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April 18, 2006

Nana

Easter, 2006

I never really knew my great grandmother Nana, though I know that I met her a few times before her death, when I was about five. Most of my memories of her are ripped from photographs�her face as she held me shortly after my birth, a family snapshot or two when my uncles were children. I was talking to my parents about this last night over a drink when suddenly it occurred to me that there was one more memory. This one involved no faces�it was all about place.

"Was there an elevated railroad somewhere?" I asked? Yes, there was. She lived near Lefferts Boulevard.

"I remember a tenement staircase, perhaps not lit very well." Yes, she lived in an apartment building there.

"There were black and white tiles on the floor." Yes, that was the kitchen.

I went on to remember colors and the way light filtered in through a window. I recalled the placement of a photo frame or two. When I was done, I asked my parents how old I must have been. They could not recollect ever taking me there (we are guessing that my grandmother took me on her own at some point), but surmised that I had probably only been two or three.

How strange it is that memories can feel so strong, even when you are not intimately connected to the subject. That image of an apartment off Lefferts Boulevard has stayed with me for years. It was one of my first concepts of what an apartment looked like. Mostly, however, I have come to equate Nana with that space. When people speak about her, I see sun hitting black and white kitchen tile or the light filtering through the train trestle outside. I kind of like things that way, remembering a living, breathing city. It makes photographs feel quite one-dimensional.

Posted by callalillie at April 18, 2006 7:05 AM | Introspect