There are not many purebred families out there.
I know mine isn't.
My family is like a rainbow. If we have skipped any color or ethnic background, it
purely was accidental. My family's fabric is more colorful that Joseph's coat and it
might even be a tighter weave.
When I married my wife Jan, I inherited a Jewish Grandmom, or as she preferred to be
called, Nana.
Jan's mixture includes English and Irish. But her Nana, Theresa Forrest,
was 100 per cent Russian Jew.
When I first met my new Grandmom/Nana, the only thing I knew about Jewish Grandmom's was
what I had seen on television shows. These normally were comedies and the
Grandmom's were stereotypes. Big women, who would pinch your cheeks and tell you how
cute you were and then sit around and play Mah Jung with the other ladies to help fill
their day.
This was not the Jewish Grandmom that I knew and grew to love. Yes, she was big
framed. But she was anything but stereotypical. Never pinched my cheeks
once. Kissed them a few times over the years, but never pinched them. Jan says Canasta was
her big game not Mah Jung.
She also was the first one to eye me up and reach out to welcome me to the family. I
had just been introduced to her as Jan's husband.
I did not tell her this was not the first time we had met. I would never dare
embarrass her. But about eight months to a year or so previously, Jan had had
a birthday party. It was my coming out party also so to speak. No one knew we
were together at the time. Nana Forrest was amongst the uninformed.
We did. not make a big deal of it. I knew a lot of the people who were present, so
it seemed natural that I was there to many. Nana Forrest did not know who I was, so
when there was a particular food item she was looking for, it was natural for her to ask
me to get it for her, thinking I was part of the catering crew.
It was an innocent mistake, by someone I found to be an extremely loving lady. I
never ever let her know she made that faux pas.
When she said welcome to me, I acted like we were just meeting for the first time.
Then she gave me a big hug, and slipped something into my hand.
Nana Forrest was not working at the time, and her residence was a nursing home, but when
we got home, what she had slipped into my hand was a hundred dollar bill. We used it
to purchase a freezer which we still use today and think of Nana Forrest each time
we open its frosty, budget-stretching confines.
Nana Forrest also was not a stereotypical Jewish grandmother in another way... she was
Christian. Her son Sammy, a born-again Christian, brought his mother to the Lord.
The only complication, she still resided in a Jewish nursing home. I do not
think those people running the nursing home fully understood her conversion
experience. She did though,. She was happy in the Lord and very
accepting of Jesus Christ as her savior. And the more we got to know one another,
the better this Nana and grandson got along.
..
Since a lot of her family either was aged, or out of the immediate area, Jan
and I tried to bring Nana Forrest out of the nursing home to spend time with us whenever
we could.. Her favorite time of the year to spend with us was Christmas.
Naturally, they did not celebrate that holiday where she lived so when she came to
visit, she no longer felt like an undercover Christian. Christmas also was her birthday.
She could sing the carols, read the scriptures, enjoy the decorations and enjoy the
seasonal food.
Nana Forrest was diabetic. That did not stop her from having a sweet tooth.
There is one Christmas spent with her that is particularly memorable.
We had just finished a huge batch of Christmas cookies prior to her arriving for a
Christmas stay with us. They were festively stacked on a tray for friends and family
to munch on as they came by to visit. I could see Nana Forrest wistfully looking at
the cookies. But I dared not offer her any and have her get sick. Not when she
was on furlough from the nursing home.
I could imagine the uproar that would have resulted in if we had to rush her
back and explain the symptoms occurred when she ate too many, of all things, Christmas
cookies.
If I was a cartoon character, you would have seen the idea balloon go off.
Nana Forrest and I set off on a cookie making spree. I went into the kitchen,
fetched down my Joy of Cooking recipe book, and I began a conversion process. I took
a sugar cookie recipe and redid it so it would survive with artificial sweetener.
It took a few different formulas until I got one that not only worked but that tasted like
something.
Then the fun begun.
It had been ages since Nana Forrest had been in the kitchen. We positioned her at
the counter. She had a wide array of cookie cutters positioned in front her and one
big lump of grandson-created, safe-for-a-diabetic-to-eat cookie dough.
She said she never had so much fun in her life as she rolled the cookies out and cut them
in seasonal shapes of Christmas trees, little angels and snowman. It was fun
just watching her.
Nursing homes often do little more than warehouse you. You can't do a lot of the
things you would do if you were at home. And aging, often has taken some of the
abilities away, even if you had the facilities. She had been in such a home for
quite some time. Her only chance to really stretch her wings was when she came out
of the nursing home for a visit with a family member. As she sat at the
counter that day, she was stretching.
As she filled up the cookie sheet with each new batch of her creations, I marched them
over to the waiting oven so they would bake properly. I am not sure how many trays
we made that day but I know there were enough left that she was able to take a small
cookie can back to the nursing home with her containing some of her dietetic treasures.
I was blessed with quantity and quality in the grandmother department. I had Grandmoms,
Grandmothers and Nanas. They came in all shapes, sizes, colors and varieties, but
they also came with one major thing in common, they all were flavored with a lot of love.
We still have a picture from that Christmas hanging in the house and there is Nana
Forrest sitting by the Christmas tree with the biggest I'm-filled-with-cookies loving
smile you ever would want to see.
By the time that picture had been taken Nana Forrest had become one more of the special
women in my life.
