Why We Call It Zelda Lily
Editor’s Note: I decided to name this site Zelda Lily after my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother. What better way, I figured, to celebrate womanhood than to acknowledge the women from whom I came. Sadly, both these women passed away before I had a chance to know them as an adult, so I asked my maternal aunt to write about the women they were. Her response follows:
Zelda and Lily are smiling up in heaven knowing that their names are bring immortalized on a blog. Of course, neither knows what a blog is, but knowing Zelda and Lily, they enjoy having their names in print.
So who are Zelda and Lily and why was a blog named after them? Because these are two very special woman that represent every mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and aunt that have ever loved, cherished, nurtured, taught, supported and influenced those they care about to be the person they were meant to be.
They were mother and daughter and, even though they were very different people, in many ways they shared qualities that made them very much the same.
Zelda was my mom and Lily was my grandmother. Since Sasha was young when they both died, she asked me to wrote a bio so people would know more about them. Most bios contain where you went to school and where you worked. Zelda and Lily graduated from the school of life and they worked at being good, loving people. So let me introduce you to two very special women:
Lily
Lily was born in Russia sometime in the early 1900s, and being Jewish made her and her family a target of the police. Her mother spent six weeks in a prison on some trumped-up charge, and Lily spent part of her youth hiding in the forest during WWI eating raw potatoes as her only source of food.
Her feet were deformed because the shoes she wore as a child were always too small and didn’t fit properly. Her family was poor and life was hard. She didn’t know her birthday because those things weren’t considered important; survival was. There was no county clerk recording date and time of when she arrived into this world. Her family told her she was born sometime in the fall but no one remembered the year. When she came to the US through Ellis Island, she picked a date and year and her birthday was born.
Lily knew how to sew and knit and take slivers out of your fingers without making you cry. Bread was always home-baked, not store-bought, and, even though she had a washer and dryer, you could often find her using a washboard.
She liked drinking tea by placing a sugar cube in her mouth and sipping the tea through the sugar cube.
Her house always smelled good and she always made sure she kept a batch of her homemade chocolate chip cookies in the freezer in case I dropped by.
She was a true Jewish grandmother who made chicken noodle soup from scratch and she didn’t like anyone in her kitchen when she cooked.
Lily’s idea of a recipe was: “ You pour in the flour until you know it is enough and then you add some sugar until it feels like the right amount and then you mix in the butter and stir until it looks good to you.”
She always made my favorite foods when I spent the night: vegetable things (veggies, potatoes and flour rolled into a round flat shape and baked), onion rolls, hamburgers and of course chocolate chip cookies.
She played mah jong with the ladies every week and taught me to play cards.
She was fiercely loyal to her friends and family, she spoke her mind and never backed down from anyone. No one messed with Lily. When Lily spoke, you listened.
Lily always made me feel special and loved.
Zelda
Zelda was Lily’s daughter. Zelda didn’t like to cook — she didn’t know how to sew or knit or remove slivers from your fingers — “That is what grandmothers are for,” she used to tell me.
Since she didn’t like to cook, dinner was often an adventure or a mystery. Steak and potatoes on Monday was the only constant. The rest of the week was either Swanson TV dinners, whatever I could find in the house (Zelda’s favorite answer when I would ask “what’s for dinner”) or Lily’s home cooking (my favorite dinner).
Of course she did have one specialty: grilled cheese sandwiches. To this day, no grilled cheese sandwich ever lived up to Zelda’s; she was the master grilled cheese chef.
Zelda loved the Cubs, classical music, Paul Newman and her garden. If it was broke she figured out how to fix it. She balanced her checkbook every month to the penny. She was a woman way ahead of her time and not always comfortable in that role. Zelda was the son her father never had so she liked hanging around his construction company and tinkering with tools. She often told me she wanted to take over his company when he retired, but woman didn’t run construction companies in the ’50s — they got married and made babies.
Zelda was very intuitive and had good instincts. She would know instantly upon meeting someone if they were a good person or not and she always sensed when something was wrong.
Zelda didn’t always speak up or voice her thoughts verbally but you knew how she felt. Her silence always sent a clear message.
As gentle as Zelda was, she would fight for those she loved and she always tried to do the right thing. She had a strong sense of right and wrong.
Zelda was open-minded and a very progressive parent. I never had a bed time. If I wanted to stay up late and watch TV, I could. But when morning came if I was tired she would say “Too bad, you still have to get up and go to school, you are the one that chose not to go to bed at a decent hour.” She believed in teaching me responsibility for my actions. She taught me to think for myself and to be independent.
Zelda would wake me up from a sound sleep to ask me if I wanted half a Flukey’s hot dog.
Zelda loved getting up in the middle of the night and eating a cheese sandwich, a pickle and chips dipped in sour cream.
Zelda had the same girlfriends since her childhood and she cherished their time together.
Zelda went to a salon and had her hair cut and styled every week; it was her special time to be pampered.
Zelda was a great mom. She loved her children and grandchildren unconditionally. Zelda was patient, protective, forgiving, wise and had a great sense of humor.
When the doctors told Zelda her cancer had come back and she only had a short time left, Zelda knew exactly what to do. Zelda had her hair and nails done. If she was going to die, she was going to look pretty. Even in death, she was going to do it her way and on her terms.
So even though Zelda and Lily are no longer with us, they still have much to teach and many life lessons to share: It doesn’t matter when your birthday is, what matters is how you live your life. Don’t fret over that $300 pair of shoes you think you need to have but can’t afford, be thankful you have shoes that fit. Doing something unconventional like waking your kids in the middle of the night to share a hot dog is not a bad thing. It will create a special lifetime memory. Be independent and think for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you like to bake cookies or buy cookies or knit or fix a drain pipe or sew or watch a baseball game. If you enjoy it, do it. There is no rule book that states this is what you have to do or be as a woman. You can choose to be a stay at home mom or a CFO but as long as you are fulfilled, then the path you took was the right path for you. Learn to trust your instincts and intuition. Do it your own way. You don’t have to put a packet of sugar in your tea because everyone else does; it is okay to sip your tea through a sugar cube. Girl time is good. Make time for your girlfriends.
Pamper yourself; you deserve it.
Hi, I’m a 13 year old girl living in Northern Ireland. I found this biography very touching. They really do seem like great people. They remind me of my mum and my granny. I’m sure that they’d be very proud of you.
xx
Beautiful commemoration.