Sunday, February 18, 2024
Just think about the bazillions of people out there that know who Taylor Swift is, or Barack Obama, or Elon Musk. In her 95 years on Earth, Anna Wessman – my Nana – didn’t win any Grammys, pass any major legislation in Congress, or invent any new technologies, but boy could she make a mean Swedish pancake. And that’s one of many things that made her a person to know.
She was smart, too. Very smart. Even before she died, I’d privately muse about how intelligent she was and how she exerted her potential in some ways almost uncommon for a woman in her time, yet didn’t in other ways due to generational influences and limitations. Born during the Great Depression – the year the stock market crashed, in fact – her life was filled with frugality and a mindset to work hard. And that she most certainly was - a hard worker.
I think about my Nana and so many words come to mind. Which is fitting in a way because she was really good with words. In puzzles, in games, in conversation, in writing. Her absolutely perfect, script-like cursive writing. I remember admiring some of the words that would come out of her mouth when I was a kid, overheard in adult conversations, and sometimes I’d look them up in one of her weathered dictionaries or thesauruses and attempt to use it later in one of my own conversations. ‘Regalia.’ That was one of the words. I talked a lot as a kid, or so I’m told, which probably wore a lot of people out, but she would always listen…or pretend to, anyway, and that made me feel good. So, I’d write her letters, even into college, because I knew she’d read them. And I liked to call her, too, because she was happy to hear from me.
I’ll miss her voice and all the fabulously mundane things we’d talk about. I’ll miss her hands, too. Crinkly on top, almost like crumpled up paper spread back out, but if you flipped them over it was like they’d been submerged in warm water and Palmolive all day. Which was interesting because they never were. Couldn’t communicate without those hands either, always up in the air or measuring things in invisible block increments on the table or space in front of her. Everything she talked about was given dimension in this way.
What a character. Very funny, too, and unintentionally so. She had the best mannerisms. And those glasses! Styles that only she could pull off.
I will miss you, Nana, very much. I’ll see you later, though, in the fridge when I pull the butter out. In my drawer, when I uncap the Lipsmacker. At the table, when I find a seven-letter word on the Boggle board. And in a multitude of other wonderfully ordinary places made special by you.
