2014 - Profile of Venatia

A profile piece I wrote as part of my coursework at SUNY New Paltz

BOLTOND LANDING, N.Y. - I wake up. I can tell it’s late because I can hear her yelling from downstairs. It takes a lot to make her yell. I crawl out of the bottom slot of the bunk bed I sleep in when I stay with her at Lake George for the summer. I hear the rubber mattress protector groan as I move.

Outside my bedroom window I see the mostly elderly members of our private association, Rainbow Beach go about their business; they’re mowing their lawn, walking down the gravel road to the beach, or heading out for groceries. Our neighbor, a very old looking man with a large family, pulls out of his driveway in his lime green golf cart. Bob. I make my bed, neat as a pin, the way she expects. As I creep down the stairs I am greeted by Grandma, fully dressed. She looks like she’s been awake for hours.

Venatia Halkenhauser. My grandmother, my mother’s mother. Her petit frame doesn’t put her past five feet tall from the top of her short curled hair, to the tips of her pigeon- toed feet. For a woman nearing 80, it isn’t obvious as she still dyes her hair a dark coppery tan—the same color as her skin—and curls it to frame the strong Greek features that make up her face; it would be white otherwise. She also wears make up—that bright fuchsia lipstick that looks like it was bought at the dollar store in the little girl section. But it looks perfect on her. Years have engraved wrinkles on her face; she wears them with pride. Behind her ears and connected to her head by magnets are the Cochlear Implants that allow her to hear.

Her smile lifts my spirit as her rich, dark brown eyes peer at me over her bifocals and she bears her slightly yellowing teeth. There is a warmth one can recognize from just one glance. The bruises and scars on her arms and legs are excellent story starters—and boy can she talk!

She was born as an identical twin to her sister, Gloria but right off the bat she received less oxygen during prenatal development which caused her to lose sight in one eye before she was even born. To this day she only sees shadows and silhouettes out of her left eye.

Growing up, her parents owned a tailor shop in New York City. Being first generation immigrants from Greece, they only spoke Greek. When she was three years old her mother became seriously ill and passed away. Her father married his late wife’s sister. “She used to make us bathe her,” Venatia recalls, “She wasn’t at all nice to us.” It all sounds very Cinderella to me. A little further into her childhood, the family tailor shop burned down and they got help from a local Methodist church. When she was a teenager, her father died of a heart attack and her kid brother was adopted by a couple who owned a local news stand. Her older sister stole money from the family and ran away, and her twin, Gloria, “went crazy!”

Venatia finished her early schooling at an all black school because she was Greek and the community continuously mistook her race and did not know where to place her. The

school was also English speaking so she picked up the language quickly. She notes that she is left-handed as well, “which wasn’t allowed.”

Nowadays a matter as small as the left-handed inconveniences wouldn’t even catch her attention.

“Good morning,” she asserts, “or should I say, good afternoon!” It’s only 10:30 a.m. but to her, half of the day has passed. “Can I make you something to eat?” She hurries into the kitchen and bustles around for what seems like 30 seconds before a toasted bagel with cream cheese and raspberry jelly appears in front of me at the dining room table.

She’s always been this way—it’s what she knows. Always keeping busy. Always wanting to help people, even when they don’t need, or want it. We sit down to eat. She asks me what my plans are for the day. I tell her beach and then work. To continue the conversation I ask her what kind of jobs she worked in her past.

Her first job, she said, was running a pressing machine. Other jobs that followed included being a secretary at a greeting card shop, an aid for handicapped children, and a Met Life insurance claimer. It was during her time at Met Life that she met and married her husband, George.

George, my grandpa, was a burly, kindhearted man. Once they were married, he worked and became the provider while Grandma played the traditional roll of stay-at-home wife raising the children. Because she likes to keep busy but did not have to work, she spent a lot of time volunteering.

Her three children were all in high school when George suffered his first of many heart attacks and had a triple bypass. He was 43 at the time and Venatia went back to school and completed a nursing degree, which she says, “was a dream come true.”

I was seated at the pink, marble counter in my mother’s kitchen when I learned about Grandma’s first week on the job. Mom scoffed and said it seemed like only two days in she came home with a broken nose from a mentally challenged patient waving his arms aggressively. And what seemed like the day after that she twisted her knee moving an obese patient onto a hospital bed.

This ended her nursing career.

The twist was bad enough that hospital admin sent her for tests that inject die into the knee to see and locate soft tissue damage. According to my mom, this was done by a rookie intern that preformed the task incorrectly, and the knee became infected. The pain became so unbearable that they took her in for emergency surgery.

The operation went wrong as well and she was given two conflicting drugs that reacted effectively shutting her kidneys down. For ten days her care providers did not know the extent of the damage. She was close to death before they finally decided to do a blood

test where they discovered complete kidney failure. She was put on dialysis and slowly her kidneys came back but the process left her with nerve damage to her ears from ordinary body poisons that kidneys normally filter out; almost all of her hearing was lost.

