Berry Picking, Babies, and White Polyester Pants

(This post is in memory of my grandmother, whose fifth yartzeit is today. May her memory be a blessing.)

Today's post is a little different than normal. No outfits to discuss or summer bucket list activities. Sorry, but this is my blog, so I get to do what I want :)

Instead, I want to tell you about one of the coolest ladies I ever had the opportunity to know, my grandmother, Lore.

Is this not the most beautiful couple you've ever seen?

I only had the opportunity to know one of my grandparents as an adult. My father's parents both died before I was born (his father, Ralph, is my namesake. Thankfully my parents just took the R instead of naming me Ralph.) My mother's father died when I was only 10, so my memories of him are mostly of eating ice cream together and me sticking plastic forks into his cheek. (It made sense that the time.) So for most of my life, my only grandparent was my mother's mother, AKA Grandma, or GG to her great-grandchildren. (She only met three of them, but she would now have nine, including Leo, who was named in her honor, and who has shown just as much enthusiasm for berries and birds.)

With her three great-grandchildren.

 My grandma was a tough lady. She was not the type of grandma who coddled us, or who thought that everything we touched automatically turned to gold. This is not to say that she did not love us. She very much did, but in a clear-eyed way, which meant that she was not afraid to challenge us when she did not agree with our choices. We had many intense conversations over religion in particular, as my grandmother sometimes felt that I was subscribing to a system that was both seeped in superstition and misogyny. These conversations were not always easy, and sometimes left me very frustrated. However, at the end of the day, I always knew that she loved and respected me, even when she strongly disagreed.

The ice cream represents my grandpa, for whom Simon was named.
Yup, that's Simon!

My grandmother moved to New York in 1937, leaving Berlin with her family in the face of the rising threat from the Nazis. Despite English being her second language, she became a beautiful writer, editing the Queens College newspaper as an undergrad and then going on to get a graduate degree at Brown. She was retired for most of my life, but retired did not mean lazy. Instead, she worked harder than most people I knew who had jobs. She volunteered on her retirement village's ambulance, wrote practically their whole newspaper, and traveled the world, first with my grandfather and later with friends. She was in a creative writing group, where she wrote poignant and funny stories. She was deeply involved in her community and a real social butterfly. At her funeral, it was amazing how many people said that she was their best friend.

On the face of it, my grandmother and I did not have a huge amount in common, other than some genes and a deep love of reading and writing. I love to cook and bake, and my grandmother felt that nothing should take longer to cook than to eat. I live my life according to Jewish law, while one of the last things my grandmother told my aunt while she was still with it was that our family seders might be done right, but they were "too long. Tooooooo long!" I have a fashion blog. When my grandmother died, we found more than 10 pairs of white polyester pants in her apartment. Enough said.

Mother and daughter.

 However, many of my fondest memories from my childhood are of time with my grandmother. I remember her taking me berry picking in the summer, and to the Quassy amusement park. Many an afternoon was spent trying to figure out if the new bird feeder in her back yard would finally be able to hold up to the squirrels, and then going out to tend the flowers in the garden. And every winter, my parents would go on vacation and my grandmother would come spend a week with us in the city. In fact, perhaps she was the one who first showed me what I have come to feel strongly-- the closest relationships can happen even with people who seem very different from you.

So Grandma, wherever you are, I am thinking about you today and every day. And I am writing about it on my Jewish modest fashion blog. If nothing else, you can probably appreciate the irony. Thanks for being the best-- your memory lives on just as strong through your many friends and your family.