Final Draft memoir: Love and Loathing

It is the 1950's and all that is missing is the white picket fence. The house is a white bungalow in Parma, Ohio, and rather spacious in comparison to its outward appearance. It is always decorated for every holiday and nothing else ever changes. It is the way she likes it, stationary and familiar. Every aspect is stuck in the 1950's with the insinuation of "Leave it to Beaver" perfection. This is how everything in the world should be and this is how everything should stay forever. It is what she strives for. It is what she acknowledges as reality and we let her live in this made up world because it has been over 50 years past and still she refuses to leave the 1950’s behind. She is my grandmother, the mother of my father, Dee Mouhlas.

Lace covers the top of every table, counter, and mantel as well as hangs from the curtain rod above every window. When a rug gets worn out and tattered, she buys its exact replica. She recently got a new couch and it is a clone of the old one from the 50's. She had her neighbor search to the ends of the internet to find it because she dare not touch the evils of a computer. She has an oven that you have to light with a match and it does not quite work right. Despite her routine baking, she refuses to get a new one and just continuously checks on her creations because the oven has no timer and the temperature cannot be trusted. She was convinced to buy a microwave in the 1970's and when it died she refused to have it replaced. Her children, now all grown up with families of their own, bought her a new one. She ungraciously yelled at them upon receiving the gift. "Couldn't you just have gotten the old one fixed? I do not need this new piece of crap!" Her children refused to take the gift back and they allowed her to rant and rave about the microwave. She now uses the microwave all the time and no one has received a "Thank you for the gift", or an "I'm sorry." The old microwave is still in its same old place above her stove and the new microwave sits taking up valuable counter space. She does not apologize. She is always right.

She is my grandmother, and lucky enough to be wrinkle free, which she thinks, is because she drinks apple cider vinegar and honey as religiously as she says the rosary. She goes to church every Sunday, no exceptions in her 76 years of life. She thinks that it is sacrilege that the Roman Catholic priests do not say mass in Latin the way they used to in the 1950’s before the Vatican II Council when they allowed the mass to be held in English.

She is a nurse but she does not wear scrubs. She wears the uniform of the nurses of the 1950’s including the little white angular hat that must be bobby pinned to the back of her head. She will not keep up with new information about medicine, and hence her job has been changed from being a traditional nurse to being one that takes down insurance information. She writes it down and gives it to another nurse to type in to a computer. She will not be fired because she has worked in this field for over 50 years and she will not quit because that would be too strange and new for her to tolerate. She says “I will stop working the day that I die.”

Her green eyes reflect the nature that she surrounds herself with and hair cut the short to her head the same way it has been since she was in her 20s, no nonsense. The only thing that has changed is that her almost black hair now contains numerous threads of grey. She would be 5'5" if she could stand up straight yet still as agile as a cat. She cleans, gardens, puts together photo albums, and bakes incessantly and at speeds that would surprise everyone who looked at her slightly stocky hunched stature.

She takes a camera with her everywhere in order to record our family at dinner tables. "Not again!" "Do we have to take more pictures of all of us eating," "I might have food in my teeth," "Can't the picture wait until we are done!" my family argues every time and she responds, "Your grandchildren need to see these pictures!" This is the only reason she gives as she chases down the closest waitress. These photographs are all neatly aligned in these numerous albums that are carefully put into chronological order. These albums do not contain any form of art work, ribbons, or newspaper clippings. Only photographs of people in stationary poses sitting around a table with a mouth full of food. Her mother used to put these photographs into albums that date back to before her birth and now she carries on the tradition. We have almost 100 years of pictures of people eating.

When my father was a child, the family dog was a little West Highland White Terrier named Yankee. This dog has passed on but my grandmother now owns a West Highland White Terrier named Yankee. He is the 5th West Highland White Terrier she has had and he is the 5th one named Yankee. She talks to him just as anyone would talk to another human. She is my grandmother.

