house so often that they insisted their station wagon could drive itself over,
unaccompanied. I feel the same way about their house now. My car will never
want to stop visiting. My mom and uncle’s adolescent footprints etched into the
garage cement. Her hydrangea blooms as massive as cauliflower heads. The bin of
rain water positioned just so under the gutter.
I
will always expect to find her inside. Soup simmering on the stove. Whiffs of
diluted Folgers coffee. But she will not be there. No “Dobry Den”. No
television on volume 96. When I walk in now, I am greeted only with silence.
During
the pandemic, I drafted a historical novel based upon my grandparent’s life and
love story. I spent many hours at Baba’s kitchen table, recording our
conversations about her life, coming of age in Czechoslovakia. And her memories
of those early years were so precise, so vivid. The ice skates she’d slide on
before venturing out on the frozen river. The weight of a bushel basket teeming
with sour cherries. The smoke billowing from the wood stove that her mother lit
every morning. She talked of picking plums in the orchards. Swimming in the
town quarry. And doing gymnastics at the Sokol center after all her chores were
done.
Her
bravery fascinated me. How bold it was, after surviving the war to leave the
only home she’d ever known to travel to America by boat, to follow a man after
a two-week courtship and two years of writing letters. My grandfather. She
didn’t ever regret the decision, but I understand that throughout her life, she
often missed her homeland and those she left behind. After crossing the
Atlantic at 21, she never again saw her mother. I know she often dreamed in her
first language and toward the end of her life, she mumbled words in Czech, drifting
in and out of sleep.
In
1950, William Faulkner wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not EVEN past. All
of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and
environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”
Since
Baba’s passing, I like to think of her in the company of my grandpa—perhaps
after subjecting him to a short scolding for leaving her down here for so many
years. I hope she is patting herself on the shoulder for a job well done—a
life well lived. I take comfort in knowing she was ready. That everything was
said—all the love and memories, bobbing like apples on the surface between us.
There’s
an image, a scene, I choose to conjure:
Light
cast on vast, still water. The sound of a distant foghorn. And then, the mist fades,
revealing a ship pulling onto shore.
On
land, a figure straightens on the pier. A man. His gaze on the horizon.
He has been waiting there, punctual, predictable, just as he did over seventy-eight
years ago in the New York harbor to greet his war-bride-to-be.
The
boat anchors, and a woman appears on deck. Their eyes meet and in that singular
look, time eclipses. It harkens them back to a field of sunflowers, to a
village church on Christmas Eve, and lard spread on rye. To a new house on 10th
Ave, to a daughter and a son in knit sweaters and knee socks, to bowling
leagues, coffee clutches, carpenter union hats, stiff green Marshall Field’s boxes
flung open under the Christmas tree, and a platter of jelly roll resting on
Formica.
In
that knowing look is the reflection of a single red poppy sprung from April
mud, an Oldsmobile station wagon stocked with shiny quarters and honey cough
drops and grandchildren scratching the foil off $1 lottery tickets. In
that look, is a pair of webbed folding chairs positioned behind the chalked line
of a softball diamond. A yellow stack of National Geographics in the
basement. Mango pits sucked dry over the kitchen sink. A toolbox. A sewing
basket. A worn housecoat. The smell of Brut aftershave. Pussy Willows drying in
a vase in the front room. A mason jar filled to the brim with dill pickles.
In
that look is the milky newborn breath of grandchildren and the great-grandchildren
he never got to meet.
They
stand there for a beat, memorizing the moment, two omniscient storytellers,
assured that the final words of their narratives have now been written, passed
onto the next generation to tell and retell.
She
disembarks from the ship, her belted dress ruffling in the breeze, a shy smile
spilling from her lips. A soft exhale. He catches it as though it were a
cottonwood seed. Grins back. Takes her elbow as they turn from the water,
melding into the fog, trailing fragrant blooms of English lavender.
She
is home, at last.
