Kipp Friedman at age 4 (circa 1965) with his grandmother Nanny (Molly Friedman) in her Bronx apartment.<\/p><\/div>\n

Whenever Sophie addressed me and my brothers the conversation would invariably steer to the same subject: her preference for boys over girls. \u201cDo you know why I like boys more than girls?\u201d she would ask, her eyes resembling large goldfish swimming in a bowl because of her bifocal glasses. We already knew the answer, but would play along. Girls, she explained, were more expensive than boys. \u201cGirls like diamonds.\u201d She would then tell us that our parents were fortunate to have had three sons instead of daughters, and we would smile back awkwardly, although this close-ended line of conversation usually left us speechless.<\/p>\n

Sophie\u2019s other preferred topic for discussion was business, and more specifically, the status of her stock portfolio. Despite being the beneficiary of wise investments set up by a late husband, Sophie worried about her finances, fearful that her fortunes could change on a dime. Each day she would avidly scan the business pages and then report on any changes in her stocks. Her frugality was expressed best one sunny summer afternoon when my mother took us to lunch at Gosman\u2019s Dock, a favorite restaurant near Montauk Point, on the southern tip of Long Island. We were seated on the deck overlooking the scenic Montauk harbor, watching the passing fishing boats, when Sophie opened her menu and her eyes registered alarm. \u201cJoe,\u201d she said sternly, \u201cthere\u2019s lobster tails.\u201d I noticed that South African lobster tails were listed on the menu. \u201cWhaaaa? Papa answered lazily, his head in the menu. \u201cThere\u2019s lobster tails on the menu, Joe!\u201d she repeated, this time more firmly, shutting the menu and staring blankly into space. I could see anger slowly building on her face. After a few tense moments, she lectured us on their limited financial means. She was apparently fearful that my mother had intended to stick them with the bill. \u201cJoe and I live on a fixed income, you know,\u201d she explained. \u201cJoe only has Social Security.\u201d My mother tried to reassure her that she would cover the bill, but Sophie remained skeptical. In protest, she ordered a baked potato and a cup of coffee, and sat silently for the rest of the meal, occasionally shifting uncomfortably in her seat, with the withered look of a migrant mother during the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

At some point during their stay my mother would literally start counting the minutes until their departure. This was usually about the time Sophie would ask her in front of me and my brothers: \u201cWhich one is your favorite?\u201d to which my mother would answer in exasperation, \u201cWhat kind of a question is that?\u201d Undeterred, Sophie would repeat the question, \u201cBut which one do you like the best?\u201d My mother would shake her head in disbelief and her voice would rise: \u201cI love all three of my sons!\u201d Once, my mother came up with a creative way to hasten their departure. Aware of Sophie\u2019s aversion to our pet cats, my mother encouraged my brother Drew to place Leroy, a black and white alley cat with a Charlie Chaplin-like mustache, on the dinner table. When Sophie spotted Leroy sniffing at the dinner plates, she panicked and left the table to start packing her suitcases. Before leaving for Florida, Sophie would give each of us a hug and a kiss and then insist on us calling her \u201cGrandma.\u201d Shortly after, my mother would quickly remind us, in case we forgot, that she wasn\u2019t our \u201creal\u201d grandmother.<\/p>\n

While we didn\u2019t always treat Sophie with the utmost respect, we were wary about how we addressed our paternal grandmother, Nanny, who was more of an imposing figure. She had dyed red hair, a leathery tanned face, wore cat-eye glasses, and had a gravelly, low voice that sounded as if dipped in tar from years of heavy drinking and smoking. In old photos from the 1930s and \u201840s she resembled a hardened version of Rita Hayworth, and the passage of time had not been kind. The story goes that soon after my cousin Chuck was born in 1948, Nanny was walking him in a stroller along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx when a neighbor approached pushing her own grandchild in a stroller. \u201cMolly, what a beautiful baby,\u201d her neighbor supposedly said excitedly. Nanny peeked inside her neighbor\u2019s stroller and responded in her low, raspy voice: \u201cThat\u2019s an ugly baby.\u201d That lack of tact and willingness to say what was on her mind pretty much summed up my grandmother.<\/p>\n