She loves all of her children to the end of this world. My Uncle Chris, Dan, my father, and my Aunt Cindy are all the perfect children and their spouses are not good enough for them. When my mother had breast cancer, my grandmother said, “I lived through it, she’ll be fine.” When my father has a cold, she rushes over with her deepest sympathies, a pot of chicken noodle soup, and she lights a candle in Church for his speedy recovery. She especially dislikes my mother. She feels my mother is trash and she treats her as such. She feels my mother never took care of my father just as a good wife should.

She collects little figures of children playing with dogs, beautiful women in extravagant dresses, perched birds, mansions with lush gardens, sad clowns, and crystal animals and food items. She encases these in glass cabinets in every room of her house and she buys thousands of dollars worth of these figures to give out to relatives at birthdays and Christmas. All of her children have confronted her about this outrageous spending. They tell her, “You have to stop spending so much money on these collectibles. They just sit and collect dust. You have more important things to spend your money on.” She simply refuses to listen to anyone. She says “When someone looks at their collectibles, they will think of me, and think of how nice I am for buying them presents and all of our memories we shared.” She is always right. She is my grandmother.

She was born in 1933 in South Amherst, Ohio as the oldest daughter of two poor Polish immigrants. She grew up on a farm in conservative Roman Catholic household where God was first, family was second (this includes Poland), and food was third. She has not drifted from her values instilled in her from youth. She tells numerous stories about picking strawberries in the fields, walking uphill though five miles of snow to and from school, going to beautiful Latin masses every Sunday with her Grandmother, learning how to be a good house wife, and learning the value of work from her grandfather. Her family always had financial problems and her father was an alcoholic so she sought comfort with her grandparents. I know she encountered a great deal more pain in her childhood than she would ever admit to because she does not like to appear weak or vulnerable so she does not speak much about her family relationships because if she did she would burst into tears.

She is afraid of being forgotten and afraid of being alone. This becomes evident with all the tears that well up in her eyes whenever she speaks or hears mention of my grandfather who passed away in 1994. She is continuously trying to fill the hole in her heart created by his death with overwhelming her self with work to do and surrounding her self with family. Still it is not enough. Nothing can replace my grandfather. She has lost many loved ones in her life. That is exactly what happens when people grow older. It is the course of nature. It is traumatizing and depressing to think about really. The longer someone lives, the more deaths they will witness. This the mentality she has begun to develop. It's not easy to lose a person who possessed so much of your heart, however she can not talk any farther than stating a name of any loved one who has passed on with out bursting into tears and screaming out in agony "Oh God, why did you take them away from me!"

We do not reminisces dead relatives in her presence. There is no shame in seeking psychiatric help to deal with loss but she would NEVER go to see a psychologist because she feels people who see psychologists are weak. She is always right. So we all just try to make life as comfortable as possible for her. We do what she asks of us out of love and respect.

She has been preparing for her own death since I was born. She already has pages and pages of lists stating who gets what when she is gone. It has become tradition that every time we gather at her house she will say, "Kids! Pick out one of these collectibles that will be yours when I die. If two or more people want the same one then we will draw straws for it."

I think the display in general is morbid and disgusting. She says she does not trust us to be civil about the dividing of her possessions upon her death and she say she wants to make sure we all have enough to remember her by. I think the last 15 years have been focused more on dying than living. That is my grandmother. She has a dominant enough personality to create numerous mental scrapbooks but she has to make sure she will not be forgotten.

Loneliness is a daily complaint of hers. She has complained of being lonely with in every crowed since my grandfather's death. She is rarely ever alone but she is always lonely. 15 years of excruciating and insatiable desolation. We do not know how to help her. We are always there to keep her company, and she keeps her self busy as a beaver with her job, housework, yard work, and luncheons. She also has her dog to keep her company. Nothing seems to fill that void. Nothing will replace my grandfather. In efforts to sooth the pain she has turned to talking to her collectibles and birds.

