Močiutė. Kind of said like “mo-chu-tay’.

That’s what grandmothers are called in Lithuanian.

I had a močiutė, but I knew her as Grandma.

And I lost her far too young. She was only 73. I was only 10. It was just before Christmas. Decades of smoking had caught up with her. She had a heart attack on December 14 and left us. I don’t remember how I was told about her death. I don’t remember how I reacted. I don’t remember the last time I saw her alive. I do remember, very clearly, how I felt when I was with her.

Safe.

Accepted.

Loved. Unconditionally.

As I slowly peel back the layers of protection I’ve built up over the decades and work with my therapist on coming to terms with the life I’ve experienced, Grandma is featuring more prominently in our conversations.

She was a safe haven.

She lived in a main floor apartment of a big house at the corner of Rusholme Road and St. Anne’s Road in the College/Dovercourt area of Toronto. Her sister and husband lived in the apartment above. (Looking at photos of the house now and it doesn’t seem all that big. Funny how that happens.)

I’d go there for sleepovers on the weekends. We lived out in suburbia so while we sometimes drove to Grandma’s (and then spent an eternity trying to find a parking spot in the densely packed immigrant heart of the big city), other times we rode the Red Rocket. One bus. Then the subway. I’d count the stations, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, all the way up to station #13. Dundas Street West. Our stop. We’d trudge up the stairs from the dark underbelly of T.O.’s public transit system, momentarily blinded by the bright sunshine, waiting for the #505 streetcar.

My gambling Grandma

There was always an extra bounce in my step as I approached Grandma’s house. I’d run up the stairs and there she was on her wooden front porch, arms wide open, ready for hugs. After a while, everyone else would leave and it’d be just me and my Grandma. We baked cookies (I still have the recipe in a Valentine’s Day card she sent me, back when Hallmark was .25 cents). She loved cherries and toasted cheese sandwiches. To this day, a slice of cheese, margarine and a piece of toast is one of my comfort foods. Grandma taught me how to gamble, playing rummy for pennies. We’d go on excursions, one time to the CNE where I won a stuffed penguin that my dog would later eat. At the newspaper kiosks in the subway, she’d treat me to a package of Chiclets, cherry flavour, my favourite.

At night, I’d get to stay up past my bedtime before being tucked under the covers on the foldout couch. I can still picture the big, dark wooden beams crossing her living room ceiling.

Her gift of self

She didn’t have a lot. But she certainly gave a lot.

Among her most precious gifts to me – a watch, a candle of a yellow mouse, its tail curled up around its back, and a hand puppet of a dog I named Harry. I like to think that even though she wasn’t able to see me open these treasures that Christmas so long ago, that she still saw. The candle sits, not yet burned, in a place of honour on my desk. The watch died years ago but I haven’t been able to part with it. Harry is a little tattered and torn but he too lives on.

And recently, a new treasure. I asked my mom if she had something of Grandma’s, a necklace, a ring, something she’d be willing to part with that I could keep close to me as I navigate the turbulence and emotional upheaval of sorting through past experiences. Grandma wasn’t much of a jewellery person.

But my mom did have a tiny Lithuanian flag. It’s 3.5 centimetres long and 1.5 centimetres wide, made out of cardboard with the yellow, green, and red of the flag wrapped around it, a few black stitches bonding it together. My grandmother made this in a refugee camp in Germany after she fled with her daughter, my mother, during the second world war.

Holding onto this small Lithuanian flag, I feel my Grandma’s hope. Hope that things would one day be better, for her and her daughter, for her homeland. It too gives me hope that I can literally hang on to.

But nothing – “no thing” – will outperform the cherished memories this amazing woman helped create for me. The time she gave me. The way I felt with her.

Safe.

Accepted.

Loved. Unconditionally.

Ačiū močiutė. Aš tave myliu.

Do you have a special story about an adored grandparent? Or someone or some place that provides a safe haven for you? I’d love to hear about it. Drop me a line or two.