Last night, I went to mass with the Country Boy’s grandmother. As much as my father likes to believe that France is a Catholic country, it’s not. It hasn’t been, really, since the 1950s or 60s. Of his grandmother’s 12 children, none brings their family to church.
I’m not judging anyone, nor am I claiming to be a perfect Catholic. It’s just funny the sorts of things that a day like this, a day that’s a recurring marker in this cyclical way in which we measure time, can make you remember.
We were standing in his grandmother’s kitchen yesterday afternoon. There’s a small table in the kitchen that can fit six if you don’t mind rubbing shoulders. I found myself wondering how all 12 could sit comfortably around it.
“Make yourselves at home,” she said, and so we made coffee — TCB, his brother, his sister, respective significant others — and we perched around the table and went through the calendar they make every year with family portraits of all 12. I can remember most of their names after more than three years; TCB’s brother’s girlfriend is still learning, but she’s quicker now than I was at the beginning. All of the sisters look the same, and most of them have nicknames in the French style: Nana, Nono, Jojo, Bibiche, Didine.
There’s something about this space, this room, that reminds me of the breakfast nook at my grandmother’s house in Jamaica, Queens, where it smelled like old wood and there was always a container of Tang in the pantry. Here it’s Nutella and pains au lait.
We didn’t go there often, but we always went for Easter. I don’t know if my parents had a rule about that, but it always felt like Christmas was with my mom’s parents, and Easter was with my dad’s, at least when I was very small. Someone would organize an Easter egg hunt on the front lawn, we would watch March of the Wooden Soldiers in the den, and my grandmother would make scrambled eggs. It’s a simple memory, but sometimes those are the best.
My grandmother’s name was Rose, but when we were small, we called her Nana Ro-Ro. A coincidence too bizarre for fiction.
Happy Easter, Nana.