Elizabeth 

At evening, flames from the old oil stove in my grandparents’ kitchen on Martha Place cast dark shadows on the ceiling.  A filled tea kettle was always on the stove ready to be heated for a cup of tea to be shared with whomever entered their kitchen.  Their household was an unusually quiet one.  The ticking of the kitchen clock could be heard on the back porch.

  The early autumn evening was cool, and the family was asleep.  Elizabeth’s bosomy silhouette in a dark dress and sweater with her gray hair tied in a knot, could be seen rocking back forth on the porch’s glider.  Its cranking sound was in rhythm with the chirping katydids.  An occasional car would pass, the driver honking its horn to those passersby he knew.  The evening had its own cacophony of sounds. 

  I am getting ready now to take the journey now to visit my grandma Lizzie who died at the early age of forty-nine, five years before I was born.  The passing of a grandmother involves the transmission of lineage and legacy even if you have never met her.  Throughout my life I needed to take that journey, but had not been prepared for it.  Often memory has its own story to tell.

  I was a young child of ten when Daddy died.  Since we lived near the cemetery, Mom would take us often to visit Daddy’s grave.  I would turn my head from her as not to show her the tears that were ready to run down my cheeks.  Almost like a ritual, we would visit the gravesite of Grandma Lizzie and Grandpa Dan.  I cried there, too, for the grandparents I had never met.

  In the only three photographs I have of Grandma, she stood with jaw tightened and lips pursed.  She was stocky and always dressed in a dark-colored housedress, with either a coat or sweater tightly fitted around her large bosom.  The only frivolity in her appearance were the tiffany-style pierced ruby earrings in her ears.  They were given to her by her oldest daughter Anna.  These photographs could not hide the sadness in her eyes. 

  Her life was something I wished to touch, wanting to rewrite and change history, to see her smile and be free again.

  I had asked Mom and the aunts about Grandma.  Their responses to my questions were not what I was looking for.  What reflections they did share of her were that she was a woman of quiet strength, generous, giving, serious, sweet and soft-spoken.  Apparently, my father had inherited these same qualities.  I , however, surmised from her photographs that she was quiet, gentle and resigned.  Aunt Nella said that you knew you were loved even though those words were never uttered.  No one really knew her.

  Was this ever the beautiful young woman with long fine curls who attracted a handsome young man who had blue piercing eyes?  Was this the young Elizabeth Roper who had flashing eyes and a wild dancing spirit?  As Daniel Van Hook drove his team of horses and wagon down Passaic’s Main Avenue, he saw Elizabeth and fell in love with her at first sight.  Did she always charm her admirers so?  My family feels that I am making a romantic invention of her.  I think not.  Grandpa Dan saw all of this.  What had happened to this beautiful free-spirited young woman to make her appear that she had no dreams left?

  Elizabeth married her handsome young man, but she did not live happily ever after.  Her well-to-do Dutch in-laws did not approve of her, even though her maternal ancestry was Dutch.  Grandma Lizzie’s father’s family were blue collar workers who liked to drink and claimed to be of English ancestry.  Her in-laws might have accepted that.  I surmised, however, that Great Grandpa Roper might have been denying his Irish ancestry.  He lived at a time when the Irish were discriminated against in housing, employment and social status.

  Aside from the in-law problem, the marriage between Elizabeth and Daniel was a happy one.  They had three children who were named after ancestors as is the Dutch custom.  Anna was named after her paternal grandmother, Daniel was named after his father and paternal great-grandfather.  Samuel was named after both a paternal and maternal uncle.  Their fourth child was Edward, named after his paternal uncle.  Elizabeth weaned him with her pendulous breasts as she had done with her other children.  One night after an especially tiring day, she took baby Edward to bed with her and  Grandpa.  She fell asleep with the rhythm of the suckling.  His tiny head rolled under her large warm breast.  Twenty-one day old Edward was quiet forever.  He had suffocated.

  Elizabeth suffered unmourned and unresolved sorrow at his death.  She blamed herself and could not share the grief with her husband.  There were other children to raise.  Crying would do little good, and would only make the hurt worse.  If she allowed her sadness to speak, it would be a wail.

  Another child came to cheer that household, another daughter who was named after her paternal great grandmother.  Her children kept her busy.  Sammy and Danny liked to play ball.  Basketballs and baseballs were left carelessly around the house.  Nella and Annie enjoyed dressing and undressing their dolls, especially Nella’s doll with the auburn hair and red dress.

  Lena, Elizabeth’s widowed mother, suffered from dementia, and needed looking after.  Sometimes Elizabeth could not cope with her mother’s condition, Grandpa would then step in to take care of his mother-in-law.  He was always gentle with her as he took care of her most basic and intimate needs.  Elizabeth would just sit and star lovingly at the oval picture of her father, James, with his large handle-bar moustache.  He was as handsome as her husband.  She remembered her life in another time.

  Deep sadness always returned at night.  It was then that she would go to the trunk in the attic and caress Edward’s baby clothes that were hidden under the other children’s outgrown clothes. 

  Many of us remember our grandmothers as having unique talents in gardening, sewing, music, or the arts.  Was she a good cook or baker?  I wanted to think she was a grandmother who made the traditional Christmas “koekjie”, Speculaas.  Would she have allowed me to help her roll out the cookies?  Aunt Nella and Auntie Ann were wonderful cooks.  Did they inherit this gift from Grandma Lizzie?  In my childhood reverie, I learned to cook and bake by her side, to make something ordinary into something extraordinary and succulent. 

  I missed the experience of having a grandmother who could wipe a tear, bandage a scratched knee, tell a bedtime story, knit a sweater for me, sew clothes for my doll, or dispense grandmotherly wisdom.  I can’t say that I learned from my grandmother any particular trait or quality of being.  A very wise unknown person wrote how I felt:

“I write for those who cannot speak

Voices unrehearsed.

A grandmother who came before me

Whispering silent words.

That are born within me

Clamoring to be free.”

The home Elizabeth remembered was a scene dominated by stern silence and shame.  She leaves with a lightened spirit, knowing that she has aired the past, and visited the ghosts.

When I see her is when I see that I am her.