I have few memories of Grandma Sinclair, my mother's mother. She used to knit beautiful sweaters for all of us and they werte passed down for years from one child to the next. Alcoholism broke up her home. Her youngest daughter lived with my other grandmother when the fighting got out of hand. She died in the early fifties of complications from diabetes including amputations.


Nana Sullivan, on the other hand, lived with us until her death at 81. I have a picture of her at 16 - very pretty and very sassy and very tiny. She eloped with my grandfather, a handsome Irishman with a drinking problem who came and went and left her pregnant every time. Her family, German immigrants, disowned her. During the Depression she kept her family of 8 children together by running a restaurant of sorts and vacating apartments in the middle of the night to avoid paying back rents. Her children had to watch the sidewalk outside their home for hobo chalk marks. Nana never turned away a hungry man probably thinking of her own husband. She ruled the family with an iron fist and in the early '30s bought a house with money pooled from all their paychecks. They all lived together in the one huge house - married, single, children. My Aunt Pat told me that she and her husband bought a house of their own but she was afraid to tell Nana until her husband threatened to leave her. Granpa Sullivan shot himself in the head and was found by my father. She had to raise her family alone. I never heard her complain. She loved us, cooked the most incredible meals including home made rolls, breads and cakes. I would kill for one of her sour cherry pies. She broke her arm in the roller of one of those new fangled washing machines and told me that her friend got her hair caught annd was left bald for life. I have a recording of Nana singing "Only Me'. It is a mess buit someday I will have it made whole. There is also a recording of her being interviewed by a family friend. She names all of her grandchildren except one - me, I had just been born. She died after a short illness that left her confused. She thought my brothers and I were her own children and that it was winter in an unheated flat. I remember sitting on the floor on a blanket to calm her down. I also remmeber a birthday cake with white icing decorated with silver dragees - real silver and i could eat them. I was only 4.