Circle of Life

Preface-My earliest memory of Nanny: 1968, standing in front of the Brooklyn townhouse where my young parents rent the second floor apartment. There I stand with polished shoes, short pants, holding mom’s hand, while watching my Nanny’s white curly-haired head get smaller and smaller as she heads toward the avenue to take the bus home.  After spending the day with my Mom, her daughter, me, and my younger sister Julie, my beloved Nanny is leaving. As she fades into the Brooklyn streetscape, I strain to keep seeing her and  I am saying, in a sing-song little-boy voice,“Nanny come back. Nanny come back. Nanny come back.”

 

The joke in my house while I was growing up was that of the Spinner kids, I was my Nanny’s favorite. All families have those jokes, they are mostly harmless, and usually have some truth to them. I was her first grandchild, so I’m sure that weighs into it. I do know that my Nanny, always made me feel special, as she did all of her grandchildren. As a boy, if I was sleeping over her house on Bay 26th Street, she would always have my favorites on hand. I could count on my Nanny having made a special trip to Bohack’s on Cropsey Avenue to stock up on Tropicana Orange Juice which I loved. Because my Mom was buying for a family of 6, she would always buy the supermarket’s brand of OJ, which paled in comparison to Tropicana. During her shopping spree, Nanny would also pick up Entenmann’s Marshmallow Fudge Cake. The best was, I could eat multiple pieces during my stay. Nanny would also make a special trip to the pork store to buy thin coiled sausage (hot, and sweet) that gave her sauce a nice tang. And the piece de resistance, she’d always buy fusilli, my favorite pasta. That’s how Grandma’s make us feel special. 

 

While visiting my Grandparents over in Bath Beach, we’d often take a walk over to 86th Street to go shopping, or to Korvettes, to pick up some toys.  At night, my grandparents would take my sister and I over to Nellie Bly’s, a local amusement park, where they’d let us ride the spinning tea cups, or the helicopters that you could control with a lever whether you were high or low, a real thrill for a kid. My grandparents would load us up with quarters so we could play some games of chance. Throughout the evening, they’d buy us cotton candy, popcorn, and ice cream. We knew all we had to do was ask nicely, and our grandparents would get us things. This generosity seemed so special, almost extravagant, because my parents, who were also loving and generous,  had to watch their money, and my grandparents seemed to be almost rich in comparison. 

 

Over the years, my Nanny was always there for me. Every birthday and holiday was extra special because she always got us really thoughtful gifts. My grandparents came over every Sunday for a nice meal. My Nanny was supportive of me, one of my biggest fans, so much so that when I got into SUNY Buffalo, she agreed to help our family by paying my tuition, something that I am grateful for to this day. My sister, after my Nanny passed away, was cleaning out Nanny’s apartment (something I probably should have helped with) uncovered letters I had sent to my grandmother  while I was away at college. The letters were typical, filling my Nanny in on the everyday life of a student, with a few “stretchers” as Tom Sawyer would say, about how much time I was spending at the library, but I mostly told the truth. The thing that I am most proud of in those letters, is that I made sure to always thank my Nanny for helping my family make the dream of college come true for me.

 

Now this story is not all butterflies and unicorns, my Nanny, Wanda Plantamura, could be a difficult person, she was set in her ways, and sometimes had difficulty communicating, especially with my Mom. Their relationship was fraught with hidden emotions, trapdoor histories, jealousies…all stemming from the fact that my grandmother conceived my mom, out of wedlock, as a teenager, in the 1940’s. So, my mother was raised by her grandparents, my great-grandparents, until my grandmother was mature and stable enough to care for her daughter, which was when my mother was practically a teenager. So there was a lot of scar tissue there for mother and daughter, that would usually flare its ugly head during the holidays, when emotions ran high. Quite a few Christmases and Easters ended with my mom, my grandmother, or both, leaving the room in tears. 

 

By the 1990’s, after I moved to CT, I would see my Nanny at Christmas and Easter, and occasionally Kira and I would go to her house for a home-cooked meal. Usually pasta with meat sauce, maybe pasta fagioli, or another favorite, breaded and fried chicken cutlets. Then we started to grow our own family, and my Nanny added to her great-grandchildren. Wanda Plantamura was what I would call a “light smoker.” She smoked Kents, and she only smoked a handful a day. If I had to guess, I would say a pack of Kents would last my grandmother about a week. That being said, the damage was done, over the years, and sadly, right around her 80th birthday, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It didn’t surprise any of us when Nanny matter-of-factly said, “I am not doing any of that chemo, no surgeries for me. It’s been a good life, eighty years is enough, I am just going to let this run its course.”  My sister tried to convince her to try treatment, but I didn’t even bother, I knew my Nanny, and could hear the determination in her voice.  Eventually, over the course of a few months, the lung cancer continued to take over her body, and it was a hospice situation. Those last few weeks, my mother and my sister, were holding vigil in Brooklyn, and visiting her daily. I was in Connecticut, with two young boys, so I only visited a handful of times. 

 

Those visits were special. I learned many interesting things about Nanny, and our family.  Lying in bed, me sitting by her side, she regaled me with stories of her working in a clothing factory during WWII. This was a necessity for the war effort, women working in the factory while most of the men were in the service. She talked of working hard, and being respected, and moving up to eventually become a supervisor. 

