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| Taken in Paris, 2008 |
Not everyone is lucky enough to grow up living down the street from
their grandma. If you are one of those people, it often isn’t until you’ve
grown up that you understand how lucky you have been. Frances Grigsby – or
Nonnie as she was known to my brother and me – was our neighbour. And though
I didn’t realise this until much later, she also became my closest friend.
Nonnie had an almost daily presence in my life for ten years, before I left for
college. Her house was a three-minute walk up the blacktop. And even once I’d
moved away completely she was there, at Christmas and on summer vacations.
Initially my brother and I made that walk to scarf down Cheezits and Snickers
minis from the fridge while watching hours of Nickelodeon, since our parents
refused to pay for cable TV. But eventually we would descend from the upstairs
den to look for Nonnie. We’d find her at the kitchen table, or on the front
porch, and that’s when we began to find out things about her.
She was born in a small town, the fourth of eight children, met our
grandfather, Papa, and married him. When he was on the road most nights of the
week, it was Nonnie who raised their five children. And while Papa
famously adored dogs, making their beloved Alaskan Malamute, Harry, a spokes-pooch
for several commercials, it was Nonnie who looked after all 14 hounds during
their marriage. Nonnie looked after me, too. My mom was a high-school art
teacher, and when she had to finish out the school year after having me, Nonnie
and I spent that spring together, walking in Loose Park, browsing fabric shops
and weaving our way through department stores. Of course I have no recollection
of these outings, but I have always believed that on those strolls Nonnie was
sharing something with me.
She made broth when I was sick, butterscotch brownies when I was
blue, and when there no other reason for it, she made a heaping plate of walnut
fudge. She knew how comforting comfort food was to her audience, but she herself
was more of a purist: Her afternoon snack was a fresh tomato or half a
cantaloupe with salt and pepper, and her own favourite dessert was anything
lemon: bar, tart or cake. To me, that affinity for all things citron made her infinitely more
sophisticated than the rest of us. In truth, she was more sophisticated than the rest of us, and she made it seem
effortless: she had travelled the world with our grandpa. Her favourite book
was the Oxford English Dictionary, and it comes as no surprise that she taught
me the meaning of ‘erudition’. She knew enough French to crack a joke, and gave
me the tapes as a push to learn. She painted watercolours and held no qualms
about the number of furs she owned. She would tisk me for saying it, but she looked utterly glamorous holding a
cigarette. And everyday at 4.21pm she indulged in a martini, to mark the
anniversary of her and Bill’s first date. If further evidence of her je ne sais quoi is required, I would direct
you to a photograph from the 1960s, showing a woman who has just caught an
enormous hammerhead shark off the side of a yacht. She is beaming and not a
hair is out of place.
Nonnie was soft-spoken but never aloof; confident, but not arrogant;
she enjoyed the company of others but she also, it seemed, took pleasure in
that of her own. What has always made me admire and aspire towards Nonnie’s chicness is that it was never
contrived. Her own sense of style was a direct expression of her strong sense
of self.
And, it has to be said, that self
believed in dressing well.
I felt most connected to Nonnie when we spoke about clothes, and I’ll
never forget the first time she let me into her closet. I had just finished
high school when she said she had some old things I might like. She opened the wardrobe
door and we dove into layers of chiffon and pleats and gabardine and silk until
we landed on a light-as-air, camel-coloured cashmere cardigan and its matching
snapaway mink stole. It was glamorous without trying to be. The Seiden’s tag
was still inside. That was the first of several treasures Nonnie bestowed on
what I felt were my own undeserving shoulders. There was the modish jacquard
mini-dress that I never fit into but insisted on keeping just in case my bone
structure happened to change. And the silk wrap-skirt that made me feel like I was
living my best life as the embodiment of the J Peterman catalogue.
Through that closet I learned what clothes could be. Nonnie had what
Virginia Woolf called ‘frock consciousness’. She knew the joy of getting
dressed, but her clothes were also a kind of aide-memoire, a register of that joy and of her remarkable life.
Attached to every blouse or skirt or dress or coat was a clear recollection of
where they had been together.
When Nonnie moved into Stonecrest, clothes became more important than
ever, and I loved hearing her recount her shopping trips. Whether she was
buying something or just browsing, simply being around clothes made life feel a
little brighter. Evidently her sartorial affinities were not lost on her fellow
residents, who recently voted her Best Dressed. I learned of this accolade just
as I was pondering what to buy her for Christmas. The day before flying home to
Kansas City I found myself weaving my way through a department store in London
looking for a treasure that might mean something to the woman who, in giving so
much of herself, had helped me determine my own sense of frock consciousness. Suddenly
it felt as if she were there with me, guiding me past the polyester blends to
something more sophisticated – glamorous without trying to be. When I came upon
a pair of light-as-air, camel-coloured cashmere socks I knew I had my answer. If
only they had come with a mink stole.