Every different type of bird that flies through her back yard has received the name of one of her grandchildren. The goldfinch is my cousin Rachel, the robin is my cousin Jack, and so on. One sunny afternoon, I was sitting at her kitchen table doodling a flower on my green sketchbook and she was looking for a recipe in her trusty cookbook which she considers to be law second only to the Bible.
"Look! Zack is here!" She suddenly shouted with the enthusiasm of a four year old ready blow out the candles on their birthday cake.
"Where!" I asked almost as excited since Zack and I have always been good friends. Zack is 20 and lives with his family in Pennsylvania and we were not expecting his arrival.
"Right there, on that branch! Don't you see that beautiful Cardinal! That's my Zachary!" She said still as excited as ever.

I had no idea how to respond. I just said "Oh, cool." and allowed her to live up her dream and her conversation with "Zachary." Numerous events similar to this have happened since my Grandfather's death. I feel terribly awful that she feels so much loneliness and pain all the time and that she feels that she has to pretend birds are her family members. She is my grandmother.



Tradition is always right. Her children, Chris, Dan, and Cindy along with their spouse and children have always gone to her house for Christmas Eve, every year since before my eldest cousin Brian, who is 20 now, was born. We used to have more people in my extended family join us however in the past few years they have gone separate ways. Perhaps they got tired with doing the exact same thing every Christmas and they thought it was time for a change. On Christmas Eve we always follow traditional folk and religious customs of Poland. Which includes saying a prayer for more children. She has gotten very dramatic when saying this prayer because her youngest grandchild is now 10 and she has the insatiable desire for great-grandchildren. “Traditionally, Poles, following Roman Catholic teachings, have fasted on December 24th. The first meal of the day was a meatless supper.”(620) No one except for my grandmother follows that fast and we all eat before we get to her house for dinner. We would never tell her that. “Upon sitting down to their Christmas Eve supper, many Polish families observe the old tradition of sharing an oplatek between them. These small white wafers resemble Roman Catholic communion wafers. The father bids family member’s peace with one another and breaks the wafer. Everyone present eats a piece of the broken wafer.” (621) My grandfather used to do this when he was alive. Now it is the oldest male present. My grandfather went along with all of her Polish traditions even though he was 100% Greek. “In Poland the Christmas Eve supper has a special name. It is called Wigilia , which means ‘vigil’ in Polish….Traditional Christmas Eve foods include carp, pike, almond soup (made from almonds, raisins, rice, and milk), beet soup, cabbage, and other vegetable and grain dishes. Poppyseed cake, ginger cake and other pastries may be served for dessert, Polish folk tradition suggests setting a place for the Christ child as well as places for any absent family members. The unused place settings remind diners of the spiritual presence of these absent guests.” This is exactly the set up of every Christmas Eve I have ever had and it all comes straight from the Encyclopedia of Christmas and New Year’s Celebrations. My grandmother lives by her traditions. She follows the book. When we are with her, we must do the same. We celebrate Wigilia. We have to eat meatless with the exception of fish. The menu for Christmas always consists of fried fish, mushroom soup, pierogies, cabbage, and peas loaded with butter. For desert, varieties of cookies are available, as well as nut and poppy seed rolls, and a cake baked in celebration of Jesus’ birthday. Dishes will be brought by various family members however if they dare have meat, they will meet with the garbage and some dishes will fail to make it to the buffet because she “forgot” about them. What is lucky enough to make it to the display will automatically receive her distaste even though she never tries them. As adamant as she is about this meatless tradition, she does not even follow it. She never really has followed it. In 2003 I was helping her prepare for Christmas Eve dinner as I usually do. This time I started helping before the mushroom soup was made. I was preparing vegetables and cutting up celery for the soup and I noticed cans of beef broth on her counter. This was not beef flavored vegetable broth but plain old Swanson’s beef broth made from the boiling down of cow bones and ligaments. A substance that would most definitely not be considered vegetarian. I was of course curious as to why there where cans of beef broth on her counter. I decided to put those cans in the cabinet to get them out of the way. There would be no reason to use the beef broth tonight.

“Where did those cans go?” she asked

“I put them in the cabinet.” I answered

“Get those out back out. I need them for the soup.”

“Wait! What? What happened to the tradition of not eating meat on Christmas Eve? What happened to the celebration of Wigilia?”

