Underestimating MiMaMa

I only ever knew one grandparent. My mother’s mother. The other three grandparents had been long gone by the time I was born. My mother’s mother died at eighty-nine outliving her daughter by almost twenty years. 

My grandmother’s name was fluid. Born Jane Lee McDonald, she found that name a bit dull so she started calling herself Jean Marie. Distant relatives called her Jenny and that name appeared in one US Census. My sister, brother and I called her MiMaMa. 

MiMaMa wasn’t the warmest of women or the most likable. I support this argument with her favorite quote about herself: “If you didn’t like me, there was something wrong with you.”

Actually, some of her favorite quotes provide insight into her personality.

I once asked her why she appeared to like my sister more than my brother or me. Her answer? “I’ve known her longer.”

She did, however, try to be supportive - in her own way. Apparently, I was not the most attractive baby in the family let alone in the population at large. She told me, “I didn’t care what people said. I used to put you in your coach and walk you down the street just as if I were proud of you.”

Despite my ungainly appearance, apparently she believed I’d be able to catch a man which was critical in her eyes. “Grab a boy you like and hold onto him.” Was I off to my first job? No. College? No. First grade. Yep. No offense to the boys in my first grade class but none of them had yet proven they were marriage material. Besides, I wanted to wait a few decades before deciding if married life was for me.

But Mimama was of an era when marriage was a woman’s main goal. Marriage worked for her. She spoke from the perspective of one who had wed her great love. 

I don’t know at what age she met John Bennis, but she loved him for her entire life. He died at twenty-nine. Distant relatives told me that she threw herself in the grave at his funeral. I‘m not sure I buy that story but I can’t rule it out. She loved her husband dearly. Her only comfort was believing she would see him again in heaven. 

Mimama married a second time but she and her new husband made an agreement that they would each reunite with their deceased spouses after death. She continued to look forward to seeing John again, but she worried. Sixty years after his death, she pulled herself out of her wheelchair so I could see her full image. She was close to tears. “What will he want with an old woman like me?

I am sure my siblings and I underestimated both the painful situation she found herself in before she was thirty and the resourcefulness with which she responded.

Her life could not have been easy. Her parents immigrated from Ireland and settled in Philadelphia. I know they had three daughters of which she was the youngest, They might have had two sons. They were only names to me. Those boys might have been from another generation. When I return to genealogical research, I can figure that out. 

I don’t know what her father did for a living but I do know he walked over a train trestle to get there and that every payday he would bring her a nickel. The story is that one night returning from work he was hit by an unexpected train that crossed the trestle and killed him. He had her nickel in his pocket.

MiMaMa lost the most important man in her life three times. Her father when she was five, the love of her life in her late twenties and the husband who offered financial security in her early forties. Each time she had to bounce back. And, she did. 

I have photos of her opening a store in the Germantown section of Philadelphia sometime around 1922. Bennis’s Baby Clothes. She made and sold clothing for kids. I can’t imagine it was easy for a widow with two children starting a business in the 1920s. I don’t believe I could do it in today's world.

She married again around 1930 to a widower with six children and had another daughter. To hear her tell it, things remained comfortable throughout the Great Depression but while the country and the world recovered, her new family’s prospects were dimming. Her husband ran an ice company that sold to the retail market. Have you heard about refrigerators? The American public had. Her husband’s business failed and shortly thereafter he died. MiMaMa was back on her own. 

For a while, she and her two other daughters bunked with my newlywed parents, married three years with two babies according to the 1940 US Census. I am not sure how long that arrangement lasted but by the time I came along, she was living in a nearby apartment and teaching sewing to underprivileged teen-aged girls. I think her job was at a residence run by nuns. All I recall the adults talking about was the highly polished floors. It was on one of those shiny surfaces that she slipped and fell breaking her hip. She couldn’t have been much more than sixty when she found herself confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life which would be thirty years. Virtually all the time I knew her.

Again, something about her life I didn’t appreciate: what it must have been like for an independent woman who never quit in the face of multiple setbacks to become unable to do for herself,

I would go to see her often - not out of love but out of a sense of obligation. During most of those visits, she told me tales from her generation. I listened and learned but sadly I never wrote down what she told me. My memories are spotty, vague and confused.

