LUCKY ARE THE BABES WHO CALL JENNIFER NANA

Lucky are the babes who call Jennifer Nana.  For they shall have great memories to pass on to their grandchildren. 

 

Some women yearn to be grandmothers, count the days, buy all the baby furniture in anticipation of the momentous event.  But I don’t recall Jennifer bubbling with excitement when the prospect was announced.  Her response looked more like quiet acceptance, and this in its own way was uncharacteristic, for Jennifer is a woman of bubbling enthusiasms. 

 

In a time so short it seems impossible, fate has delivered her two incorrigible little grandsons.  No evidence of quiet acceptance now.  She has turned our annual church Christmas dinner into a re-enactment of the summer camps we shared with our children.  With all the determination of a leadership candidate drumming up support at a party convention, she is working the room as people take their seats, stirring up mischief.  There is chaos.  There is laughter.  Everyone has a part to play.  A chorus of Jingle Bells interrupts the master of ceremonies every time he says the word table.  And when he says Christmas, the crowd bursts out with Fa la la la la la la la la.  We smack the hand of our neighbour on the closing line of the Johnny Apple Seed grace.  “The kids,” she explains as she co-opts me as a partner in crime, “The kids don’t know about the things we did at camp, like the Announcement song.  “

 

There are so many things Jennifer does with a sparkle.  A Christmas vegetable plate is a foundation of mayonnaise adorned in bright vegetables arranged in a huge Christmas tree pattern.  A bridal shower in her home is a morning event for forty guests featuring the tiny buttermilk pancakes her mother used to serve the Camrose ladies.  A cheeseburger for our kids drips with a mixture of hot cheeses and comes to you with a skiing story from one of her myriad cookbooks.  She introduces me to Pavlova, that yummy meringue and fruit dessert, and I never forget Pavlova because she tells me about the Australian athlete for whom it is named. 

 

When Jennifer was forty, her favourite song was Rainbow Connection, by Kermit The Frog.  For years she stood in front of the congregation, teaching songs to children, with the interests of the children as her first concern.  Make it fun; make it a song that children can sing.  Be a little outrageous so they will always remember.  Make it really beautiful if it is a prayer or a round.  But this is not all she was doing.  For while she was making a place for the children, my irrepressible friend kept up a constant stream of dialogue with me, the pianist.  Though her husband warned her of the dangers of possible offence to me, she knew it would all even out.  She, standing in front of the microphone, could say whatever sprang to her lips.  Then I, unable to respond in the moment, having no microphone of my own, would have extra time during the sermon and prayers to engineer a reply. 

 

One time she threw me—a tedious birthday whiner--a surprise birthday party.  Perhaps she knew it would change my birthday story forever, bring an end to the whining.  There were two cakes, baked in her mixing bowls, one shaped as the left breast, the other as the right.  She was compensating for a shared deficiency.  Neither of us was particularly well endowed in real life. 

 

Sometimes you lose track of the things you most love about your friends.  These loves get buried in the clutter of life events, of fatigue, of straying attentions that obscure the joys of fully living.  Still they are your beacons, the touchstones of your life.  If something happens to you, they reappear in an instant, and you feel no surprise, only gratitude for their abiding presence. 

 

Jennifer has been carving a path for me for a long time, embracing motherhood first, showing me how to care for ailing parents.  And now, as my future grandchildren remain hidden below the horizon, unrevealed until their season, I see her making memories for hers, and it is enough to join her in a mid-life display of outrageous behavior, to be part of the story these little boys will tell.  She is expanding my grandmother images far beyond the narrow confines of aging women.  As I watch in genuine delight, her cup is replenishing itself from the fountain of youth.