“It is what my mother used."

“You were so adamant and set about these traditions and we always have to follow them. You were yelling at me for eating chicken and rice soup last year.”

“This is what I use.” She said.

That is all she said. She ignored every word I said. That is what her mother used and that is what she will use. She got the broth out of the cabinet and poured it into the pot. I do not know if she considered it to be meatless or not. I asked her and she did not answer. Her mother had passed before my time, so I do not have the liberty of asking her why she used the beef broth. My great-grandmother was also 100% Polish and very traditional. So why was this used against the Wigilia tradition that they stand by so firmly. I told some of my family members about what had ensued while preparing the dinner. They asked her the same questions that I asked her and they received the same answers that I received. It has never been a big deal to anyone because no one in my family other than my grandmother is strict about the Wigilia tradition and no one is a vegetarian so it did not really matter. It is just very curious. It is odd and it is something that bothers me. It desperately bothers me. Mostly because I cannot have an answer and that she ignores the questions entirely. She does not answer questions if she does not want to. I think she does not actually hear anything that she does not want to hear.

Christmas Eve is always an adventure. Everyone who joins us must have a serving of pirogues, fish, soup and peas if they don’t want to meet with her rage. “No thank you helping!” she always says. Whether they are six or sixty, she will stands over them with the dish of whatever they neglected to take and wait until they have finished the serving size of her choice. No one wants to disappoint her since she is so kind for inviting them to her house and no one wants to get into a fight over food. Christmas Eve is not the only time of year when someone gets interrogated for their food choices and how they choose to eat. It happens at every dinner, and she does not stop with her relatives. In her presence, one must finish their plate. No exceptions. There is no wasting food. All food groups must also be present on the plate and one of those items must be something she made. If someone has failed to meet those qualifications they will have to face her wrath, the wooden spoon.

After dinner, we all end up being coaxed into singing Christmas songs because she will start moping around the house complaining that we all hate her if we don't sing her 10 page booklet of carols.

Everyone has to follow her way and do what she says. It doesn’t matter how old, but gender makes a difference. She is sexist against women. She says that men are more important and should be working to support their family while a woman has to stay home and take care of her husband. A woman should always do as her husband asks. She is very lenient on her grandsons and very strict on her granddaughters because girls must learn from a young age how to be a good wife and learn how to cook and clean and take care of their husband and look beautiful for them when they come home from work. I believe in male and female equality. It was 2003 when my cousin Rachel was 11 years old and had a severe case of an anxiety disorder. My grandmother told my Aunt Sue who is Rachel’s loving mother “Rachel should come live with me for a year, I will teach her how to be a good wife in the future and teach her how to cook and clean for her husband and she will get rid of this foolish anxiety problem.” They did not accept the invite and my grandmother was not pleased at all. Rachel and her mother are not the only ones who have received this speech. Dee says what she wants and does what she wants regardless of what anyone thinks. If you dare think differently, there will be hell to pay. I have certainly been forced to give plenty of cash to the devil.

Every time she sees me, there is a problem. The biggest problem is my food allergies. Yes, I am allergic to dairy, eggs, gluten (a protein in all wheat products), and red meat. I cannot eat anything that she makes because I will get sick. I have learned the hard way. She does not know how to make food that I can eat. I do not blame her for that. Many people do not understand what I can or cannot eat. Most people are not accustomed to checking labels in everything. It is a whole new style for her and she does not like doing things in a new or different way. I have given her a few chances upon making my food because she takes it as her sole responsibility to feed every mouth that walks in her door. If someone walks in her front door her first questions is “Are you hungry?” If they answer no, she says “I will make something for you.” She believes that my food allergies are ridiculous and all in my head. She has admitted to purposely adding things that I am allergic to because she thought that I was pretending, and if I did not know that one of my allergens were present, then I would not get sick. I was soon puking in the bathroom after I had eaten her chicken that she swore was safe for me to eat. Yet she still does not believe me. She does not believe anyone could be allergic to food.