Nanny and Poppy lived in the same Art Deco-era one-bedroom apartment for nearly 40 years on a street that bordered Yankee Stadium off 167^{th<\/sup> Street and Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx. By the mid-1960s, their neighborhood was rapidly changing as many of their friends and relatives had left for the suburbs or Florida, to be replaced by a new wave of Puerto Rican and Dominican families. Despite the changing nature of their neighborhood, their apartment seemed like it was caught in a time warp from a bygone era.\u00a0 They kept a baby grand piano near the entrance that they bought shortly after they were married in the early 1920s. Original sheet music from old Broadway show tunes filled the piano stand and chair. A shelf in the foyer contained a display of Art Deco cigarette lighters and they kept decorative glass ashtrays throughout the apartment with a mini wet bar off to the side. We typically visited them on the High Holidays or on special occasions, but more often than not we met them for dinner further downtown in Manhattan or they visited us in Long Island.<\/p>\n}

Whenever we visited, my father would slip a Don Diego cigar inside Poppy\u2019s jacket as a sort of welcoming gift. Upon entering, I would marvel at the small alcove at the back end of the narrow kitchen just off the front entrance. This was where my father slept on an oversized chair for much of his childhood until he left for college. My Aunt Dollie would sleep on makeshift bedding within the TV console box in their sunken living room.\u00a0 When I was very young, for fun I would crawl inside the console box and stare at faded cutout images of movie stars like Don Ameche, Hedy Lemarr, Loretta Young and Dick Powell that my aunt had taped to the walls during her childhood. As a child, I thought it sounded perfectly normal, even adventurous, to camp out in your own apartment, although my father told us that it became increasingly embarrassing as he grew older, especially when he would have to explain to a girl he was dating where he slept.<\/p>\n

Unlike my maternal grandfather, Papa, who had retired years earlier, Poppy never officially left his job in the Garment District. We heard stories that Poppy had somehow made a poor business decision around World War II, against Nanny\u2019s better judgment, and was mislead by his business partners out of an opportunity for a controlling interest in the company, coming out on the losing end. The real story was never fully disclosed, but it obviously left a dark spot on their marriage. Poppy stoically carried on, however, returning to virtually the same \u201ccutter\u201d position for the rest of his working life. This may have been the cause for his painful stomach ulcers which kept him on a strict diet of bland foods like boiled beef and kasha varnishkes. My father would say that ketchup was the most exotic food Poppy could stomach. One thing we were all aware of was Nanny\u2019s constant bickering, often under her breath. She would berate Poppy over the most benign things but Poppy would good-naturedly just grin and take it, occasionally making a small retort.<\/p>\n

Blessed with a quick wit and an equally sharp tongue, Nanny would have excelled in business had she been given the chance, but Poppy was too traditional to allow his wife to work. Clearly frustrated, she spent most of her days at home, often in a bathrobe except when she went out with her girlfriends. As it happens, she developed a drinking problem, although in those days she was what my parents would euphemistically call a \u201csocial drinker.\u201d It was said that she would occasionally leave the apartment in her bathrobe, carrying a bottle of liquor and take long cab rides, unloading all her problems on the cabby as a form of therapy. Poppy was known for taking long lonely walks of his own, often sunning himself on nearby park benches or in the bleachers at nearby Yankee Stadium. \u00a0Family get-togethers would sometimes end with us silently stepping by Nanny\u2019s sleeping body in the kitchen. \u00a0Still, Nanny was very kind to us and always showered us with sweets and gifts whenever we visited, my favorite being a box of petit four Rainbow Cookies from a nearby bakery. She also seemed to carry an endless supply of hard candies in her purse.<\/p>\n

