Grandma Toby was enormously influential to me. She would fly me out from Colorado for the summer to visit her back east for three or four weeks every year like clockwork. Lazy summers at the neighborhood pool, the shopping mall, the beauty parlor, and reading on the summer porch before a leisurely afternoon nap. “Think of it as a spa,” Grandma used to tell me. We’d go to the library once a week and pick out books, hers in a faded red tote bag with “Grandma” stamped on it in white letters. Neighborhood boys and I developed crushes on each other and I baked myself at the pool to a fine patina. I returned to my home in Colorado relaxed, infused with that glow that comes from no responsibilities and condoned laziness.
Grandma gave me many gifts, and sometimes I think the most important one was routine. My place at the breakfast table for example; a floral placement set with an egg, a small gold tiffany grandfather clock (that never worked, no matter how many times the clockmaker came by) and portraits of Grandma and Grandpa in the foreground. The portraits were painted in Paris while Grandpa was stationed at the French embassy. Grandma looks coolly elegant, pearls around her neck accentuating the curve of her shoulders, the point where her dress met primly in the center. She is stunning, movie star beautiful. She told me the painter made her look more beautiful, took some weight off—this is typical, even in her eighties she was concerned with her weight. Plus I believe that he’d want to paint her in the most flattering light; she always had a way of making people want to do things for her. Still, when at a restaurant or anywhere out in public she turned heads—silver grey black hair upswept weekly by Aspa, her Greek hairdresser, Chanel Coco Red lips, and a cheerful courtly manner that assumed everything was one big lark. As an adult I see the wisdom in this—treat people as if you are someone used to being served, and as someone who you are already on familiar terms with, and likely you will be shortly.