My grandmother, we called her Busia, Lucille Bujnowski. By the time I knew her she was a weird and tough old bird. She would ride the train into the city every morning at 5 AM, work a union job at General Foods, and made good money. They honest to goodness gave this line worker a gold watch when she retired at 55. It was a wondrous time, if you ignore all the racism.
She came over from Poland when she was very young, and the Great Depression hit right after she got married and had kids. She taught me the secret of feeding an entire family on one can of Campbell’s soup – just keep adding water.
She helped raise us after my dad died. I wish she had taught me some Polish.
And I need to add that she was the one who told my mom to bury statues of the saints in the front yard to ward away some heavy shit she was going through. I remember going out to this weird Polish Catholic statuary store in Chicago, wrapping them in plastic (so the saints don’t get dirty), and digging holes.
I don’t know what made her happier. When John Paul II got elected pope, or when John Paul II named his first saint, my cousin Maximilian Kolbe.