In our mind's eye she is forever young

Grammy, a magical word and a magical teller of tales of our childhood. She lived 93 years. Today is her birthday. She would have been 108 years old. Photos (above and below) scanned from one of the snail blogs -- magnetic albums of Kodak prints with Letraset headlines and text -- of our salad days.

Grammy -- our magnificently contrarian Finnish-American grandmother, Julia Kock Loddy, JuJu to her great grandchildren -- was a shining star in the family constellation of our childhood. Today, September 8, is her birthday. 1899 was the year. In our mind's eye she is forever young, a force of nature inspiring us to be all that we can be. A voracious reader and moviegoer who seemed to conflate T.E. Lawrence with Peter O'Toole -- she devoured The Seven Pillars of Wisdom even as she took us young girls to see "Lawrence of Arabia" early and often when it was still playing in Cinemascope at the Gary Theater in Boston.

Grammy's baby girl, our own precious Mummy. She outlived her mother by little more than a year, taken down by something we never would have dreamed of, Lou Gehrig's disease.

We were the apple of Grammy's eye -- Sissikins -- until we hit puberty, and then all bets were off. In our early teen years in Exeter, New Hampshire, her wit and wisdom outshone our own whenever gentleman callers from Phillips Exeter came a courting:

How can I speak of her virtues?
I don't know where to begin.
She's clever, she's smart, she reads music,
She doesn't smoke or drink gin.
(Like I do)

Bride of the hour Susan, Mummy and Sissy in the day. Girls just wanna. We don't care what anyone says. Being young and pretty is wicked fun.

Herewith a republication of our homage two years back to the woman whose Finnish gloom and gypsy joi de vivre are surely the soul of our wit:

September 8. Grammy's birthday.  Julia Kock Loddy, the child of John and Aurora Kock, Finnish emigrants who settled on a farm in Lunenburg, Massachusetts -- near the Finnish "ghetto" of Fitchburg -- around the turn of the (20th) century. Shades of Bronson Alcott, with lots of leftist utopianism in the air. Julia was the golden girl, the adored but cloistered sister -- Alice James, sister to Henry and William comes to mind: "In our family group girls scarcely seem to have had a chance" -- amidst a family constellation of two high-achieving brothers. Also one other brother that died as a child and broke the mother's heart. Grammy, the greatest teller of tales we ever knew, told of her family's watching the dead brother's soul ascend to Heaven. She also recounted a horrifying tale of her father's shooting the family dog for getting pregnant one more time (the woman made me do it, Lord?).  Here must lie the deepest roots of our life-long feminism.

Julia would have been 105 today had she lived, but she was more than ready to go at 92, stuck in an old-folks' home, when she left this vale of tears.  Eyesight gone, she could no longer read the great works that had sustained her lively mind when she lived for many years in her own little room upstairs at our parents' home.  She was the one who took us grandchildren to the widescreen theater in Boston umpteen times to see "Lawrence of Arabia."  She had read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and everything ever written by or about T.E. Lawrence. Oh, wouldn't we love to tap that recalcitrant all-about-oil mind today.

In our high school hussy days -- our sis and ourselves -- as townie gals in Exeter, New Hampshire, entertaining the Phillips Academy boys who lit up our lives, it was always Grammy -- later known via her first grandchild, Matthew's, epithet as JuJu -- who engaged the minds of those brilliant young future Masters of the Universe.

Julia had been a "child bride," arrange-married to a dashing Estonian officer of the Tsar's army -- the mysterious Hubby of our childhood -- as an eighteen-year-old.  Mary, the precious child who later became our own dear mother, was born the next year.  At some point in there, Grammy fled with infant Mary back home to her mother, who had long since returned to Finland. A year or two later Grammy returned stateside, and there's some faint memory of her having chosen, years later, to fund her daughter's college education vs. taking another trip back to Finland to see her mother one last time. Don't we wish we had paid more attention to her oft-repeated stories?  So intense, so heartbreaking, so American.

Grammy.

Comments

[pam]

Happy Birthday, Grammy.

She's still a shining star, looking over your shoulder. I'm sure she always will be; you're lucky to have her.

[goomp]

Childhood memories are with us always. The lucky ones such as yourself have ones to cherish.

[Teresa]

Ah - Goomp is right of course. Both of my grandmothers lived to age 99, both passed away in the early 1980's. I remember seeing my father's mother 2 times (although I know she came to visit when I was 2 years old, I don't remember that one). My mother's mother I saw 3 times a year (there abouts) but it was such a large family with so many grandchildren, I never spent much time with her.

Sounds like you had a chance to really get to know your grandma - that's a wonderful thing.

[Laura Lee Donoho]

This post is rich in everything important. Grandmothers, beautiful girls, great movies. I was born on the same day as my grandmother's grandmother, Polly Miranda Mabry Stiles. That gives me a greater connection to her I think somehow. I know that she had a great deal of native American "Cherokee" blood because she lived until the photographic era. It's true, being young and pretty is wicked fun. But sometimes it's somewhat daunting.

[Gayle Miller]

How very fortunate to have the grandmother that you had, and the memories that were built through the years with her. She sounds like she was a remarkable and most courageous woman.

I never knew my maternal grandmother although by reputation and through the various tales told by her surviving children, I came to "know" her and love her in a very special way. She died when my own mother was 14 years old, in the way of my mother's family, at age 58 - as did most of my aunts and uncles and my own mother. She was a strong woman who, with my grandfather (who preceded her in death by 7 years), managed to raise her 9 living children to independence (my mother was the youngest and graduated from high school right after her mother's death), and my grandparents were even resourceful enough to provide my mother's eldest brother with a full college education.

Then I look at some of the namby-pamby, whiney characters that seem to abound in public life today and I miss the strength, courage and SPINE of your grandmother AND mine. Different breed entirely.