My First Steps with Nannie

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my first childhood memories come from Moulton Street where Nannie and Mamie lived and I frequently visited. The first interactions I recall from Moulton St. began in the 1950s and continued until the house's demolition in the mid 1960s. Time is an odd illusion. The hours, months, years I spent in or around Moulton St. seem far more extensive than the actual count.

In the blooming days of the home, evening meals had been served by the servants around a huge mahogany table in the vast dining room. The esteemed china and glassware may have been used regularly, but I hardly think that to be true since much of it remains in tact today. By the time I arrived on the scene, Nannie and I ate alone at a blue enamel-topped metal table in the out-dated kitchen. No one served us, though Mary Chilton faithfully worked for Nannie during the day. Such a kind and gentle woman, Mary was, but Nannie occasionally treated her with little respect. My countenance deflated with each of my grandmother’s barbed words and belittling chides, not toward me, but toward Mary who ducked her head and cowered away like a scolded dog. I, too, ducked away under the unpleasantness, more embarrassed perhaps than Mary Chilton.

Nevertheless, in my innocence, I gave my grandmother the latitude and respect she needed to hold court. She frequently and proudly reminisced with stories of old that prompted her faraway pleasant trance and the approving nods from ancestral portraits in validation of her recollections. I listened half-heartedly to the familiar refrain that echoed Nannie’s instruction on how to keep the southern belles chiming the chorus of old. Usually, when she could hold my attention or stillness no longer, I looked toward the kitchen where my favorite Danish Wedding Cookies awaited and on cue provided a timely exit from the one-way conversation.