The infection was cleared but it left a hole in her kneecap where she was supposed to get a bone graft.

A second surgery was decided against.

The money from the malpractice lawsuit put her in a big house in Florida and to this day she signs papers to get disability checks as she was no longer allowed to work after the incident.

She now has nerve damage in that knee that causes severe soreness to the touch and sometimes, unexpected crippling pain. Over time her hearing diminished until it was gone and she was forced to get old-fashioned hearing aids.

I look at her new Cochlear Implants while I eat. I watch her sweep the kitchen and wash the dishes. Funny, I remember her going through these motions just before she went to bed last night.

She’s a machine.

I go back upstairs to get dressed. I’ve got about three hours to spend at the beach before I have to get ready for work. When I get back down, in my swimsuit and cover-up, she is in her lazy-boy chair on the porch. It’s about 20 years old but it comforts her. I think it reminds her of Pop. The faded blue corduroy fabric is worn on the arms where she rubs tenderly for a moment before reaching down to push the button on the side that opens the footrest. She opens her book. The light streams through the screened windows right onto her. I study the dust particles floating in the beam for a moment. Though for the most part she likes to keep on her feet and busy, she can sit there for hours.

When she finds the page where she left off her lips start to move slightly as she relaxes into the story. She could probably write one of these romance novels by now—it’s always the same drama-filled love story. It makes me smile every time she tells me, “I think you would like this one, Emily.”

She’s still sitting in this same spot when I return to the cabin, soaking wet with a towel around me after my afternoon at the association’s private beach that’s about a 10-minute walk away. It wasn’t particularly sunny today and the water was cold and wavy; but I take advantage of my time here. I am lucky to be here. To get this time with her. The only difference I notice when I open the screen door and glance at Grandma is that now she’s got a banana and some crackers on a folded paper towel resting on her lap—her lunch. “How was the beach?” she asks. We chat for a few minutes about the weather and who was down there and the babysitting job I’ve obtained for the coming weekend. I head upstairs and get changed for work.

In my room I close the blinds. One time Grandma told me that an “older gentleman” from our association told her that my cousins and I could be seen changing from the street. Now I never forget to close them. I put on long, dark jeans, and a lacy tank top. Add some jewelry. Makeup. Finally, I try to make my wet, stringy, tangled hair look presentable by pulling it back into a loose bun and adding some sparkly clips. A pair of silver sandals completes my look. I straighten up and study myself in the mirror. I look like her. A little. There is no mistaking the clear Greek facial features I have inherited from her. Or the deep tan that lasts way into winter after everyone else’s has faded. I smile, proud.

When I come down Grandma looks up at me and closes her book. It takes her a few minutes to get out of the chair. I want to help her. I always do, but she won’t accept it. Her independence is undeniable. She scoots herself to the edge of the cushion lowering her in-turned feet to the ground. She reaches down to the side button and pushes it while forcing the footrest back into the chair with the little strength she has in her legs. Her face is strained but she tries to mask it. The first motion towards standing up is useless and she has to rest a moment. “It’s these damn hips!” she tosses out as she goes for her second attempt.

Once she’s up and walking we make our way to the door as slow as injured turtles, down the path, and into her car. Her old Lincoln Town Car. It’s huge and drives more like a large boat. It also smells like the rodents that probably take up residence under the hood during the winter when the car goes unused for months while Grandma is in Florida.

Since she was about 50 or so, she and my grandfather would travel back and forth to Florida for half of the year. Her house in Florida is much larger then her cabin here, even though we have expanded it many times to accommodate for our growing family.

In Florida she also has her own screened in pool and private garden where she grows everything from melons to banana trees. I think she likes it better down there than up north now that she is alone. There is more for her to do to keep busy there and she has a large community of friends. They have activities planned for every day of the week—her favorite is Tuesdays when they gather to eat at Toojay’s and play mahjong.

She’s got friends at Lake George too, but she doesn’t keep up with them like she used to. They miss her. When my family and I spend time at the beach they come up to us asking if she’s up here yet, how she’s doing, and why she doesn’t spend hours on the benches in the shady area by the beach where all of the other elderly people gather to gossip and watch the young people, like she used to. We tell her that her friends ask about her and she purses her lips and replies with some version of, “If they want to see me, they know where I am.”

Her time in the Adirondacks decreases every year. While it used to be almost 50/50 she now only stays here June through August—she only comes to see us.

The remnants of Grandma’s family are most precious to her. She was only married once and has three children. Linda, who married and had four children, Douglas, who married and had two children, and my mother, who married and had my brother and I. She has eight grandchildren in total and they mean everything to her. “My children and grandchildren are my life,” she says, “God has blessed me with not only them but a home we share together.” We are the only reason she comes back.

