I Got Sunshine In A Bag
May. 3rd, 2009 10:32 am![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mundensWhile waiting for my morning coffee to cool, I started cleaning the laundry.
I often work that way, need to fill in some time so start something, and then find that the time has become more than filled. Had to force myself to sit down to drink the coffee before it got cold.
Anyway, I was cleaning and I realized that the Frigidaire dryer we have has been amazingly long-lasting. It's older than my eldest sonferrouswheel. I know that because Little Nan bought it for Ele and I while Ele was pregnant, saying that we would need it for the nappies.
This, as reminiscing often does, led me to think about Little Nan, and her partner, Big Nan, both of whom have now been deceased for many years. Big Nan was the one who was my actual grandmother. She was a huge woman, who did all the manly things, like drink., smoke, chop wood, etc. It was Big Nan who first taught me rudimentary woodworking skills when I was staying with them over the school holidays. These days, I'd call her butch, but I didn't know that term back then. It was merely the name of a dog in a cartoon. She was Big Nan because she always towered over me as a child.
Little Nan, however was "my size" as a child. She had grown chubby and roun, in her old age, but she must have been one of those tiny , elfin, size ten, women when she was younger. She, like the classic boggan, made the tea, cleaned house, and brought us breakfast in bed. When I had been a good boy and gone to bed nicely, or when I had woken from a nightmare* and they had taken me to bed with them to comfort me, I was allowed to eat breakfast in bed with them.
Little Nan and Big Nan slept together in what I remember as a wonderfully fluffy and warm bed, that caught the morning sun. My memories of that bed are of the safest and warmest place in the world, bright and white in the morning. At the time, the fact that the two nans slept together in that lovely bed seemed like a perfectly natural thing for a pair of nans to do. That there were two of them, and that Little Nan wasn't really my grandmother, I sort of understood, but they were the Two Nans, and they did what the Two Nans did.
Interestingly no-one else, at least in the memory of this child, made any comment at all about the potential oddity of this relationship. Now I look back on it and tend to assume that they were a lesbian couple, but one has to remember, this was England, and last century. The concept of pairs of women "companions" though potentially providing a cover story for some lesbian couples, was a strong one, and just the fact that they lived and slept together, and that one of them was tiny and feminine and the other large and butch, would not be considered enough evidence to pronounce them as lesbian to the world.
Now I wish I knew whether they were or not. Actually, it doesn't really matter if they were lesbian. They loved each other and me. They gave me some of the best memories of my childhood.
*I remember one such nightmare was triggered by the cop show Hawaii Five 0 in which a criminal was using special effects to make it look like the godess of the volcano, Pele was responsible for his murders. I dreamed of angry volcano goddesses.
I often work that way, need to fill in some time so start something, and then find that the time has become more than filled. Had to force myself to sit down to drink the coffee before it got cold.
Anyway, I was cleaning and I realized that the Frigidaire dryer we have has been amazingly long-lasting. It's older than my eldest son
ferrouswheel. I know that because Little Nan bought it for Ele and I while Ele was pregnant, saying that we would need it for the nappies.This, as reminiscing often does, led me to think about Little Nan, and her partner, Big Nan, both of whom have now been deceased for many years. Big Nan was the one who was my actual grandmother. She was a huge woman, who did all the manly things, like drink., smoke, chop wood, etc. It was Big Nan who first taught me rudimentary woodworking skills when I was staying with them over the school holidays. These days, I'd call her butch, but I didn't know that term back then. It was merely the name of a dog in a cartoon. She was Big Nan because she always towered over me as a child.
Little Nan, however was "my size" as a child. She had grown chubby and roun, in her old age, but she must have been one of those tiny , elfin, size ten, women when she was younger. She, like the classic boggan, made the tea, cleaned house, and brought us breakfast in bed. When I had been a good boy and gone to bed nicely, or when I had woken from a nightmare* and they had taken me to bed with them to comfort me, I was allowed to eat breakfast in bed with them.
Little Nan and Big Nan slept together in what I remember as a wonderfully fluffy and warm bed, that caught the morning sun. My memories of that bed are of the safest and warmest place in the world, bright and white in the morning. At the time, the fact that the two nans slept together in that lovely bed seemed like a perfectly natural thing for a pair of nans to do. That there were two of them, and that Little Nan wasn't really my grandmother, I sort of understood, but they were the Two Nans, and they did what the Two Nans did.
Interestingly no-one else, at least in the memory of this child, made any comment at all about the potential oddity of this relationship. Now I look back on it and tend to assume that they were a lesbian couple, but one has to remember, this was England, and last century. The concept of pairs of women "companions" though potentially providing a cover story for some lesbian couples, was a strong one, and just the fact that they lived and slept together, and that one of them was tiny and feminine and the other large and butch, would not be considered enough evidence to pronounce them as lesbian to the world.
Now I wish I knew whether they were or not. Actually, it doesn't really matter if they were lesbian. They loved each other and me. They gave me some of the best memories of my childhood.
*I remember one such nightmare was triggered by the cop show Hawaii Five 0 in which a criminal was using special effects to make it look like the godess of the volcano, Pele was responsible for his murders. I dreamed of angry volcano goddesses.
