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Grandma Carrie
By Robin Mills
I remember the scent of my grandma Carrie, slightly sour mixed with ivory soap. I remember the click of her heels, the kidney shaped metal cleat meant to prolong the life of shoe soles tapping on the cold hard tile floor of their Palm Springs apartment. I remember seeing the white hoop cheese she used to stuff her home-made blintzes, nestled between her front teeth when she leaned in to whisper something in my ear, and her thick toenails covered in shiny red polish.
Grandma Carrie came across the ocean as a child with her mother, from Kiev, fleeing pogroms and leaving behind some of her ten siblings who would never follow, only to be lost to concentration camps. They settled, living in a New York walk-up, likely shared with more people than there were bedrooms. As a young woman she took secretarial courses and was a member of the American Socialist Party. She married Morris in 1924, and they moved out west where the weather was friendlier.
My parents often dropped my brother and me at their home and went off to have kid- free time around an oval shaped pool full of shimmery blue water, under the hot desert sun. My mother, in her black and white zebra bikini and dark cat-eye glasses, lounged poolside in the quiet.
Carrie toted us around the desert in her blue Buick, to air-conditioned malls, miniature golf and parks full of cool grass where we laid down under shade trees until the moisture soaked through our clothes.
At night we slept on the fold out couch in Carrie’s living room, sleeping sideways to avoid the cold hard metal bar that otherwise poked our backs. In the morning, the earthy scent of cracked wheat hot cereal wafted from the kitchen. We sat at the round table covered in a sticky plastic tablecloth rimmed with roses. My grandfather Morris ate soft boiled eggs and read the newspaper, folding it longways in thirds, flipping from section to section. His days were spent hunched next to the radio listening to KCBS news and weather on the hour, wringing his hands or staring off into space. He suffered from “undiagnosed pain in the bones” and lived Palm Springs summers in a wool cardigan and hat.
My father in passing once mentioned Carrie was married, before Morris. He had a name, Meyer Lesowitz, even pictures of this man. Pictures of them, hiking with friends, posing with her stylish short hair, head band and knicker hiking pants. They were often arm in arm, or close enough to be, atop a boulder or mountain peak.
We were told it was a short marriage. A year. And that he had died in 1924, a young man.
In going through boxes of photos and memorabilia I found an autograph book dated the year of this man’s supposed death where he was mentioned as a good friend and wished best of luck. And a College of the City of New York yearbook. And a letter in the New York Times, April 25, 1944 signed by Meyer Lesowitz Teacher of the Blind, 20 years after his “death”.
My grandmother had all this in her box of memorabilia that was passed from her to my father to me.
That autograph book still sits on my desk, waiting for me to find more mentions of him online, or a family member to surface and tell us everything of his life. So far, nothing.
Robin Mills lives in Petaluma California. By day she is an American Sign Language interpreter. Her non-work hours are spent writing, swimming, hiking, photographing the world around her, traveling, playing in various art forms and swing dancing. She has work published in Underbelly Press, The 200 Word Short Story and The Write Spot and was a finalist for publication in Big Brick Review.
