Legacy

My great-grandmother, Mary Regina Lynch, was born in 1895 and came of age in the early Aughts. She was one of the youngest in a massive Irish family, which is perhaps a redundancy. Maybe it was birth order, maybe it was genetics, or maybe it was just her, but she was a quintessential firecracker.

I only ever knew Gamma as an elderly woman in a nursing home, but even there, she was a pistol. She hated the nursing home and would call my mother, her favorite grandchild and the only relative left on the same coast, berating her into smuggling in booze. Gamma had diabetes and was not supposed to drink, but as my mom put it, she’s in a nursing home. The woman’s got to have some fun. Gamma’s favorites were “twosies,” her pet name for premixed Cocktails for Two – that is, until she discovered Bailey’s Irish Cream. She called our house one night, irate that we’d “kept it” from her.

So we’d smuggle booze in, Gamma would get tipsy, wink at passersby and slur “Come up an’ sshee me sshometime.” For this reason, I’ve always associated her with Mae West, and apparently, that’s not too far off.

Unlike most pre-suffrage women, Gamma was well-educated. She’d gone to college, a feat rarely heard of at the time. She also had a motorcycle that she’d ride through the hills of her town. Domestic chores held little interest for her, and my grandfather (her only son-in-law) swore that he single handedly defeated the Japanese in the Pacific by launching Gamma’s rock-hard meatballs at them. Clothes and make-up were more in her wheelhouse and even in her later years, she’d get all dolled up in a gold lame dress to go to work. After she was widowed, she took a shine to Jimmy, a local barman and would strut in, my mother in tow, and conspiratorially whisper “Remember, my name’s Mrs. Jones.”

She is, in short, my idol.

I can remember Gamma’s perfume vaguely, but it blends in with the astringent smells of the nursing home. Emeraude was her signature scent, and I can’t wait to try it out. Its scent profile is similar to Shalimar, one of my favorite scents ever.

Gamma died when I was about 10. She remains quite a legacy to live up to, but dammit, I do hope I’m doing her proud.