April 9

The day before Nanoo’s funeral, I went to her house and picked through her jewelry. I felt close to her and also so far away; she would never let me do this if she were here. I picked out a gold chain with a round braided emblem at the end. I slipped it in my pocket and left. 

The next day I wore the necklace to her funeral over a bright orange dress. It was January.

“How cheerful,” my cousin Cindy noted about my dress.

“Nanoo was a cheerful person,” I said wistfully.

I stood at the pulpit of the church where our family grew up and spoke about her kindness, her environmentalism, and her insatiable love. 

After the funeral, my husband and I drove to a pretty blue house on the other side of town just to look. When we pulled in the driveway, a black cat trotted across the lawn and sat staring from the woods. It was warm and sunny outside. This house felt like home.

“I think Nanoo would like it here,” I told David. “It’s quiet, and there are so many birds.” He thought so, too, and we bought the house. 

—

Nanoo was twenty-one years old and a new mother at home while my grandfather fought overseas during World War II. She used to tell me how, at a certain time at night, every house, business, and building had to shut off their lights so the “enemy” couldn’t see the East Coast shoreline. At Christmastime, she cut a star shape from a cardboard box and wrapped it in silver cigarette papers. Years later, she poked a small hole in the middle of the star and strung her new electric tree bulb through to make it shine. 

I have the star now. And, still, the gold necklace, even though it broke at the grocery store when I wrestled my bags and my toddler. I have her plates, her college pennant, her recipe book, her weird clock, and her watch. I have her picture on my mantle, but I do not have her. 

Recently, I found a book of poems she wrote as an early mother. For all of the stories she told about resilience and innovation during the war, her poetry was fearful and fragile. It was almost as if she put her thoughts into poems to make them less scary. And yet, years later, she carefully typed out each poem and pasted them into a scrapbook. She was scared, but she was never afraid to share her pain. 

Even in this strange isolation, I will never come close to experiencing what Nanoo felt almost 80 years ago. I fear for my parents, my children, and my community, but I do not fear the losses that she faced. In the midst of this, though, I feel connected to her. She would be so resilient and creative and calm. 

Early in self-quarantine, I took out the weird clock and looked it over. The molded plastic letters read “Bath” with a small clock face nestled in the “B”. It’s beige and cracked and ugly, but also so uniquely her. Carefully, I removed some old tape, wiped clean the clock face, and put in a fresh battery. Ticking, I hung it on the wall in my bathroom. A few days later I came in to find it stopped, the second hand tangled in the minute’s arm. I gently shook them loose, reset the time, and replaced it on the wall. “Yes,” I thought. I can keep this going.