Rose
My aunt Rose was the third of the five Mravintz sisters, born between my mother and aunt Tess. While the first two sisters Mary and Helen, had pretty dominant and expressive personalities Rose was a much quieter, calmer person and seemed to be more willing to step away from family issues and agitations. When she talked about her childhood Rose seemed to have more stories about other families in the neighborhood and at school and one got the impression that she spent less time alone with the family and more time out in the neighborhood.
She talked about being best friends with a little Italian girl whose last name was Como whose brother grew up to be Perry Como. She was amused that they used to chase him away from them when he was little. Rose had dark eyes and a dark complexion and hair and she said when family members and friends came over and met all of the Mrativintz girls they always remarked at the end that all of the other girls looked alike but who is this dark one? She seemed to take some pleasure in that difference, and in some ways held herself outside of the family. As an adult seemed to be less intrigued by the old family stories than the other sisters were. She didn’t react against the family drama like my mother did, but rather seemed less obsessed with family issues, not making them as important in her adult life. This attitude actually made it easier for her to interact comfortably with her sisters as time went by.
Rose had a style all of her own. Her hairstyle was dramatic and important to her, She loved the color red and would tend to get red cars, red high-heeled shoes and wore red dresses. She painted her fingernails and toenails in vibrant red colors. She also named her cars calling her red Mustang with the fancy wire rims Redbird. She always wore high-heeled shoes even to the point where she could no longer stand on her flat feet. She had to get high-heeled slippers to walk around in the house. A favorite role model was the actress, Loretta Young. While all that style would make it sound like she was quite flamboyant she was actually really self-contained and not all that flashy as one would expect. She knew what she wanted, made sure she had it, and was very content to be whom she was and where she was.
For me this was a delightful difference from my mother’s constant dissatisfaction with her role in life. Rose did not seem to take up a whole lot of space, physically or emotionally, but she was very confident, comfortable and even powerful in the space she did live in. She knew what she wanted and how to have it. She was my Kuma, the Slovenian word for “godmother”. I now realize that she served me very well in this role with her calm, matter of fact demeanor and example of being satisfied with what she had rather than bemoaning what she did not have.
Rose and my mother seemed to be paired up quite a bit in stories before I was born. Both of them married and moved outside the Slovenian community. Rose married Frank Bezila and they moved to a farm in Warren Ohio. They had two sons Frank “Sonny” and Bob. My mother and Dad and I used to drive out to their farm in Ohio from Pittsburgh some weekends and I remember a lot of good wild times chasing around the farm, exploring with Sonny and Bob and especially remember bebe gun fights that would occasionally end in tears. Fortunately no eyes were put out.
Rose became especially important to me after my fathers death. My uncle Frank died in the same year, so my mother and Rose became widows at the same time, living on limited resources, raising teenaged boys and facing a host of new and difficult challanges. My mother had done much floundering after my father died and in retrospect I believe she may have been experiencing a nervous breakdown. Whatever the issues were they more or less got resolved when Rose and my mother decided to join households and move to Tucson Arizona together.
The Bezilas sold their farm in Ohio and moved in with us in Camp Hill Pennsylvania for a short time. When we sold the house in Camp Hill we got in our two cars and headed to Tucson Arizona, which was where Mary and Charles were living. We rented a house together in Tucson for a couple of years. While we were together, the Griffiths-Bezila household ran pretty well, especially when compared to the agitation that had gone on before with my mother. In retrospect I can see that my Aunt Rose’s presence and input really calmed my mother down and helped her act in a much more stable way.
While we were together Rose and my mother worked out ways to cook large meals so that the family could do all of the cooking on Sunday and have things frozen to eat during the week, as both Rose and my mother worked during the week. My mother got a Federal Civil Service Job as a secretary with the Farmers Home Administration, and Rose worked for a car dealership. These Sunday cooking events became a wonderful family get together, and I think most of the high volume, low cost meals we made came from
Aunt Rose’s cookbook. She made wonderful homemade bread that we consumed as fast as it came out of the oven with butter and strawberry jam. She pressure cooked green peppers stuffed with ground beef and rice in a delicious tomato sauce that also served as gravy on “made from scratch” mashed potatoes with plenty of butter melted in. There was also “sour meah” with the meat similar to the green peppers but stuffed in cabbage leaves. Klebesi and sour kraut was another staple, again served with mashed potatoes. Aunt Rose’s lemon meringue pie could not be beat and to this day I have never found its equal. Interestingly she was not above a bit of deception with her cooking. When we went to events where you were to bring a covered dish, she happily presented Sara Lee cheesecake or Stouffers spinach soufflé as the “family secret,” figuring she did not have time to cook something from scratch after a day of work. We did our shopping at wholesale places and more or less got our household budget in order. A lot of the issues my mother had experienced problems with were not so evident at this particular time. Evenings often included games or cards and charades, and Bob and I spent many hours in the neighbor’s swimming pool in exchange for maintaining it. Looking back, I attribute my mother’s improved functioning at that time to the support she got from being with Rose. For me it was nice to grow up with “brothers” having been an only child before that. Sonny was almost out of the house, but I had a few fun years with Bob as an enjoyable older brother. The two of us, both recovering from the recent loss of our fathers and adjusting to major life changes found peace and happiness in the neighbor’s swimming pool, racing, having rubber under water knife fights and dunking each other until we were too exhausted to think at the end of the day.
