Annie and Olive: Part 1

Can sass and scorn transcend generations?

Since before she could speak, Olive has trolled me with the benign brutality of Miranda Priestly.

I suspect that she inherited this skill from my side of the family. My late maternal grandmother was infamous for her uncanny ability to obliterate your entire sense of self with a single, cutting remark.

Her name was Ann O’Brian, but to my siblings and me, she was always Annie.

She'd never wanted to be called Grandma or Granny — or worse, one of those cute, nonsensical nicknames like Gaga or Meemaw. When her first grandchild was born, she announced that she would be "Annie," and that was that.

She was a formidable woman who gave incredible hugs. She’d squeeze you against her chest and then thump your back with her wrinkled hands so hard that it almost hurt. My siblings and I loved her deeply, but existing in her orbit also meant living in a perpetual state of terror, never quite sure who or what she would pounce upon next.

Mealtimes, in particular, were rough. The six of us would sit there in front of our tin plates, toying with the silverware and trying desperately to remember the litany of archaic rules she relied upon to judge others’ etiquette and point out where it was lacking.

(I still find myself following many of these rules decades later. Dishes must be passed to the right; Spoon your soup away from you; Never cut the tip off a triangle of cheese; Signal that you've finished eating by arranging your fork and knife beside each other, pointing at 12 o’clock.)

The rules were exhaustive and inane. Inevitably, one of us would screw up, and Annie would pounce, withering the unlucky transgressor with a stare or remark so sharp that we'd sometimes leave the table in humiliated tears.

You weren’t even safe slicing a loaf of bread — Annie once told my sister, Lizzie, with great exasperation, that she cut bread like a heathen, while my mom had long since been banned from doing so because (according to Annie) she was incapable of cutting anything but "great doorstops”.

In short, Annie was a terrific snob, a woman of refined and exacting judgement, and the self-appointed arbiter of good taste. She loomed large in our lives as judge, jury, and executioner, we lived in constant fear of her deeming things "not good enough" or simply not done.

Men wearing earrings, for example, was simply not done, as my brother found out when he arrived at our family cottage one summer with two small plugs in his earlobes.

Sitting in an old wicker chair by the large glass patio windows, Annie looked icily at Liam’s new additions as she tapped her rings against the top of her cane. Then she picked up her glass of gin, looked out the window, and idly rattled the ice cubes before taking a slow sip.

A less experienced observer might think she'd lost interest or simply decided not to say anything, but we knew better and held our breath, waiting for the inevitable.

"If I was a twenty-six-year-old man," she finally mused aloud to no one in particular, "I wouldn't have holes in my ears."

There was a pause.

“Well,” replied Liam, attempting to sound lighthearted, “I am. And I do.”

Annie levelled her gaze in his direction once more, lingering, as though searching for redeeming qualities and finding none. She then raised her eyebrows, turned her gaze back out the window, and took another slow sip of gin.

She didn’t restrict her judgment to just family, either. She and my granddaddy visited us in Calgary one year, and on their last night in town, my dad took us all out to dinner.

The restaurant was an inexpensive, family-friendly establishment, the type that offers a kid’s menu with free desserts.

When the waiter came to take our orders, Annie was invited to go first, and we all waited in silence as she perused the menu, flapping through the thick, plastic-covered pages one by one.

Finally, after an interminable silence in which I began to wonder if she'd forgotten that she was supposed to be ordering, she closed the menu and placed it down in front of her. Not looking at the waiter standing beside her, she waved her hand in his general direction and asked, "Do you have anything other than garbage food?"

---

When I was eighteen, I stopped eating meat, and in fact, have not eaten it in the two decades since (barring the odd Ikea hot dog or errant bacon bit). This is now just a fact of my existence, but at the time, steeped in the black-and-white thinking of my late teens, it felt like this decision made me a Good Person.

I was quite proud of myself and the great sacrifice I was making for The Animals, eagerly lapping up the praise and admiration it earned me. "Oh my gosh, I could never do that," my best friend gasped dramatically when I told her. "Good for you!"

I beamed modestly.

Annie, however, was less impressed. When we started to prepare dinner the first night that summer, she pulled a roast out of the fridge, and my mum sidled up beside me and discreetly asked what I was going to eat. Nothing escaped Annie's sharp attention, however. She pressed her hands flat on the worn formica countertop and leaned forwards.

"What do you mean, what is she going to eat?" she asked loudly.

"Maddie's gone vegetarian," my mom explained, somewhat apologetically.

"Vegetarian."

"Yes, vegetarian. She doesn't eat meat anymore."

Annie narrowed her eyes and stared intently at my mom for a few moments before shifting her gaze to me, waiting for me to explain myself.

"It's because of the animals…" I offered lamely. (Where the hell were my accolades?)

Annie sighed and turned her attention back to the roast. “How tiresome.”

---

Annie died when I was 31 weeks pregnant, and although they never met, I have always noticed small echoes of her in Olive.

But without ever laying eyes on each other or even being blood relations (my mom was adopted), these little hints of Annie always make me wonder: Can sass and scorn really transcend generations?

To be continued…