“You are just stupid. You can be allergic. In my day we didn’t have such foolish people making up such crap. You just hate me don’t you? You just hate me and won’t eat my food.” She says these words on a routine basis.

She says if I drank apple cider vinegar and honey just as she does, I would be fine. She is always right. Every Christmas, she gives people food as part of their present. I always get delicious milk chocolate which I am allergic too. I am eighteen now and I found out about my food allergies when I was ten. Here is another issue; I get interrogated because I cannot eat certain foods however she cannot eat potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers because they cause her arthritis to flare up. I have asked her about this many times. I do not receive an answer. Food allergies are all in one’s mind. She can be allergic to certain foods but no one else can. She is always right. She is my grandmother and she always knows best.

We are very different people. I am always wrong. I am always defacing my body with my piercings, tattoos, hair dye, and nail polish. I am ruining the gift that God gave me. I never hear the end of how disrespectful and ungrateful I am being and how I will never get married because no man will want a woman with holes in her ears. I do not listen. I am also foolish for being in college because I should be looking for a man to take care of instead of being in school. Every time I get a boyfriend, she gets so excited over the prospect of receiving great-grandchildren (much to my parent’s distaste). Every time we break up, she says, “Maybe you two would have gotten married and given me great-grand babies if you didn’t ruin your face with holes.” No one I have gone out with has ever officially met her. I do not expect her to approve of my piercings. I just want her to understand that my sole purpose in life is not to get married, pop out some kids, and be June Cleaver. I am eighteen. I am not ready to get married and have kids. I am enjoying my life. I have just always felt that she has never sought interest in who I am, but only how she can mold me.

My grandmother and I have never gotten along. Even when I was 4 years old, I was enough to drive St. Peter to swear, and I do not know why. I just cannot please her. I have given up on that. I just wish I could talk to her. I mean a real conversation with her actually listening to what I have to say. I used to live with her for a year. I have been to her house at least one night a week from the time I was born until now since I am in college. I do not think that we have ever shared an actual one on one, in depth conversation where she is actually listening to what I have to say. We only argue about everything, because we both get so fed up with each other. There has always been a sheet of tension between us. It has built up over 18 years has now it has turned into the Berlin Wall. I hope it can be demolished just the same. Just re1cently she has been diagnosed with colon cancer and the outlook is bleak. I have this intense fear that she is going to die with out our conflict ever being resolved. I know she wants break down the tension between us just as much as I do. She has told me that she despises the uneasiness that has taken root between us. She wants us to be close just as her and her grandmother were.

The problem is that every time we try to throw away our grudges and make peace; a problem arises in form of my food allergies, her disliking for my mother, or our differences in the ideas about a woman's role. She does not understand the reality of my allergies and thus she gets insulted when I can not eat her cooking and our tension in reinstated. I get insulted when she says my mother is not good enough for her son, and I have to stand up for my mom and thus we again start to argue. She will bring up that I should be looking for a man to take care of and I say I will do what I want, and once again we are back in the same old cycle. One of those 3 issues always reinstate our discordance.

I will stop talking to her because I do not want to fight with her but that tension is still there. I stop listening. I tune her out because I think she is doing the same to me, and I really hate what she has to say sometimes. I will not give in because I do not see that as an option. I will not try to answer her in a polite manner because I will get yelled at for interrupting or she will raise her volume so it exceeds mine. So I shut up. It seems impossible but I want to get along with her. I want to talk to her. I want to tell her everything. I want to let her know how much she has hurt me. I also want to let her know how much I love her.

I really do love her. I help her with all of her baking, I decorate her house for the holidays, I mow her lawn, and I help her babysit my cousins when my aunt is at work. I love her and I feel that I have to help her out. The saddest part is that I do not know why I love her. Sometimes I do not see any reason to love her but I still do. I just hope that we can get rid of all the bitterness and tension between us before she dies. I love her. She is my grandmother.






Gulevich, Tanya. "Poland, Christmas in." Encyclopedia of Christmas and New Year's
Celebrations. 2nd Edition. Helene Henderson. Detroit, Michigan: Omnigraphs,
2003. 620-623.