The Tuna Story

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I have not written this week’s blog, so I am sitting in front of the computer screen staring at the flashing cursor, waiting, hoping for inspiration. I let my hands rest on my lap and take a deep breath. I’m aware of the chair beneath me, holding my weight. The door to the balcony is open and suddenly I hear a small child giggling in absolute delight. She is clearly having a wonderful time. I find myself smiling. In fact, it is practically impossible not to smile just hearing the peals of laughter. Walking to the balcony door I can see a little girl, about four years old, being pushed by an older child on the swings in the small park outside my apartment. With dark shining hair, dressed in a bright pink t-shirt and shorts she squeals and giggles each time the swing sends her high into the air, sticking her short brown legs and small white sneakers up toward the sky. I stand and watch for a few minutes, taking pleasure in her unbridled delight.

When was the last time you laughed, really laughed a long belly laugh that made your eyes water? Just thinking about it reminds me of my mother’s mother, Nana- how infrequently she laughed and how I loved it when she did.

Nana was a serious woman. Eldest of a large family with an abusive alcoholic father she’d had to leave school at fifteen to get a job and support her mother and siblings. She had four brothers who were always getting into trouble and one sister who was fifteen years younger than her- my Aunt Nonie. Nana had a reputation for being fierce and at times, downright harsh. She had very definite ideas about duty, obligation and what moral people did. She worked hard and didn’t appear to have very much fun. She was a formidable woman.

But she loved me. To me she was often soft and loving. I delighted in the rare occasions when I saw her laugh, really laugh. And nothing made her laugh harder than telling The Tuna Story.

Apparently, Aunt Nonie believed she had an allergy to tuna fish. Nana, as much as she doted on her younger sister, thought this was nonsense. She maintained that Nonie just didn't like tuna and so claimed to have an allergy. The bickering about tuna went on well into adulthood in the way that these things do in families. Nana married my grandfather and they had my mother. Nonie eventually married, moved away and had a family. And still the disagreement about tuna fish was maintained. Nana never really argued about things in so many words, but when someone said or did something she didn't like her disapproval was plain. She’d make a soft snorting noise, purse her thin lips and frown. Nana could frown with her whole body. You could feel that frown even if her back was toward you, could feel it in the set of her shoulders and the stiffness of her stocky, fully-corseted body. All four feet eleven inches of her was involved when disapproval was being communicated. As I said, Nana was a serious woman.

Aunt Nonie frequently visited Fort Erie, the town where they’d grown up and where my grandparents continued to live. On one of those visits she and my grandmother went grocery shopping. I don’t know what got into Nana (a woman not normally susceptible to spontaneous outbursts) but as they walked down the aisle of canned goods, she suddenly grabbed a tin of tuna and whirling around, shoved it under Nonie’s nose and yelled, “There! You think you’ll break out in a rash if you smell the tin?”

Except it wasn’t Nonie. Nana had not noticed that her sister had dropped back a little and another woman- some hapless shopper- had moved up the aisle only to have this tiny grey-haired figure shove a tin of tuna at her and scream something about a rash. The woman froze in terror, and Nana, shocked and sputtering, tried to explain. But she couldn’t, because she and Nonie started laughing. The harder she tried to explain the harder they both laughed until the two of them were doubled over in spasms, tears streaming down their faces while the woman made her escape.

When my grandmother told this story- often after my Aunt Nonie’s prompted her with, “Tell them all about how you threatened some poor woman with a tin of tuna,” we would all start laughing. And Nana would laugh that deep belly laugh as she told the story, her eyes filling with tears and her face getting dark pink. I laughed with her, for her, delighted to see that she could have a moments of real silliness- in the grocery store and in the retelling of the story.

There are a lot of stories about my grandmother that would not make anyone laugh. But this is how I like to remember her- sitting at her kitchen table telling the tuna story, laughing and wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. Like the sound of the little girl’s giggling in the park, just thinking about it, makes me smile.