Shrines

Though the grannies and I spend our days in different ways—I commute to Manhattan every day, Sophie takes daily trips to the cornerstore to buy Sprite and Chips Ahoy, Olga hasn’t left the house in about 5 years except to go to the emergency room, and Mrs Fruehauf takes daily trips to the neighborhood senior center to play Bingo except on the days she takes her senior bus trips to the casino in Yonkers—we are also one in the same. We’ve all got very German last names, and likewise we’ve all got a certain fondness for pilly cardigans, big eyeglasses, a good kraut.

And lately it seems I’ve picked up a habit of making shrines throughout my apartment, as is very characteristic for a grandmother. A shrine of candles and dried flowers here, a shrine of an old typewriter and photos there, a shrine of bamboo plants and mini books on top of the toilet. I assume it won’t be long until I’m taking inspiration from Sophie and shrinemaking with baby Jesuses, rosary beads, Christmas ornaments, pieces of mail from a decade ago.

One of Sophie’s proudest shrines is the row of a dozen fake roosters lining the top edge of her refrigerator, in size order. I think she’s proud of how, over the years, she’s managed to collect 12 different sized rooster figurines, some even with real chicken feathers. Another notable shrine in the house is Olga’s neatly ordered collection of pill bottles and photo frames atop her kitchen hutch—the wonder of which is that the photos in the frames change on the reg. This isn’t because they’re digital photo frames, but because Olga switches out photos two or even three times a day depending on her mood.

So in any given frame, in the morning there might be an old photo of her sister Sophie, but if in the afternoon she gets into an argument with Sophie over something like a carton of milk, she might change the photo to an old portrait of their mother. If seeing her mother makes Olga too emotional in the evening, she might change it to a photo of her old garden or even back to a photo of Sophie.

And at the end of the day, whether I’ve learned by example or whether it’s in our family blood to cling to relics from the past and collect them in piles around our apartments, this habit of shrinemaking doesn’t seem to be one I’ll kick anytime soon.