 

She told me about my grandfather (actually my step-grandfather) who started to hang with the wrong crowd in his Carroll Gardens neighborhood. My grandfather’s mother told him, “You are not to hang out with that Purse-Ico boy.” Nanny pronounced it, Purse Ico. With my limited knowledge of New York mob history, I connected the dots and asked her, “You mean to tell me Papa was hanging out with Carmine ‘the Snake” Persico?”  And she said, “Yeh, yeh, that’s the guy's name. His mother knew that boy was bad news and told him he better stay away from him. Probably saved his life.”  

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Over the spring, and toward summer, Nanny’s health continued to decline. On the last day of school, June 23rd, my wife and I planned to take our two boys, Nick and Brian, to the beach the next day, our first day of summer vacation. Kira is a planner, so food was bought, sandwiches made, juice boxes were on ice, towels and beach toys packed. We were ready to hit the road early the next morning. That night I dreamt of Nanny, a dream that was clearly a sign that I needed to visit.. That morning, I sat up in bed, I could hear Kira downstairs finishing up breakfast with the fellas, knowing that this change in plans was not going to go over well.

 

I stood in the doorway to the kitchen and jumped right in, 

“I know we have plans to go to the beach but I feel like I have to go visit Nanny one more time.”

 

“What!? We have plans to go to the beach! Jesus Jim, really?  Just go tomorrow.”

 

“Sorry, I had this dream last night and I feel like I have to go, today. The last thing I want to do is spend 5 hours driving to Brooklyn and back, when I could be on the beach with my family, but I feel like I have to go to Brooklyn.”  

 

‘Fine.”  

 

I leave my wife, fuming in the driveway, with two disappointed young boys staring at me as the car disappears. My thoughts meander as I drive away. Maybe I should just stay and go to the beach? I could go to Brooklyn tomorrow. Nanny will probably be around a few more days? 

 

The drive from Connecticut to Brooklyn is a bear, a  gauntlet of heavily trafficked areas.You might hit traffic at any number of spots, 84 in CT, 684 in Westchester County, further south on the Hutchinson River Parkway, across the Whitestone Bridge to the Grand Central, or the dreaded, B-Q-E. I hate the drive. But I go. I feel drawn to Brooklyn, it feels it’s the right thing to do.

 

In a few hours, I get to Maimonidies Hospital in Boro Park, where my Nanny lies in a coma. Hospitals creep most of us out, the smell, the memories of visiting other sick people. This is even worse because  it’s a hospice situation. The staff is great, the doctor greets me at the desk, escorts me to her room and tells me, “She is unconscious, but it would be nice if you just talk to her. She knows you’re here.” The doctor leaves, I stand awkwardly at her bedside. I begin talking to her, too loudly it feels. “Hey Nanny, it’s Jimmy. Traffic was terrible.”  I make jokes, which is what I do when I am nervous. “Have you been playing any hoops lately?” Eventually, I run out of things to say so I decide to read aloud to her. I happen to be reading about WWII, and my nostalgic radar notices that WWII was the topic the last time I spoke with her. I begin to read from, The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw. I would highly recommend it. Bedford, Virginia is the town that lost the most boys on the D-Day invasion, the book is an homage to those boys, and to a heroic and sad time in our country’s history. 

 

While I am reading aloud, her breathing is labored, she’s not breathing at a normal pace, she’s taking in exaggerated breaths every 12 seconds or so, occasionally I think that she has already passed, but then she takes another breath. One of the nurses comes in, a young Chinese woman, she checks the chart, fiddles with some tubes and then stands beside me while I read. Eventually she says, “She’s gone.” I look up, and say, “I thought so too, but watch, she keeps breathing.” We are both staring at my grandmother’s mouth, waiting. Then, she takes another breath. I say, “See.”  And the young nurse shakes her head. We stand there, watching, and then…that’s it. Standing there, with this total stranger, I watched my grandmother take her last breath. 

 

Shocked, saddened, I’m thinking: Have I ever seen anyone die before? It’s a good thing I drove down today. This was meant to be. It’s like she waited to say good-bye to me. 

 

Then I look at my watch, it’s 2:20. I think about calling my family. My sister is a teacher, my mom is a paraprofessional, I know they’ll be arriving right after school. I decide to wait. Now what I did next will entertain my wife to no end.  I took the elevator downstairs, walked out the front door of the hospital, made a left, walked half a block, and got a slice of pizza. 

 

Eventually my Mom and my sister show up. We hug, talk, start to make arrangements. About 6 o’clock, I head back to my car, to make the drive back to Connecticut. In that natural New Yorker way, I just know where I parked, I made the subconscious “note” to myself after I parked. I walk down 12th avenue, to 52nd street and make a right turn. I walk three or four cars in to my car and I stop, amazed.  I look at the houses, the trees, the cars, and I realize, I parked my car right in front of the exact townhouse that I lived in with my parents all those years ago. Not two doors down. Not across the street. Right in front of the apartment that holds my earliest memories, particularly that memory of a little boy singing, “Nanny come back…”