My Nana

My Nana was the last of the real old ladies
She knew what it was to be an old lady and she rose to the occasion
Taking on the role and making it her own

She was an old lady a long time, her husband Frank dying young at 57
Her hair was white
She let it be white
She kept it tied up in a bun
Sometimes, if you stayed overnight, you saw her take it out of the bun and brush it, long, silky and with waves
She used bobby pins
Everyday

She wore old lady black shoes
Just one pair
She had bunions on her feet
They hurt
When she walked she tended to hobble, back bent
An old lady walk

She wore old lady dresses
And cardigans
All the time

She had a pet dog, Scamp, on whom she doted
He got old too, in sympathy I think
My God, did he smell bad
A spoiled nasty bad tempered dog
Maybe he had bunions too

You could walk over to Nana’s place
Around the golf course
Down Duncan Street
And she would always be glad to see you no matter how adolescent you were
Feed you sweet cakes
Slip you a dollar when you left
Sometimes because you did something for her
But often because you didn’t

She made jelly, with extra sugar
She kept a little jar of brown sugar that you could have a teaspoon of if you were good
She made pineapple syrup on the wood stove so that the whole house smelled like heaven will smell
She made roasts with the outside black but inside warm and heavy and fragrant
When I was older I cut the wood for that stove

She used to laugh, hold her hanky to her mouth and say things like ‘Jingy Joves!’
You don’t hear that enough anymore

I remember her washing in a copper boiler
I remember the ice man who used to call with a huge block of ice for the ice chest
I remember the dunny in the backyard
I remember digging pink sweet potatoes out of the rich soil and eating them raw
Of course all of this was when I was much younger

It seemed as I got older and bigger she got smaller and thinner
Almost as if her substance was going to form my flesh and bone
She lived alone in that one bedroom fibro house until she died, aged 83

For nearly 30 years she was an old lady
She wore it well