Lil

I realized this afternoon that today used to be my grandmother's birthday. She passed away 15 years ago at age 90, and I probably haven't thought of her as often as I should have in the years since, but I saw "January 18" on something, and she just popped into my head.

I lost my other three grandparents in the space of about two and a half years; I was not quite six when my father's father died in 1969, and then my mother's parents died in 1970 and 1972, so my dad's mother was the only grandparent I had in my life for most of my life, and she was a significant presence in that respect.

She was born in the Bronx in 1906 to Italian immigrants, one of 14 children. I believe there were two sets of twins in there, and a couple of her siblings didn't made it to adulthood, childhood illness being somewhat more common a century ago.

She never learned to drive, so we had that in common. I was the oldest grandchild, and though she never said so, I always kind of felt like I was her favorite. When I was a kid, she used to take me on the bus with her to go shopping in downtown Providence ("downcity," as Rhode Islanders still say). You could say that she's a big part of the reason I like to shop so much.

Her name was Adeline, but somewhere along the way she acquired the nickname Lil. I was never sure of the reason for that. It might have had something to do with one of her siblings; several of them had one given name but were known by different names.

Lil was fiercely loyal to her family, but there was, to me, always a sadness about her. She never got over losing her husband. She didn't live to see me get married, but she met the Mrs. several times.

In one other bit of family trivia, her husband's birthday was the day after hers. She used to tell him, "I get the cake and you get what's left over."