Bubbeleh

I was the Tutteleh to my Bubbeleh.

She was still my Nana when she pitched renaming us these affectionate titles. A voracious reader of the Washington Jewish Week, she had read an article with the writer referred to her own grandma and herself with the affectionately Yiddish, Bubbeleh and Tutteleh.

And like my very close bosom buddies relationship with her, this nickname change happened in the last 15 years of her life. She lived to be 105 1/2 and three days. Had she not lived so long, we would have never developed the bond we did. We are both late bloomers in our respective lives. She didn’t begin to blossom as the bawdy opinionated unfiltered broad she ascended to be until my Grandpa Harry died at their then shared age of 89.

As she came out of her obedient passive shell, she delighted in bantering by phone or in person when I visited her home in Silver Spring from my homes in NYC and then in Los Angeles.

I took this photo while visiting her back when she was only 101-years-old. She was combing her hair with a little 99 cent store comb that was probably 60 years old because she lived post Depression Era despite not needing to. From behind, I found she looked quite glamorous. When looking direct at her reflection in the mirror, I saw the more current reality of her aging.

I love that all the accoutrements that myself and my family have given her over the years are on display in their sweet clutter. Among the details in an old framed photo of her and Grandpa Harry. There’s so much going on all at once, but it captures such a moment in my grandmother's older years that tells some of her life story.