Is it strange that I associate my grandmothers with kitchen appliances?

My grandma, Gramma Anna as we called her, was born in Dairyland a child of the Depression, and raised her family on the corner of Main St. in Middletown, NY. My Bubbe, Sala, was born in Lodz, Poland, spent most of her childhood in Nazi death camps, and moved her family from Germany to upstate New York when she was 21 years old.  Both women knew how to make kasha varnishkes and other Jewish staples, both could knit and sew, and both made sure we, their grandchildren, knew how much we were loved.

But these women couldn’t have been more different.

Gramma signed our birthday cards in perfect cursive, “with love,” and Bubbe drew zany pictures of flowers and x’s (kisses) and sunshine all around the words “kisses kisses kisses” and “love you mamale,” words she’d spelled phonetically. Gramma was quiet and contented herself during visits to our house by reading magazines and watching my brother and I play. Bubbe, who lived less than three miles from our house, spent most of her afternoons making stockpiles of cookies and chicken soup for us, helping my mother with the laundry and ironing, and squaking in Yiddish, over the phone, about who amongst the greenes (immigrants) was shtuping with whom.

Gramma taught me how to say “oopsy daisy” when I spilled something. She was dainty. Bubbe cooked in a slip and a sheen of sweat from her forehead to her bosom.

Gramma had great power in her wagging finger. That’s not ladylike was enough to keep me honest in her care. Bubbe reminded me, often, to be a balabusta!– the traditional connotation of this word translates to good homemaker, but she meant it in the sense of being a bring-home-the-kischke kind of woman despite all odds, like starting over in a new country, in a new language, working the night shift at a factory with no air conditioning, and navigating through life without a driver’s license. When she said the word, balabusta!, she said it with her fists clenched, marching in place. Read the rest of this entry →