In the Lap of My Nana

Antebellum and overstuffed,
Dust free floating above layers
Of its settled selves
On the worn purple curtains
And along with the books
And things habitually
Accumulated
For reasons long forgotten
On the dark and stately shelves.
Always in shade and
Always too humid and warm,
In my grandmother's
Living room
In her second floor apartment
I never feared harm.

Like a blanket of ectoplasm
Yet with substance and girth,
She never laughed out loud
Or displayed overt mirth;
But gently sat me
On her vast, cushioned lap
Until my eyelids drooped closed
And I nodded off
For a nap.

Well spoken English
With just a hint
Of an Eastern European
Anti-lilt that she
Would never acknowledge,
Nana pinched my cheeks
And fed me well
And though I was only
Three or four,
She spoke with me of college.
She had finished High School
But her formal education
Could not go on from there,
For she had to help support
Her parents' priority
Of her brothers' ambitions;
You see, that was when
A woman's future
Was determined by
Her family
And was not what we would call
Fair.

She bore three daughters
And stopped them each
In their tracks,
Just as she had been stopped;
Unkind
But unconsciously
Acted out facts.

She loved the grand children best
And was soft with us
In ways that made our mother
And aunts sad
And sometimes mad;
If she had this within her,
Why not for them?
Sometimes
Speculation is all
That there can be
Whether the subject is my Nana,
You
Or even me.

No one lives forever,
No, not even that ol' Puff
And after ninety two years had passed,
Nana had lived enough.
She was buried with the same face she wore
In all those years of life,
Not a smile but neither
Was it a frown,
A neutral look of a
Grandmother,
Mother
And wife.

I recall it sometimes clearly
And sometimes barely at all;
My Nana's touch
Warmed me so much
Her death was like a fall
From a higher place
Where love loomed large
Across the sky
Of my young years
And placed the foundation
In its place
For the experiences of later
Love,loss,
Adult pleasure and tears.