The bubble broke for me when Rose and Bob moved to a new apartment-a co-op apartment and set up a separate household. My mother was angry about this at first but then followed suit. We bought a unit in the same complex, which is where I lived until I left my mothers house, but I guess this proximity did not have the same effect as living together did, as my mother quickly reverted to her old ways. We moved when I was a junior in high school. In looking back now I realize that my mother’s behavior deteriorated after we moved which made me understand that Rose was definitely the stabilizing fixture in her life. Once again I was answering the phone to dodge calls from bill collectors, eating expensive (though admittedly delicious) prepared foods we could not really afford and trying to ignore my mothers constant diatribes on my inadequacies and the general frustrations and unfairness of her life. Being a bit older myself, and having more opportunity to get out of the house as an older teen, I was not as vulnerable to my mother’s ranting and raving as I had been when I was younger, but it did really bother me until I was able to get out of the house.
I would get Rose to help me figure out what to do when things got too out of hand, like when my mother would make her left handed suicide attempts, but I do not think Rose was willing to take some of those too seriously. For example one time, obviously not to be taken seriously, my mother declared she was going to drink herself to death with a case of champagne. Even so, I think there was a certain level of denial with Rose as well, that I do not really understand. Rose came over and drank with her, rolling her eyes when she looked at me and assuring me that I did not really need to worry about a “suicide attempt” that presented itself in this manner.
On a more serious note, when I was fifteen my mother took an attack of appendicitis as an opportunity to kill herself. She locked herself in the bathroom and would not let me in. She said she wanted to die that way. I got Rose and we finally got her out, but her appendix had burst and she had peritonitis, which could easily have been fatal. She stayed in the hospital a pretty long time because every time she came to consciousness she pulled all the tubes out of herself. I am somewhat confused about what happened during this time, because I would have thought Rose would have taken me in while my mother was in the hospital, or at least made sure I had food and whatever I needed, but as near as I remember I was left to my own devices at the apartment. Maybe some other arrangements were made, and I just don’t remember them, but I do remember trying to cook things I did not know how to cook, eating box after box of Melba toast when I was out of everything else, and finally my mother coming home and things being back to about where they were. Maybe I was telling people I was doing fine when I wasn’t or maybe it was just something nobody knew how to talk about or deal with. I wish I had a better idea of what was going on at that time, and why Rose didn’t take a more active role in helping me through it. As I write this I realize that I need more information about that time and think I will call my cousin Frank and see what he remembers.
This would also be a good idea in regards to what Roses life looked like after I left Tucson. As far as I know, Rose/s life seemed to stay on an even keel. She lived in her coop apartment until the time of her death and actually owned it at that time. I don’t really know what her take was on my mother hooking up with Jim and moving to Seattle. I don’t know how long she continued to work at the car dealership. After Tess and Cathy retired they moved to Arizona with Gram, until Gram died. I think Rose enjoyed socializing with Tess and Cathy soon after they came to Arizona, but that diminished after Tess had a stroke from which she never fully recovered and Tess and Cathy lived in a retirement city a little distance from Tucson. I am under the impression that Tess and Cathy kind of went into a “hermit” mode until Tess died fourteen years later. I don’t know if they maintained much contact with Rose through that time or not. Another question for Frank. I do know that she got to enjoy her grandchildren, Erik, Dominique and Dianne.
I do have one little antidote to tag on to the end of this piece. After Anna Rae and I divorced, and while I was going through my wild man stage with Judy (just pre Gail) Judy and I hitch hiked to Mexico and made a stop off with Frank and his wife Patty in Tucson. Rose came over for dinner, and off handedly assumed her Kuma persona. She asked Judy if she was serious about her relationship with “our Scott” and was it likely we would be getting married in the future? Judy was not at all taken aback, as she was the kind of girl quite comfortable with frank talk. “I don’t think either one of us are in that kind of position right now. We are just enjoying being who we are right now and not really thinking about the future too much.”
Rose answered “Oh. All right then. I guess I don’t need to bother remembering your name.”
Bye the way… that trip was the death knell for Judy’s and my relationship, though I was not yet aware of that possibility… so I guess the moral is that Kuma knew best.