The Greatest Great-Grandmother

Arlene "Nanny" Kressler

    My great-grandmother, who everyone called Nanny, was a kind woman, with kind eyes behind her glasses. She changed the style of her glasses every few years and always complained that she liked the old ones better than the new ones. Just like with her glasses, she hated every change made with her whiteish gray hair- it was always cut either too short or not short enough for her liking, but she was the only one to be able to notice. Her face was not as wrinkled as someone of her age should have been, since she slept on her back for her whole life, completely still the entire night, laying as if she were a mummy. She loved to wear a bright colored or patterned shirt underneath neutral toned cardigans, because any temperature below 70 degrees was too cold for her. While she was a very caring person, she was also the most stubborn person I have ever met in my entire life. There were many occasions of her stubbornness, but perhaps the most extreme and memorable would be when my sister and I were swimming at her pool on what felt like the hottest day of the year. 

    “Pfft, I don’t need it,” Nanny said, swatting the air as she did so, rejecting my mother’s offer to get her a hat, “I won’t be up here long.”

    Another thirty or so minutes went by of Nanny and my mother talking. My mother occasionally  offered to get her sun hat from the house and Nanny refused each time. My mother then asked if Nanny would want to come up and sit on the deck with her under the umbrella. Since she was 89 years old at the time, it was difficult for Nanny to do stairs, and since there was no railing, she would have needed help getting up.

    “No, I’m fine standing,” Nanny replied. It was excruciatingly hot outside, so hot that there was the indescribable smell of skin beginning to burn, only slightly masked by the smell of chlorine and sunscreen. The heat made my mom ask if Nanny was sure and offer to help her get up the stairs. “Yes, I’m sure,” she spouted back, “I’m fine standing.”

    My mom and Nanny continued talking while my sister and I got out of the pool and began putting the toys we had been playing with away. As I was standing on the opposite side of the pool from the deck, attempting to use a net to get a pool noodle from the middle of the pool, Nanny began to sway. She was standing at the bottom of the steps to the deck, facing my mom who was sitting on the deck, diagonal from Nanny across the stairs.

    Suddenly, everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. Nanny fell backwards, luckily parallel with the pool rather than into it, and hit her head on the sidewalk. My mother immediately leapt up and grabbed a towel to hold over Nanny’s head to try to cool her down and give her shade. As Nanny was laying there, I could see a small amount of blood pooling around her head. 

    “Are you okay? Do you know where you are?” My mother frantically asked.

    “Oh, I’m fine,” Nanny stated calmly, “I just got tired and decided to lay down and take a nap.”

    I rushed down to the house to call 911, and an ambulance came soon after. Once my mother convinced Nanny to get into the ambulance, she was taken to the hospital where she ended up needing four staples in her head and they determined that she had a heat stroke. This was one of the many heat strokes that she had, and each time she denied anything being wrong and attempted to not go to the hospital for afterwards. There was always an explanation given as to why she was on the ground and how it was nothing to worry about, even when she had cracked her head open.

    We would share this story, and the many similar stories, every year for Christmas and Easter when my extended family would gather at Nanny’s house. Nanny had two children, eight grandchildren, and twenty great-grandchildren, but she always made each one feel cared for and loved during the holidays. There was never a year where Christmas gifts felt rushed or generic, and there were always sweet messages written in the cards. Every Easter she would have candy, and sometimes money, in eggs that she would hide around the basement for the kids to find. She was always the main person to cook everything, and because of that she would hover over shoulders, watching people get and eat their food, saying, “Eat up. It’s good, I made it,” and, "gotta get it eat." 

Nanny's 89th Birthday Dinner

    Once everyone was done eating, it would be time for dessert. Dessert was Nanny's favorite part of any meal, especially during Christmas. Since she made a majority of the meal, everyone else was responsible for bringing different desserts. I always sat next to Nanny at the dining room table, so when the desserts were brought out I would be the one making her a plate. I would offer to get her one of every dessert, and she would say she couldn't eat that much. I would do it anyway, and give her small portions of everything because I knew how she was with dessert. She would always say something along the lines of, "Pfft, I can't eat all that," while swatting the air. Once she had scraped the first plate clean, though, she would ask for seconds of the desserts she liked best. 

    

    Nanny and I shared the same birthday, September 25, so since this almost always fell during the week of the Bloomsburg Fair, we would celebrate together there. We would also go out to dinner with my family and my grandmother after. Nanny “hated” being sung to for our birthday, but there was always a huge smile on her face when the waitresses came out singing with desserts. She would say she only wanted a small bite and that my family could share the rest, but one small bite always turned into eating half of it, offering it to anyone else, and then asking whoever took it for “one more bite” again and again. 

    Before living in Bloomsburg, we would have to drive 45 minutes to visit. While that isn't much now, as a child it felt like forever. Since we were so young, it was a big deal for to visit Nanny and my grandmother. This meant that every summer my sister and I would each get our own week staying at my grandmother's house, who lived next door to Nanny. During this time, whenever my grandmother was busy, Nanny would watch me. She loved to play different games with me, especially war, which she taught me how to play. We would sit on her living room floor and play card games for hours some days. She would sometimes let me win, but never twice in a row, since she was very competitive. The entire time I would be at her house she would be trying to give me as many snacks as she could. She would ask my mother what my favorite snacks were each year, and load up her cupboards with as much of my favorite things as she could fit. 

Nanny's 95th Birthday

    When I first moved to Bloomsburg, my parents didn’t want my sister and I to have to start a new school halfway through the year, so we started school here before we had moved. Since Nanny lived in Bloomsburg, she let us stay with her for the three months it took for us to find a house here. It was very kind of her to allow us to live with her during that time. She had been living alone at that point for nearly two decades, and was used to her peace and quiet. I was just turning ten, and my sister was eight, so, as I'm sure you can imagine, her peace and quiet was quickly interrupted. She had lived in that house since 1972, when it was built, and prior to that lived in various houses in and around Bloomsburg. She had grown up in a farmhouse in Buckhorn, and because of this would say that my sister and I should be grateful that we didn’t need to milk the cows and collect the eggs before walking to school, like she did.

    At least once a week when living with her, she would make Pennsylvania Dutch chicken pot pie and hand make the noodles, because she knew that it was my favorite meal. She rolled out the dough on the kitchen counter, needing to get on her tiptoes as she did so, with strength an 87-year-old woman with arthritis should not have. Once it was finished, she would fill our plates as high as possible while saying, “Eat up. It’s good, I made it,” as she did for Christmas and Easter. She would always get ecstatic when I would ask for seconds. She loved to feed people, and it was a running joke in our family that you can't go to Nanny's house and come back the same weight. 

    Once my family had found a house in Bloomsburg, we didn't see Nanny quite as often. However, we still went to church with her every Sunday. We would wait in the parking lot for my grandma and Nanny to get there, then I would help walk her in. She hated admitting she needed help and would always say "I can do it!" when I would grab her arm for the stairs. I would then tell her that I knew she could do it, I just wanted to make sure that I could. This would make her laugh and she wouldn't have an issue with getting help if I offered it this way. Even though she knew that I was doing it to help her, she would grab my arm as if she was the one helping me. 

    Nanny was loved by everyone who met her, and while at most times she had a "my way or the highway" attitude, it was impossible to choose "the highway."