“It is just so unfair.”
That is what my daughter said this weekend, looking at the man my husband has become. She’s right. The grief of missing someone sitting right in front of you is a weight that feels, at times, unbearable. But as I sit here at seventy-two, navigating a life I never signed up for, the lens suddenly shifts. I am finally seeing Nanny.
For decades, she was the silent architecture of a Bronx kitchen—as unexamined as a wooden stool. I saw her stoicism as emptiness; I saw her lack of “joy” as a choice. But today, as I serve my husband the breakfast he can no longer prepare for himself, I recognize the rhythm. It is her rhythm.
I see the girl in the Greek hills whose schoolhouse door was bolted shut so she could tend younger siblings. I see her in the grey Bronx heat, where her iron never glided—she banged it down on the board, a rhythmic, metal punctuation for a woman who had no other way to speak.
She only truly “came out” in the green soil of Long Island, tending a grape arbor with an ancient fluency. I remember the “Old World” magic of a cool cucumber slice pressed to my forehead on a sweltering afternoon—a ridiculous green unicorn’s horn that pulled the heat from my blood and quieted the summer fever. It was there she showed me the fragile wonder of Morning Glories, their brief, brilliant life a sharp contrast to her own long endurance.
I once looked at her life with a sophisticated disdain. Today, I look with awe.
I have the luxuries of a modern heart—a therapist, a support group, and the agency to name my pain. Nanny lived in the “unfair” without expectation. She didn’t wait for the sun; she simply ensured the world stayed bright for those who didn’t see her effort.
I am no longer just watching her; I am carrying her. I pray that the same “Theavolos” spirit I’ve inherited—that relentless “little devil” of a spark that refused to give in—will see me through this as it saw her through the silence of her own. I am no longer just the “sophisticated” woman I fought to be; I am the navigator now, setting the daily rhythm and holding the line. I am making sure the world stays bright for a man who can no longer see the effort.
.