The Elephant in the Room

By Laura Begley

As a youngster, I loved when my Nanna Sue would come down from her apartment in Mt. Vernon, New York and stay for the weekend. She would usually do so when my father went out of town on business, as he was a traveling sales manager for a hand-knitting yarn company and often made overnight trips to various stores in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Since my mother—Nanna Sue's only child—passed away from a brain aneurysm when I was four, dad frequently needed extra help from one grandmother or the other to keep an eye on my older brother and me.

A vintage photo of my mother, who passed in 1972.

Nanna Sue and I were compadres. She never told anyone how old she was. Back in the mid 1970's when I was seven, I thought perhaps she was in her late fifties or early sixties. I found out much later she was actually in her seventies at the time, having been born in 1901. Sue had short blonde hair, a long patrician nose, freckles, and a wide smile. She was medium tall and svelte, and worked to keep herself in good physical shape. I remember she could reach the top of the doorway and would gently stretch her spine by hanging from her fingertips. She always had excellent posture.

Nanna Sue was more subdued and reserved than my Grandmother Adele, who was a plump, apple-cheeked woman with a zaftig figure. Adele would have made an excellent Mrs. Claus if only we hadn't been Jewish. But I digress.

Nanna and I would play card games together, primarily Crazy 8's and Gin Rummy. She would let me have tea with milk and sugar, while she would drink plain hot water with milk—she had to avoid caffeine because of her glaucoma. My favorite time with Nanna, however, was always bedtime. Unlike Grandma Adele, who would gladly read me any book I chose, Nanna Sue had an active imagination and would make up stories for me. She'd probably weave in bits and pieces gleaned from popular fairy tales, but for the most part the narratives were all her own.

My favorite stories were based on the framed needlepoint animals that adorned my robin’s egg blue bedroom wall. My mother created the original designs—she was a talented artist, and several of her oil paintings grace the walls of my home to this day. I'm certain one of the reasons Nanna enjoyed using the needlepoints to fuel our fancies was because they had been mom's. The smiling, patchwork-shelled turtle with two birds on his head was one of my favorites, but there was also a tawny lion with a wild brown mane, an orange monkey with a red hat, a brown and white owl with layered green and blue feathers, and a plump white elephant wearing a gold and red jhool—an embroidered cloth—on his back and forehead.

I named the elephant Alabaster, although we mostly called him Al.

Nanna Sue would tuck the covers around me nice and tight, the way I liked them, then she'd sit on the foot of the bed. "What story would you like tonight?"

"Tell me about Alabaster," I'd ask politely, snuggling down and trying to touch the footboard with my toes. I was short for my age, so it was a bit of a reach.

"Where did we last leave Al?" Nanna would inquire.

"In the tent at the zoo, hiding under the hay."

Nanna would nod in assent, glad to know that I'd been paying attention the night before. "Well then. Al was hiding under the hay, trying to prevent the ringmaster from finding him and assigning him some dirty chore to do. Unfortunately, Al forgot that he was allergic to hay. After just a few minutes of hiding, his trunk started to tickle—just a little bit at first, but that insidious prickling moved further and further up his trunk, until suddenly, Al couldn’t hold back any more—and KAWOOSH, he sneezed so hard that what had been a huge pile of hay was spread all over the tent, with not even one strand left to cover Al's snowy white head..."

With that, Alabaster and I would be off on another of Nanna's wild rides. She always made them memorable at the time, but fifty years later I’m hard pressed to remember the details, only the love that went into the stories.

White elephants are a rare and precious commodity, not to be ignored. I was never fortunate enough to have a son or daughter of my own to tell silly stories about Alabaster and his friends to, but the memories of my needlepoint friends live on, saved within my writing and stored in my heart. I hope you’ll keep them in your heart now, too.

Me, Nanna Sue, and my older brother, circa 1977.

Alabaster the Elephant - he looks great for his age!