My Nan Nan

 

When most people reminisce about my grandmother, they begin with a comment about how she was not a very good housekeeper.

 

We called her Nan Nan and she endured 13 pregnancies to raise 7 children during the depression.  Five boys, two girls, Several miscarriages, a stillborn or two and at least one horrible accident.  There aren’t good records and in those days you just keep carrying on.  All but 2 of her children were delivered at home.  When her youngest was just 4, I came along to make her a grandparent.    By the time her youngest was 10, there were 8 grandkids and we all gathered at Nan Nan and Pop Pop’s every weekend.  

Cecelia Marie Schuh was born in 1917 and dreamed of becoming a nurse.  Her father said absolutely not as nursing was not regarded as an honorable profession at that time and so she dropped out of school and married Earl Shelsby at age 16.  She would have been an incredible nurse.  Between kids, grandkids and everyone’s friends, there usually were a dozen or more kids hanging around.  They lived on a small farm nestled between I-95 and the B-W Parkway near Friendship Airport.  One of the closest neighbors was a Westinghouse Facility and so the property provided fields for baseball or volleyball, hills for sledding and trees for climbing.  Nan Nan was constantly nursing a skinned knee, a sprained wrist or some other injury.  In fact, when I was 5, I had fallen and cut open my hand and it became seriously infected.  A doctor mentioned potential amputation and my grandmother’s response was, “like hell!”  That afternoon she had two of my uncles hold me down while she cut open the wound, cleaned it, bandaged it up and it quickly healed. 

 

Nan nan nursed more than children.  She had a thing for animals.  There was a pet squirrel named Chipper that had complete run of the house.  Chipper loved chocolate and I remember the thrill of him taking a Hershey Kiss out of my hand.   For a while, there was a pet monkey.  I even remember her confiscating a small bottle that I used to feed a baby doll so that she could feed a brood of opossums after momma opossum was hit by a car.  There were the normal pets as well, such as a herd of cats and an occasional dog.   As a young adult, I was driving to work one day listening to traffic reports when I heard that the Baltimore-Washington Parkway was backed up because there was an old lady chasing an emu along the highway and I instantly knew it was my grandmother.  Yea, a neighbor’s bird got away and she risked her life to prevent injury to the critter.

 

When she wasn’t nursing kids and critters, she was nursing plants.  She had a huge vegetable garden and her flower garden was legendary.   As kids, there wasn’t much scarier than hitting a baseball or any other ball into her flower garden.  She would curse and swear and wave a big stick around while we tip-toed through the blossoms to retrieve our ball.

 

My grandmother was passionate about holidays.  Unless we happened to be in our deathbed, we were expected to show up for every holiday.  The house was a small cape cod, built after a fire destroyed the original home in the 1940’s.  There were 2 small bedrooms with slanted ceilings upstairs for the boys, the kitchen was moved to the back porch to make space for a bedroom for the girls, my grandparents bedroom and one bathroom, that usually had a line in front of it.  There was no hot water, unless you warmed it on the stove.  But at the time, it seemed like a castle even when it was crammed full of aunts, uncles and cousins. 

Halloween was the most noted holiday in the Shelsby family.  Nan Nan created a custom costume for each child and grandchild.   Many of them were not really costumes, instead floats, that always took first prize in the Glen Burnie Halloween parade.  One year she took a large burn can and painted it like a Delmonte spinach can.  She made my cousin Gil as sailor suite.  For me, she made a black skirt with a gold stripe along the bottom, a red blouse and a black wig.  When we walked in the parade, everyone knew we were Popeye and Olive Oyl.  But when I wasn’t next to Gil, no one knew who I was and I was devastated.  So she and my dad scrambled, painted the Mona Lisa on poster board with cut out eyes and that’s who I was when we wore our costumes to school that week. 

 

One year, she was my one-stop-shop for back to school clothes.  I picked out some fabrics and she created a wardrobe of dresses, skirts and blouses.  What was most significant about this is she never used a Simplicity or McCall pattern.  She simply measured me, drew out some designs and then used old newspapers to create the patterns. 

 

As I entered my teens, the name “Nan Nan” seemed so childish and I shortened it to Nan.  I wished we called her something more sophisticated like “Grandma.”    I guess I obsessed on this more than what’s normal because one day, totally by accident, I called her “Grandma.”  She looked at me like I was from outer space and asked me what did I call her?  I don’t think I ever made that mistake again.

 

I was just 21 when I got the phone call that Nan was rushed to the hospital.  I was so distraught that I dashed out of my apartment without my keys.  Sobbing, I knocked on a neighbor’s door to call the property manager to let me in.  She had a massive brain tumor and was gone in a few days.  Her last words to my grandfather before she slipped into a comma was “don’t forget to feed my cats.” 

 

Nan nan was gone long before I was old enough to appreciate what a talented person she was.  I’m convinced that had she been born in an era when women had more opportunities, there is no telling what she would have accomplished.   Perhaps a doctor, maybe a veterinarian.  Or maybe a fashion designer or even an engineer.  Sure, she was truly awful as a housekeeper but my God, that woman was talented.