Of all of my grandparents, I think about Poppy the most–not for what he said or did, but for how he made me feel. There was something very comforting in his quiet, gentle, steady, dignified\u2014even somber\u2014demeanor. My father once referred to me as \u201cMr. Mellow\u201d and I\u2019d like to think that that was a character trait that I inherited directly from Poppy. As a young man during the First World War, and then in mid-age during World War II, Poppy joined the ranks of the civilian defense as an air raid warden, patrolling the night skies for enemy aircraft that never materialized. I still feel pangs of guilt for once shutting the electric car window on his finger when he ran out in the rain to say goodbye to us after one visit. It didn\u2019t help that Drew lambasted me: \u201cWhy\u2019d you crush Poppy\u2019s finger, moron?\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time I was 11 Nanny was suffering from lung cancer. I remember the final summer that Nanny and Poppy visited us at a house we were renting in the Hamptons. Nanny was drinking more heavily and I remember her scolding me for no reason, which made me cry. After that, I would try to avoid her as much as possible. One night my father took us to an old supper club adjacent to the East Hampton public beach. There was a piano player and a singer near the bar. After our meal, my father and Nanny stood and began dancing to a standard that we could hear from the bar. Nanny appeared lost in a dream as she gently swayed with eyes closed while clutching my father, who was slightly overcome with emotion. Within months, her cancer would rapidly spread. My parents\u2019 marriage was also dissolving and we were in our final plans to sell our house in Great Neck so we could move into Manhattan, ostensibly so my mother could be closer to my father\u2019s work. Nanny was being treated at Lenox Hill Hospital in Midtown Manhattan, and for a while she would stay in my father\u2019s high-rise apartment on East 65^{th<\/sup> Street so that she could be closer to the hospital. By the time she was hospitalized I never had a chance to say goodbye. At the funeral, my father remarked how the officiating rabbi did such a nice job capturing her personality as if he\u2019d actually known her. I remember how lost Poppy appeared with my Aunt Dollie taking charge of all the funeral arrangements.<\/p>\n}

Within a few months after Nanny\u2019s death, Poppy would also become sick. He was scheduled for what was supposed to be routine prostate surgery. Since children under 12 weren\u2019t allowed to visit patients for fear of spreading infection, I waited in the hospital visitor\u2019s lounge while my parents and older brothers went to his room. Within a few days Poppy would pass away, apparently because he was operated on while he had a high temperature. The funeral was held at the same chapel as was Nanny\u2019s with the same officiating chaplain. Only this time, my father complained bitterly that the rabbi had failed to capture Poppy\u2019s true character. At the burial site, it was one of the few times I had ever seen my father cry. As much as I tried, though, I couldn\u2019t cry which made me feel a sense of guilt. I wanted to show my father how bad I felt, too; that somehow my grief would make him feel better. As we left the cemetery, my father placed a cigar in Poppy\u2019s open graveside. He said he hoped the cemetery workers would have the decency to leave the cigar.<\/p>\n

The last time I saw Papa and Sophie was for lunch at an outdoor Italian restaurant in Manhattan during the mid-1970s (Papa would pass away in the early \u201880s while I was away in college). By this time, my parents were separated and my brothers and I were living with my mother in an apartment on the Upper West Side. Papa still spoke optimistically about bringing \u201cyou two kids back together\u201d even though my parents were involved in new relationships and would soon file for divorce. The conversation shifted to mundane talk about retirement life in Fort Lauderdale, their fondness for \u201cfarm stores,\u201d and their various ailments. At a certain point, though, my brothers\u2014perhaps out of boredom\u2014began dripping strands of spaghetti and meatballs from their mouths as if they were in a food-spilling contest. Each took turns trying to outdo the other, releasing ever increasing amounts of food onto their plates while my mother and I did our best to keep from laughing. But neither Papa nor Sophie seemed to notice. Then my brothers, each with spaghetti sauce on their lips, took turns mouthing bizarre noises and curses under their breath in Sophie\u2019s direction, which she either didn\u2019t hear or chose to ignore. It was just another in a series of random, puzzling memories of my grandparents that only reinforces Papa\u2019s baffling question uttered so many years ago: What, indeed, is<\/em> the sensus of the basis?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…the natty look of a Damon Runyon character…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1900,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions\/1900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}