Grandma and the Manicure

Grandma always had perfectly manicured fingernails. In her old age, she had a placemat at her spot at the kitchen table, which now that I think of it, was at the head of the table. Interesting in itself.

Under that placemat was a treasure of things she might need at any moment.  It was pretty scary what she'd pull out from under there sometimes. And one of the items was an emory board.  Not the soft disposable cardboard ones, but a real, metal emory board. She'd whip it out during any conversation and fix one of her nails. They were all long, always had perfect clear polish on them, and it seemed none of them ever broke. Through cooking, cleaning and anything else, those nails were perfect. As a child, I tried and tried to grow my nails to be like Grandma's, to no avail.

Yet Grandma didn't always have long nails, she said. Mrs. Livolsi made her grow them. And she always called her Mrs. Livolsi--never anything else when telling a story about her. Mrs. Livolsi was her boss in the 40s, during WWII, when Grandma no longer had a husband, she had a daughter to raise and needed to support them. So she got a waitressing job at a diner-type restaurant that is now the Japanese Steak House on Rt. 17 in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ. Back then it was a hangout for fledgling aviators trying their hand at Teterboro airport as well as other regulars.

Grandma was a nailbiter, however, and that was just unacceptable to Mrs. Livolsi. With her thick accent, she told my Grandmother that she could not have hands like that to present to the customers and still expect tips. She painted bright red nail polish on Grandma's nails as a reminder to not bite them and to grow them or else. And grow them she did, until they were beautifully long and presentable to the customers. Grandma called those 5 years of waitressing some of the best years of her life for all she learned and experienced. Eventually she met my Grandfather and remarried. And once that was the case, you generally didn't work outside the home again. But she kept her nails manicured perfectly for the rest of her life.