Matriarch

The passing down of a beautiful life

Kyra Defries Emo

Elegance is the only beauty that never fades. ~ Audrey Hepburn

My grandma keeps house plants; geraniums, pothos, fiddle leaf figs, chinese money plants (pilea peperomioides), and my favourite (the one that reminds me most of her) Oxalis Trianlularis Purpurea, or the lay term of Purple Butterfly Plant. In the month before my wedding, she gave me one of her Butterfly plants, a big overflowing one, in a large ceramic bowl. The leaves flutter like little friends, laughing at me as I sit at my desk in the loft. My first home with my husband. But this was ten years later.

Now, I am eighteen years old. It’s my first time away from home. My grandma is my best friend. I have just moved to the big metropolitan city of Montreal from small town rural BC, naive and uncut. I don’t know anyone yet. I take the metro to her place, get off at Atwater station and walk. She lives in Westmount, in a duplex on Irvine. The brick building is cracked and old, settled into the foundations. It is welcoming, with Ivy growing in the cracks. I knock on the wooden door (a formality) and walk right in. She is family. Little Chloe, the black cat with the bell on her collar greets me with her wistful look. My grandma is tending to her plants in the back patio. It is the size of a small closet, open to the sun and rain, with cement pavers set at odd angles. I walk right into the kitchen and put my mug in the one-cup coffee machine, flicking the on switch. I pop some raisin toast in the toaster. Then I settle in with my book, on the striped yellow couch under the red flower oil painting. I am home.

My grandmother taught me the importance of cats. And the love of books, chocolate, snowy owls, designer clothing, and tchotchkes. She was so stylish. She had designer clothing made for her. She never left the house without a scarf, or necklace, or lipstick. Style, the unspoken power of women when they are expected to conform to society in a prescribed way. She taught me to dress up in a black velvet coat when going to the Nutcracker ballet. My grandmother told me so many stories, like how her mother and father met in Paris and spoke in French as a common language, because one spoke Russian, and the other English. Then they moved to Toronto, then Montreal, and my grandma was born.

I walk from college to grandma’s house after class. This time, I get baby bells and vinta crackers from the cupboard, and pickles from the fridge. There is a magnet on the fridge that says ‘I love Chocolate’. I settle in at the desk in her office and dial up the computer to get some work done. Tall stacks of books and newspapers line the walls. There are multiple calendars on the wall. It smells like home. Her apartment was the first place I walked, that day. I was spurting between buildings, hiding, my heart beating wildly. The sirens fading in the background. I got to her door and she said, there you are. The TV was on, with live coverage of the event. It is over a decade before that fear leaves my body.

My grandmother told me countless stories about my grandfather, whom I never met. The love of her life. He was a star hockey player who won a scholarship to a University in the States. And he played the banjo. Apparently, he had dimples, and an incorrigible Joie de Vivre. They both studied geology at McGill University in the 1940’s. When he was on a remote job site in Quebec, she would paddle across the lake to his camp in a canoe to visit him. She would drive him to the airport early mornings, in her silk dressing robe and slippers, her hair tied up in a colorful scarf. The height of morning elegance. He was on his way to work in South America. They skied in the French Alps together, and took the train to honeymoon in New York. Theirs was a true love story, and he died too young.

My grandma is a dedicated bird watcher. She belongs to BPQ (Bird Protection Quebec /Protection des Oiseaux du Québec.) They go out in groups, en tribe, with binoculars and field guides to walk up Mont-Royal and Ile St Hélene. They observe Red-winged blackbirds, Mallards, Northern Flickers, and Yellow warblers. Park Angrignon is great for owls and woodpeckers in winter. You can occasionally see the Great Egret (Ardea Alba) in the Botanical Gardens. Some of the best bird viewing is in the center of downtown Montreal, on the mountain (Park Mont-Royal). Grandma takes me in her old volvo to the book fair, with classical music playing on CBC. They are raising money to protect the endangered habitats of birds.

My grandma told me stories about her mother, my great-grandmother, who fled Moscow during the Russian Revolution. They buried their silver tea service and belongings and escaped on a train. I hold a photo of my great grandmother, Kyra Mashkina, taken in 1907. She is a young girl, sitting with her mother, clothed in velvet and silk in front of their dacha. A hand-tinted account of memory, held in fragile paper form. The photo is bent and cracked. This photograph is over a century old, and it holds the matrilineal line of memory. It holds my life, my mother’s, my grandmother’s, and my great-grandmother and her mother’s. This container of life and memory shows that elegance is the only beauty that never fades. My grandma taught me this. And so I carry this with me always, in my heart, in my sense of style, and in my love of beauty. I carry her in my heart.