« Mary Samoff | Home | More about my Russian… »

February 22, 2005 at 12:08 pm

More about my grandmother...

“Grandma Samoff“ was an artist.

At some point, my grandmother took up oil painting. She painted all sort of still lifes as well as some landscapes. Rarely did her painting contain people. What the paintings did possess was a sort of dark moodiness that always captivated me no matter how well the subject matter was painted.

Grandma’s sense of chiaroscuro was impeccable, even if her proportion and perspective were not. But this one one of her “trademarks” if you could call it that — a whimsical disregard for reality even though a viewer would swear that it was a mistake.

Later in life Grandma had to give up oil painting, but she did not give up her artistic aspirations. Even last year we received a couple of her handmade pressed-flower greeting cards that she so loved to make.

Grandma Samoff was a gambler.

Grandma and Grandpa used to love to go to Reno and Las Vegas to gamble. They never really hit the jackpot, but they didn’t do too bad either. When my grandfather retired, they to Palm Springs. One of the reasons for this is so that we could all have a central place to have family gatherings. I’m pretty sure part of the reason was so that they could be closer to the casinos.

As far back as I remember, one of the favorite past times at Grandma and Grandpa’s house was playing poker — and we played for real money. I even remember my pride the day the adults let me play at the “big” table. I must have been twelve or thirteen. I had been playing poker for years already. But now was my chance to play with and stay up with all of the grown-ups.

Grandma and Grandpa didn’t stop at card playing either. My grandpa owned his own business and they invested in a number of apartments around their old neighborhood in Montebello. After my grandpa died, Grandma invested in a number of stocks and loved to talk to her accountant about how they were doing. Her keen gambling instincts won her some fairly lucrative purchases in the stock market, but also led her down some unprofitable roads.

About three months ago, Grandma visited her last casino.

Grandma Samoff was a businesswoman.

How else could she have handled the apartments and the stocks after Grandpa had died? Grandma gave me my first car loan (along with payments and interest and everything). She also loaned money to my other cousins and even some of her friends. She kept tabs on her apartments for as long as she could before handing that responibility over to my dad — who, even after taking over the the business, would drive Grandma down to see how the apartments were doing ever once in a while.

Grandma loved finding deals and she loved negotiating. Seeing the gleam in her eyes when she was thinking about business in some way or another was enough to make anyone smile.

Grandma Samoff was a storyteller.

Grandma loved to reminisce about old times (not unlike her brother, Morris. I always wanted to record her telling some of her stories — and I should have — but now all we have are our memories.

One of my favorite stories was about how my grandmother treated some friends to lunch over fifty years after she promised she would. We call the story, “The Three Ruths.”

Back when Grandma was in her mid-thirties, she finally gained U.S. citizenship and got her green card. When she did this, three of her friends (“The Three Ruths,” for all three of these women were named Ruth) went along to support her. Of course, being the woman that my grandmother was, she offered to treat the Three Ruths to lunch afterwards. But when they had left the ceremony for lunch, Grandma realized that she didn’t have enough money to pay. So, Grandma promised the Three Ruths that one day she would make good on her promise to buy them lunch.

It took over fifty years for Grandma to fulfulll her promise. When she was seventy-five-years old, she finally got to take two of the Ruths (sadly, one of them had passed away) out for lunch.

Grandma was a good…grandma.

When Grandma and Grandpa lived in Palm Springs, we used to love to take the three-hour drive to visit. We knew we’d get to make home-made banana splits and swim in the pool. We always enjoyed seeing our cousins and our aunts and uncles. Grandma had a way of making all of our visits to their house fun no matter what kind of family strife was going on at the time. We would go for weekends or weeks and get sunburned beyond recognition… Grandma always made us feel at home.

Saturday evening, the night before she died, my parents had taken Grandma for a walk at the beach to see the sunset and to look at some flowers. Afterwards, they went out for pizza.

One of the last questions that my grandma had asked my mom that night was: “Did you remember to buy some new long stockings for my funeral?”

I was planning on calling Grandma that night, but never got around to it. I was also really craving pizza, but ended up getting Mexican.

We’re heading out to California on Wednesday evening. The “viewing” is on Thursday night and the funeral is Friday morning. It will be at the Russian Molokan church in Montebello. It’s hard to explain a Molokan funeral, so maybe I’ll just wait until we get back so that I can dedicate an entire Blog entry to it.

By the way, my mom had gotten the stockings.

Digg This Story

Save This Page

No Trackbacks

Trackback Link:

Comments (4)