This obit for Sister Wendy reminds me of one of my fondest memories of my grandmother. nytimes.com/2018/12/26/obi…
So Sister Wendy was a nun who did a series of art-appreciation shows for the BBC, in several of which she waxed rhapsodic about erotic themes in classical art. Everyone was thrilled and scandalized and thrilled again. It was a whole thing.
My story, given the timeline in the obit, would date from around 1994. I was in my mid-twenties, visiting my grandmother in Seattle with my folks. (In my memory I was in or just out of college, so it's possible it was 1992.)
Anyway, we were all in my grandmother's kitchen area—me and some male relatives around the dining room table, my mom, aunt, and grandmother hanging out in the kitchen proper.
My paternal grandmother was an artist, and my aunt is one, and my mom is English and a history buff, so it's not surprising they were talking about Aunt Wendy that day. I was overhearing snippets of their conversation in the gaps in my own.
And so it was that I happened to hear a piece of a sentence in which my white-haired grandmother, describing a work of classical art—I deeply wish, today, I knew which one—used the word "hard-on."
Again, I'm in my early twenties, and the youngest person in the room by a generation. Absolutely the first time I've heard my grandmother talk like this.
(I said "fondest" memories at the top. Not "sweetest.")
When you hear your grandmother use the word "hard-on" for the first time, the thing to do is feel honored and play it cool. Reader, I did not do this.
Instead, I said, loud enough for everyone in both conversations to hear, "I can't believe I just heard my grandmother use the word 'hard-on'!"
Like a putz.
My grandmother, thankfully, and as always, was cooler than me.
She turns and puts her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and speaks.
"If I didn't know something about hard-ons," she says, "NONE of you would be here." And then she goes back to her conversation.
Miss you, grandma.
