It's the only object I have of my grandmother's. Just a small bread plate. Rimmed with an abudance of bright flowers, the place has a center docated with a yellow-beaker bird with a long graceful tail perched on a flower's branch.
The plate doesn't look like Nana. It's too fussy, too ornate, too colorful. My rotund grandmother never wore bright colors. All of her dresses looked the same -- long and dark. She wore elastic stocking and sensible black shoes with square heels. When she went out, she'd wear a black coat and hat and have a black purse hooked over her arm.
Even her home was dark. If houses wrinkled like grandmothers, it would have been accordion like the corners of Nana's eyes. Her staircase was so steep and narrow that many times Nana said, "Go up up on your hands and knees so you don't fall."
"Yes Nana," I'd say.
Yet, when I think of my grandmother, I smile. I recall the times she said, "Just give me a few minutes to think about a story." Then she'd sit urpright, silent, with closed eyes, while I'd sit in quiet anticipation waiting for her to work out her latest tale. Usually, the children in Nana's stories were brave and heroic. I wanted to be brave and heroic, too.
I remember the nights I spent sleeping on the stiff and scratch wine-colored couch. My grandmother had me practice getting off the couch and going to the bathroom with closed eyes, to be sure I could accomplish that feat in the middle of the night.
Nana's house was the only place I had rootbeer floats. I'd scoop the foam up with a teaspoon. My grandmother kept spoons in a sugar bowl in the center of the oilcoth-covered table.
I recall visiting my grandmother in the hospital. An unruly teeager at the time, and the center of my own universe, I didn't know what losing Nana would mean.
When I turn the plate over, I read "Songbird; Heinrich & Co; Bavaria." At the top there is a crown. I wish I could place the crown on Nana's head.