If I had to pick a few words to describe MiMaMa, I would choose feisty, indomitable and, maybe, pushy. I never understood why my mother had a small wedding but chose to have her wedding portraits done by Bachrach. There are several shots of my mother and one of my father. Naturally. And, not so naturally, in my opinion, one of MiMaMa. I wasn’t surprised. I can picture her taking the best room when necessity drove her to move into my parents’ house.

Before she became mostly home bound, MiMaMa would return from funerals lamenting that there would be no one left to come to hers. I don’t recall much about her service except that she got a good crowd. I guess a lot of people liked her. 

There were many times I didn’t like MiMaMa. Maybe there was something wrong with me.

NOTE: My brother-in-law once told me that the women in my family were crazy. And he hadn’t even met the WAC turned underwear model or anyone on my father’s side - which rumor had it included a gangster’s moll. I like to think what he thought was true - starting with MiMaMa.

© 2023 Jane Kelly

What a Nice Man

My father was a very nice man. Not that he couldn't get angry. He could. Rarely, but he could. I can think of two times in the twenty-five years I knew him. But I think it is better to record a few stories that demonstrate how kind he could be.

My father worked for the same insurance company for over forty years. He worked his way up from the mailroom to Executive Vice President. I don't know if he actually started in the mail room or whether he used a popular cliche of the day to illustrate the progress he made. Either way, he moved up through the ranks.

I got to see him in action at work when I had a summer job in the Loan Department. He had a large office that sat off an open area filled with desks for clerical and secretarial staff. He didn't have to walk through that space because his office had a back door that opened to a small public lobby with an elevator and stairs.

I was rarely in his office but I was there one day when the back door opened and a young woman strode across his office to access the big clerical area.

"How ya doin', Mr. Kelly?" She was cheerful to the point of being jolly.

He replied with an equally cordial greeting as she passed in front of his desk.

I asked him why he didn't tell her it was a private office. He didn't think it really mattered. She only came through twice a day, was always pleasant, and never interrupted him. "If it becomes a problem, I'll suggest she use the other door." My opinion? He didn't want to embarrass her but, even more so, I imagine he got a kick out of the situation. He probably looked forward to her daily visits.

That was a nice man.

I found what might be his kindest action through the 1940 census. He never mentioned it.

At the time of the census, my parents had been married for three years and had two children. I wasn't one of them. I wouldn't be born for quite a while and by then they would be living in a house they owned. In 1940, I think they were still renting. I don’t have the exact address yet but I am fairly sure it had no more than four bedrooms. The people named as living in the house were listed based on their relationship to my father (head of household): my mother (wife), my sister (daughter aged 1), my brother (son aged 0), my grandmother (mother-in-law), my mother's sister (sister-in-law), my mother's half-sister (sister-in-law). I suspect my father was the only one working.

My grandmother's family had flourished during the Depression but as the 1930s came to an end, she found herself a widow for the second time. I don't know the details, but I recall my grandmother saying that the family made it through the Depression just fine, but then things took a downturn financially even before her husband died. (Her second husband owned an ice company. Have you heard of refrigerators?) I imagine that is how she and her other two daughters ended up living with a couple that were pretty close to newlyweds. 

That is a nice man.

After he died, my father was audited by the IRS. It was routine because the percentage of his income he gave to charity exceeded the standard maximum. I had to go through all his records and discovered he had missed some deductions. The IRS owed him. I’m still waiting For the money.

That's a nice man.

I could cite instances of his generosity on a personal level but let me just say there were many. He was a very nice man.

My father passed away on May 11, 1974 but his spirit had died almost three years earlier when my mother passed away. Watching his granddaughter while my sister worked gave his life some structure. Most days he walked the two-year-old to a near-by pub-like restaurant for lunch where they got to know the regular crowd. After my father died, my sister took her daughter there for lunch. All the patrons at the bar greeted Kelly warmly. They said they missed my father. They said he was a very nice man.

Yes, he was.

© 2023 Jane Kelly