Nana la linda

Nana la linda is the name we grandkids have called my paternal grandmother for I don't know how long. It means "Nana the beautiful" and it is how she signed every birthday and Christmas card I remember opening, and still does to this day. When she married my step-grandfather, Jim, she started signing "Nana la linda y Jim el feo" (Jim the ugly) much to our delight at such a splendid joke. We loved Jim. He taught me how to play pool when I was eight and poker in junior high and when we were little, he would fill the jacuzzi on the patio up with cold water so we could pretend the lounge seat in the jacuzzi was really a water slide into the dolphin tank at Sea World. After the floods subsided from our water park adventures, and only after catching the little blue and green lizards in the backyard for a while, my cousins and I would perform dance routines that we had choreographed to Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation album for the family. Jim would toss quarters like we were the beautiful belly dancers at his favorite Greek restaurant. We felt wildly talented.

They lived in a small suburb in central Florida called Casselberry in a small ranch-style home that I wish I could purchase just so I could have forever the smell of tamales in the air and the feel of the cool tile on my bare feet. To this day, a requisite of any home I occupy is a ceiling fan in my bedroom like all the rooms at Nana's. There is nothing like a good sunburn smothered in aloe vera and cocoa butter while the cool ceiling fan wicks away the sting of a hard day's play at the beach.

The best suntan, Nana taught us, is obtained by following a simple regimen: First swim a couple of laps in the pool, lay out in the sun until dry, then proceed down the 8 steps from the pool to the sand (pictured right) and swim in the warm Atlantic waves for a while. Lay out until dry and repeat. It didn't do much by way of UV protection since your sunscreen would be gone after a couple of rounds, but in a week were all the loveliest shade of cafe con leche you could imagine.

She patiently instructed me in making one of our family's favorite dishes, Arroz con pollo as I jotted down scribbles of notes including phrases like "un chin chin of sal y un chin chin of pepper" translating in English to salt and pepper to taste. I have yet to master San Cocho, a delicacy in the Dominican Republic served for special occassions. I will have to visit for another lesson. She recently taught my son how to make the corn tortillas that accompany many a delectible dish. His pint-sized tortillas were the perfect complement to generations of comfort food being handed down.

As I try to channel the energy of my childhood adventures at Nana's into a few humble paragraphs, I find I would have to write much more to even begin to do justice to her story. You would have to know Nana to really appreciate what an amazing and complex woman she is. For all of the things I would love to know more about in her life, I know this: that I make more sense to myself when she is around. I marvel to see glimpses of her in me, and somehow some of the little pieces of the puzzles in my life seem to fit a little better. Something about having family draws clarity. I am glad that my son knows his Gi-Gi he calls her. Someday, he will trace one of his characteristics back to her and be glad he knows the woman who handed it down, Nana la linda.