Nana Redux

Nana, as I’ve mentioned before, was our ‘woo-woo’ grandmother. She was proud of being a co-founder of the Cleveland congregation of the Spiritualist Church which, she carefully and regularly explained to me, believed in two things: the Golden Rule and communication with the dead.

Nana lived with us from 1956 to 1963. I was 12 when she died.

My earliest memory of her is of the tea parties she hosted for me. She lived in an apartment over a drug store and had a seemingly vast collection of teacups, teapots, and all the necessary paraphernalia for serving tea. Her whole apartment was a collection: glass globe lamps, plush velvety couches you could sink into, doilies on everything, and gleaming wood everywhere, both furniture and floors.

She’d let me choose the teacup I wanted. Usually I went for the bling: a shiny gold cup and saucer with a mother-of-pearl interior. The gold was finely filigreed and the inside of the cup glowed in an opalescent rainbow of colors. I thought it was beautiful.

Every now and then, I’d select one of her tiniest cups, maybe twice the size of a thimble. She had several with raised dragons flying around the cup and saucer. I liked those, too, even though they required constant refilling. Nana didn’t mind.

Actually, Nana never seemed to mind anything. A truly gentle soul and one of the most Christian women I’ve known. She quietly lived the Golden Rule, though she wasn’t above stretching the truth.

Born sometime in the 1890’s - she lied about her age and I’m not certain – she had to quit school in the eighth grade to go to work and help support her family. Her father had left them.

When she told me stories of that time in her life, her father was never mentioned. Instead, I heard about her setting pins in a two-lane bowling alley or playing the piano and organ in the silent movie theatres.

When the “talkies” came along, she needed a new source of income and decided to go into real estate. There was one big problem, though: the state of Ohio required real estate agents to have a high school diploma. So Nana told them she’d graduated from a high school that had burned to the ground. The fire, of course, had taken any records with it. (No computers in those days, boys and girls.)

By the time I came into the picture, she’d built her own real estate agency. I remember visiting her at her office in downtown Cleveland’s Arcade Building. It was a magical place – Cleveland’s first skyscraper (all of nine stories) built in 1890. It was a ‘50’s version of a shopping mall: you entered a five-story atrium covered by glass and metal, connecting the two nine story towers. There were shops and an area with lots of games to play – I remember pinball and bowling.

Nana’s office was a little boring in comparison. At least to a five year old…

Nana at work - circa 1955