I don't remember much about my gran. That would be my dad's mum. Both my mother's mum, and my father's dad, died well before I was born.
Dad never knew his father, a Polish immigrant named Stanislaw. Stanislaw died in a boiler explosion just a few months before dad was born, in the summer of 1924. Gran and her husband came over on a boat from Poland, landing at Ellis Island, and then somehow ending up in a little rural town in the foothills west of Albany, NY, labouring on a dirt farm. How they made their way to the little city dad grew up in, is anybody's guess, though there was a strong Polish-Ukranian presence in that place.
Gran was faced with raising seven children alone--while she was still pregnant with dad. My grandmother, Bertha, by the way, was totally deaf, and could not speak.
It wasn't easy on any of the family, growing up in a small industrial city, through the late twenties, into the Great Depression, and then, there was the Second World War.
Dad was sent to Catholic School, which was not a nice place for the poor, youngest son of a deaf-mute widow. I particularly remember one story, how in the early 1930's, his mum had no money to spare for a school tie, and sent him to school without one. The nun, rather than show compassion for a poor child, made my dad take a pair of scissors, and cut out a paper tie, which she then made him stand in front of the class and pin on his shirt, before sending him home with a note, telling his mum that he was not to return to school without a proper tie.
It must have been quite hard on both dad and his mum, for dad to recall it so vividly to me, back when I was in my teens, in the mid-70's.
But, somehow, his mum managed to provide for her family. I never knew how, though dad intimated that gran took in washing and did odds and ends for the neighbours. And of course his older brothers--he had three sisters and three brothers--helped as they could. I recall dad telling how, in the Depression, he and his brothers used to pick up spilled coal from alongside the rail tracks, for their home, and scrap metal to sell. Some of you possibly may have seen that film, "The Christmas Story," where little Robbie wanted a Red Ryder BB rifle more than anything? That was no fiction. Most boys in the late 30's and early 40's wanted that BB rifle...including dad. He dreamed of that gun. Then, Christmas day dawn. Dad woke and rushed into the living room, looked under the tree....no gun. Just like the boy in the film, dad was crushed. Crying, he asked his mum why Santa didn't bring him his gun. And, smiling, his mum pointed behind the sofa. There, on the floor behind the sofa, wrapped in colourful paper and a bow: A Red Ryder BB gun.
Dad told me this story one Christmas, when I was about 12, I think, Christmas of 1971, long before the film was ever made...so I guess "Robbie's" story, wasn't so fictional, after all.
I barely remember gran. Mum was very fond of her,though. Dad's family managed a swimming pool and roller skating rink at an amusement park in our village..which was later torn down shortly before I was born, to make way for the Mid-City Shopping Center . Sadly, gran's kids sort of ignored her. Dad was, I'm quite ashamed to say, embarrassed by his mum. But then, mum's epilepsy and my having DCD embarrassed him. Image was everything to dad, and I'm afraid some members of his family didn't quite meet up with his ideals. Dad didn't often like to talk about gran, and I probably learned more about her through mum, than dad.
My only real memory of gran, was of her holding me tenderly sitting on an arm chair...I think I was only just three at the time--why do I remember that? Not sure, but I do. Mum said gran loved me very much. And you know what? I believed her.
You know, the thing I remember most about gran? Her smile. Gran had a smile that would outshine the sun. I've a photo of her, with such a beaming, lovely smile...sometimes I just look at it, and think, "what a lucky woman, to have been so very happy in the final years of a long, hard life."
Mum used to joke, that she smiled like that, 'cos she never had to listen to her kids whinge and moan. 
