Maquinna's Poop du Jour

A Belated Inheritance on Neutral Ground at Art's Deli

I have tried several times over the last few days to write this particular post. I expect that like my previous attempts, this one will end up long and rather unwieldy. Regardless, it needs to be written, tangential rambling though it may be.

Baba - my grandmother - was born on a farm in Saskatchewan around 1919 (I can't be entirely sure of this year, but today it is my best guess), one of the first children, of the nine in her family, to be born in Canada after they emigrated from the Ukraine. Sometime during the late 1930s she moved to Vancouver, where she found work as a waitress, and ultimately met my grandfather and married him. Baba believed in living as well as she could, and the farm was not for her. I find it important to say all this, because despite her humble origins, my Baba had a very strong sense of her own style, and took great pride in looking her best. Check out that strut as she walks through downtown Vancouver. That's a woman with class and substance.

In short order my father was born, and several years later my uncle completed their family. Rumours abound of other pregnancies, and of stillborn twins, but I cannot verify any of this. They settled in a small town on Vancouver Island where my grandfather was the local barber. He was also, from all accounts, a binge drinker and gambler, and not a particularly reliable provider. He died in his fifties, most likely from the effects of perpetual fermentation. I don't believe I was even yet born at the time.

After a respectable amount of time, Baba met Joe, who was also a widower, and one day they walked into town hall and got married. Joe, who was Papa Joe to my siblings and me, became the only grandfather figure we ever really knew. We also believed that they must be quite rich. Joe owned hotels. Every year they went to Maui for a month, and Baba would bring back hula dolls with little plastic leis and fake grass skirts. They lived in what, to us, was a very fancy house with a typically slavic sense of grandeur: velvet furniture, and lots of silk flower arrangements on a marble fireplace. The garage held Cadillacs and Lincolns. Baba grew roses; to this day whenever I smell luscious, fluffy tea roses, I am reminded immediately of her. We believed our Baba was happily married to a man she loved, and that they were enjoying their golden years together.

Baba was a paradox of frugality and generosity. Perhaps it was her farm roots that made it impossible that anything should go to waste. This meant that there was always a ridiculous amount of food constantly available, and constantly eaten. We used to crave the rings of kolbasa - Ukrainian sausage - they would always have, still fresh and steaming, made at Art's, a local delicatessan. Ukrainian candy, she would say. Better than candy. She taught me to play cribbage, and she never, not even once, let me beat her. She would give away her used things to us - towels (they still have a lot of wear left in them!), clothes - God, my sister and I would be given polyester cruise ship party dresses, floor-length in bright circa 1968 colours, and bras so enormous - 44FF, I swear - we couldn't imagine ever filling them (little did we know then how that genetic joke would come back to bite us in the ass). Enormous underwear found in 12-packs in the clearance bin at Zeller's, such a deal! We considered ourselves lucky if we managed to escape with nothing more than a bellyache from a pan of her amazing lemon squares. When I married, she gave me a silver tea service she had bought when she first moved to Vancouver. Slavic people placed more confidence in that kind of wealth than in money in the bank, especially after the depression, and for her, that tea service was security. I was often told that I resembled her, and I think it's true I have many of her features.

It was hard to watch her decline as diabetes, and then cancer, took hold of her. She wasted away in pieces, painfully. When she began giving away more of her things to us, and then rather large sums of money, I suppose we just sort of shrugged it off uneasily. That was just Baba's way. We just didn't know, then, how much she was trying to tell us. Sometimes Baba and Papa Joe would bicker, or I would hear Joe make comments about how difficult this all was, and I just thought it was a normal thing for him to be frustrated and angry at the prospect of her dying.

There was jewellery she had, that she wanted to make sure we got. Some furniture, some other items. Baba, we said, don't worry about those things. It didn't strike me as strange that my father and uncle had been given power of attorney in her affairs and were helping with her medical arrangements. They were her children; why shouldn't they?

I don't like remembering the last time I saw her before she died. She was not herself, and she said things I know she didn't want others to hear. I smile more when I think of her funeral. She had become fed up with the Ukrainian Catholic church some years previously, after all the clergy sexual scandals became known, and had made arrangements with a Ukrainian Orthodox church. Hundreds of people came that summer day. Tall, lanky priests with even taller and lankier hats swung pots of incense over her, and chanted somber prayers. And Baba, true to form, lay in her teal coffin - teal! - wearing an eye-poppingly bright orange-red dress. I had to laugh. The juxtapositions were inescapable at every turn.

It was only hours later, at the wake, that I started to realize that all was not as it had seemed to me. My mother, who Baba always regarded as her daughter, even after my parents divorced, noticed Baba's favourite ring - an enormous oval emerald surrounded by diamonds - being worn by one of Joe's son's wives. She knew Baba had intended that ring for one of her own granddaughters, as well as the rest of her jewellery.

None of us ever saw anything that Baba had willed to us. Joe said it wasn't hers to give away, and that he could sell whatever he wanted and do whatever he pleased with the rest. Baba must have known this, must have known Joe would not honour her wishes. She gave away all the things she was able to, while she was still alive. How could Joe do this to her, to his wife of nearly 30 years?

The truth spilled out slowly. Theirs had been a marriage of mutual convenience. He needed someone to cook and clean after his wife died. She had few skills and little money of her own to live on. She took care of him, and he took care of her. Being married meant they could maintain their social lives. But as soon as my Baba's illness prevented her from keeping up 'her end', he was ready to wash his hands of her. He resented the fact that she was ill because it was inconvenient for him. She meant very little to him.

Yes, much of the jewellery Baba had was given to her by Joe, over the years. That was the kind of present a man like him gave when occasions like birthdays and Christmas required him to. And don't get me wrong - my siblings and cousins and I aren't really concerned about who got a few baubles, or whether my mother got a promised dining room set. What bothered me most was Joe's complete lack of feeling and respect for her. I think we all felt grossly betrayed. And that was before we learned he tried to her have exhumed and reburied back in my hometown, so he could sell the more expensive plot she had arranged for herself. Thankfully, my dad and uncle were able to put a stop to that. We never spoke to Joe again.

It's been nearly eight years now since Baba died. I spoke with my sister the other night, and she said Joe had called my uncle. He had found some photos of Baba and her family, and wanted to know if he would like to pick them up. My uncle refused to talk with him and certainly wouldn't go to the house Baba had lived in with Joe. I guess Joe then contacted my father, and some kind of arrangement was struck. Joe would leave the photos at Art's deli, where my father could pick them up the next time he went there to get rings of kolbasa.

As someone who intends to be a photographer, getting these pictures of my Baba means more to me than any money or emerald rings ever could. I feel like we're finally getting the inheritance we really wanted all along.

posted by Maquinna @ 3:33 p.m.