Nina's Eulogy of Ruth

My Nana 

Nina Padgham-Auslander 

June 25, 2014
(Read aloud by Ellen Schattschneider at Ruth Auslander's Memorial Service)

I have known my grandmother since, well, I was about 15 minutes old, and ever since that day she has been an inspiration to me. I would love to know how she could have made delicious brisket and matzoh ball soup every Passover. I would love to know how she managed to go to an organic food store at least once practically every day. I also wonder how my Nana was able to stomach macrobiotic desserts. No way was she completely human.

My Nana was about 5’2” with dark curly hair and purple rimmed glasses. She walked rather slowly, with a slight limp from a knee injury years ago. She was very gullible, which amused my whole family quite a bit. And sometimes she mangled the English language, for instance, saying, for example, getting something that was worrying her “off her head” instead of “off her chest” or, when talking about computers and the Web “on the line” instead of “online.”

One characteristic that my Nana has always had is being extremely neat. I think she might have been the only person in the world who knew where everything was at any given time. She was also very friendly. She was the kind of person, that, given a crowded elevator, would know everyone’s name by the end of the ride. My grandmother was, in general, a very calm person, and would get mad only when my brother and I fought. She always told me that cleaning my room and keeping things organized would lead to a calmer state of mind and less stress. Then I would remind her that I am a teenager and therefore keeping my room straight is impossible. She would laugh and we’d then move on to another topic.

My grandmother was a highly caring person. For instance, one day when I was about nine, my Nana and I were buying something at Sears when the cashier suddenly started talking to her warmly, thanking her for some reason or other. My Nana smiled and chatted and paid for her purchase. I asked her in the parking lot what that was all about.

“Well,” she said, ”a few years back I was shopping here, and I noticed the woman at the cash register was standing in a puddle wearing only thin shoes. There was a leak of some kind and her feet were wet. So I went out to the drugstore across the street and brought her a pair of rain boots.”

 “Wait. You really did that?”I ask.

 “Of course.”

I rest my case.

Recently I wrote a report for school about elders, so I interviewed Nana. She told me that one of her best memories at age 6 was of the ice cream parlor. Her brothers would always send her to get ice cream for them because the ice cream man was fond of her.”Every time I would go, the ice cream man would always give me the cone with the slip of paper at the bottom that allowed me to get a free ice cream cone. And because each cone that I bought had that slip of paper, I would always come home with three or four ice cream cones. My brothers loved me for that.”

She told that school was, for the most part, exciting and fun. Nana loved learning new things. One of the things she did not enjoy, however, was the first grade teacher, Mrs. Stern. (I’m not making this up.)

“Boy,” Nana said during our interview. “Do I have a story for you about Ms. Stern.

“One day I brought  a plastic ring into school. The kind you find in cereal boxes. I was really in love with that ring. So was another girl, Jackie, from the rich side of town. Well, I loved that ring, but I liked the one Jackie traded me even more. It didn’t matter to us six year olds, because a 5 cent ring was the same as a fifty dollar ring.

“That is, until the day Jackie wanted  to trade back. The problem was that I had lost Jackie’s ring. Jackie, now upset, told the teacher. Mrs. Stern started yelling at me, screaming at me to come to her. But I didn’t. I ran. I ran all the way home and told my mother the whole story. She told me not to worry, that she would fix it. And she did.

“The next day at school, a nice social worker named Ms. Bridges brought me out into the hall and said that that I didn’t need to worry any more about the ring. It turned out that my mother had marched straight into the mayor’s office, demanding in her limited English that her child not be harassed. So the mayor sent the social worker over. “ ‘Don’t worry, Mrs. Stern will be nice to you from now on,’ ” she told me. Nana paused to take a sip of water. “And you know what? Mrs. Stern soon became my favorite teacher.”

I asked Nana whether it was easier growing up now or then.”Times were simpler, of course back then,” she said. “But more rigid. If you were a man,  you only had a few career choices; forget about it if you were a woman. Growing up today,you have so many choices about what you want to be. Then she put her hand on my knee, looked me in the eye, and said “Have you thought about medicine? You would make an excellent doctor.”