Snapshot: My great-aunt, the Resistance heroine
This photograph shows my maternal great-grandmother, my grandmother and her siblings. Her husband is probably off laying transatlantic cables. Family legend has it that every time he came home, he gave her another baby and another jewel.
My grandmother (Nanny) is the solemn-looking little girl standing next to her brother Guy in his sailor suit. He was the only boy, adored by all, and died in a motorcycle accident a few days before my grandmother’s wedding. As a result, she married in black with a long white jacket over the top. As a child, I didn’t understand why anyone would get married in black.
It is Ivy, the baby in the christening gown, who makes the best story in my family. She married a Dutch Jewish man called Maurits van Lier and, during the second world war, lived in occupied Holland. She helped Allied airmen escape back to the UK and the US. Maurits was interned in a concentration camp but survived.
We still have the letter sent to her by General Dwight D Eisenhower following the US president’s direction to “express the gratitude and appreciation of the American people for gallant service in assisting the escape of Allied soldiers from the enemy.”
I met her only once, in the back garden of the house I grew up in. I was shushed by my mother for saying that she had a face like a monkey, all creased and lined. “Auntie Bobbie”, as I knew her, died in Spain, apparently homeless and penniless. But her bank account was healthy and her bank box full of her mother’s jewels. Her estate went to my nan as the last surviving sibling. It meant that Nanny, who had spent her life watching every penny could finally afford to buy food in Marks & Spencer. She also acquired all the jewels. A diamond and white-gold twist came to me and I wear it now, along with my grandmother’s wedding ring, as I type, looking at this snapshot of my beloved grandmother, my great-aunts, the great-uncle I never had a chance to meet and the Resistance heroine.
Kate Osborne
Playlist: In memory of my cherished sister
I Heard it Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye
“Don’t you know that I heard it through the grapevine / Not much longer would you be mine / Oh I heard it through the grapevine / Oh I’m just about to lose my mind”
This song reminds me of my elder sister and the good times we had as young adults. On Saturday nights in summer, we used to open the windows of our shared bedroom and we would play our records as we put on our makeup in front of a very large mirror. As there was a four-year difference in our ages, we didn’t socialise together, but we shared the anticipation of a good night out with our separate friends.
In the next few years, I fell in love and got married. My sister was my bridesmaid and she subsequently became godmother to my daughter. Because of my husband’s job, we lived abroad for a time. My sister always visited and our tie was still strong and we had fun. Some years later, my most cherished sister married. Her husband did not care for her family. I think she was made to choose between him and her family. Perhaps this is what I want to believe, but our contact with each other gradually ceased.
Our paths diverted and she died without having spoken to me for years. Sixteen years later, I still think of her and remember the joy of those days when we were young and liked each other. This was our favourite track on one of the LPs that we played each Saturday night.
Brenda Carden
We love to eat: Grandma’s egg mashed up in a cup
Ingredients
1 egg
Butter
Scottish morning roll (if you can find one)
Hard boil the egg (or leave it just on the side of soft-boiled, if you prefer), remove the shell, then place in a cup, add a generous lump of butter, and chop the egg and the butter vigorously together with a knife. To eat, spoon it out of the cup directly, or plop on your roll, which is best buttered. The combination of the hot egg with an occasional cold sliver of butter is a great one. Nowadays, I make it with unsalted butter and a good grinding of black pepper, and usually eat it on rye or sourdough toast.
But “eggmashedupinacupwithbutter” is the dish I best remember. I heard its name – and ate it often – before I could read and write, and perceived it as a single entity, a collection of sounds. My parents moved to London from Glasgow when I was four, and eggmashedupinacupwithbutter was always the first thing Grandma would feed me when we visited Glasgow. The rolls were a Scottish breakfast staple: thin, crisp, dark crust speckled with beige, and soft bread inside.
Grandma Wilson – or “Granma”, as she signed off the weekly letter she sent me, rolled up in brown paper along with a Twinkle comic and a 10p coin – wasn’t a great cook. She made traditional Scottish staples such as mince and tatties (watery and lumpy, respectively), and her chips were long and thin, burnt black on the outside and verging-on-raw on the inside.
Her soup, however, was smashing: homemade stock from a long-boiled chicken carcass, with finely chopped carrots, a handful of rice and chopped parsley.
Eggmashedupinacupwithbutter is still my go-to comfort food, and it feels like a big hug from Granma, who died 12 years ago.
Adrienne Wyper
We’d love to hear your stories
We will pay £25 for every Letter to, Playlist, Snapshot or We Love to Eat we publish. Write to Family Life, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or email family@theguardian.com. Please include your address and phone number.