She drives with all of the stereotypes of an aging woman but stubbornly denies them all. As we creep towards town I watch her. She barely comes up above the dashboard and sits with the seat so high and forward that anyone else who tries to get in the car is unable to do so. The rest of the family agrees it’s time to start weaning her off driving so much. It worries us that she is so medically and physically limited but she is stubborn and it’s hard to convince her that soon it may be “that time.” More than once she’s come back to the cabin from shopping with dents in her car and some story as to how somebody “crunched her” in the parking lot while she was inside.

She is a strong woman and does not like to be told that she might be slowing. Her medical problems did not stop with the knee surgery and the loss of her hearing. Years later, different medications she was on caused both of her hips to deteriorate causing the need for a double hip replacement which she completed within the time frame of one year. Also, when the Cochlear Implant technology was new and available she ditched her conventional hearing aids and went for that surgery, on each ear, as well.

Sitting in her car as we pass a Laundromat, a pet groomer, and the local pub, I think again about my conversation with my mom. Two hours after she returned from surgery the nurses started to worry. It was taking longer than average to wake up. The drugs should be wearing off, they said, but she was showing no signs of stirring. One nurse came out into the waiting room to ask my mother which eye was the one Venatia sees properly out of, so that they could tell how the pupil was reacting to a beam of light. They had read on the chart that only one of her eyes was functional but didn’t know which one. The nurse reported that one of her pupils was fully dilated and the other was a pinprick. My mom had to admit that she didn’t know either. And after calling her siblings and a few others, there was still no confident answer. My mother followed the nurse into the recovery room to see if looking at her face would help trigger something. As she walked up to the bed, suddenly Grandma’s eyes opened fiercely and my mother saw the good one lock to hers immediately. “PAIN.” That’s what she said. “That one! That eye, right there,” my mother said backing away quickly and pointing to it.

Once she was in a state of stable recovery, she was brought to our house where she stayed for a few weeks. Usually when she stays at our house she uses our guest bedroom in the basement, but this time my parents took that room while she stayed in my parent’s room on the first floor. With strict instructions she could only sit on our large brown armchair in the living room and watch as we prepared her meals and tented to her. I can only imagine what it must have been like for her to just sit in one place and stare at our kitchen. Her chair, angled in this direction only had a view of the kitchen’s center island and appliances, the small bar off to the side, and the living room with its brown furniture, graphic rug, and coffee table with the fold out chess board. I found her studying the stones that make up the fireplace often as if she was considering it for an escape root. She had cone-shaped bandages over each ear and joked that they made her head look like a football. She heard things different now. Not natural, but tinny and mechanical. “Everyone sounds like Mickey Mouse and I can’t tell anyone’s voice apart,” she said, frustrated. Now she’s used to it and we don’t hear about it anymore.

We pull up to Serendipity Boutique, the women’s resort-wear store I am working at for the summer. “Have a good day at work—do good!” “Thanks grandma, I will.”

For the next few hours I tent to women with open purse strings. I like working here but watching these women shell out $200.00 for a sundress makes me think about how Grandma’s past has made her so frugal. She’s well off now but she won’t even buy something in my store with my 30 percent employee discount and it is hard for her to accept gifts.

After locking up the storefront at 9:30 p.m. I head down the street to our meeting place— the parking lot behind her favorite diner. I open the passenger side door and it startles her, like it always does. “Hi sweetie! How was it—did you make lots of sales?” I smile, “Yes, grandma.” When we pull back into the gravel driveway, I open the door for her and she gives me that stubborn look that so plainly says, I can do it myself.

When I come back downstairs after changing into sweats and a tee shirt I hear the microwave beep. I don’t know how she does it but she’s got the timing down perfect. My portion of dinner is heated and on its way to the table—pasta tonight, with her alfredo sauce that tastes like it needs salt but will never have any because “it’s bad to have too much.” Of course she has eaten hours ago on schedule, but she sits at the table with me and we gossip about the rich women who shop at my store. The conversation drifts back to her family, as it often does, and she fills in some details and characteristics about some specific members. “I don’t think Gloria looks anything like me,” she says, “but we’re identical so there’s something to that.” I remember a time about five years ago when Aunt Gloria she visited the Lake house out of nowhere and my little bother Miles ran up to hug her thinking she was Grandma.

After I’m done eating I grab my laptop and she grabs her book and we sit on the porch, her in her chair, and me on the floral-patterned couch next to it.

Around 10:30 she asks me if I want dessert. I do of course. I don’t bother asking to help. I know the answer. A few minutes pass and hot chocolate in a Tom and Jerry mug and a small pile of cookies on a glass plate are on the coffee table in front of me. The cookies are barely cooled—she must have made them while I was at work. Biscotties, her favorite. Delicious. Another half hour passes as we sit together in silence. “Okay Emma, I think I’m going to watch TV in my room. Have a good night and I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” She winks.

I’m still sitting on the couch when I hear her sweep the kitchen and wash the dishes again.