Elsie

Today, my cousin, Kevin, our family historian, sent out a reminder that our Aunt Elise would have celebrated her 119th birthday today. I know, you’re probably thinking nobody lives long enough to celebrate their 119th birthday…. but, if anyone could have done it, it would have been Elsie.
Elsie. Where do I begin? I can tell you about her cooking skills…they were fabulous. I can also tell you that, to this day, I can’t see rice pudding on a menu without smiling. It was Elsie who introduced me to that. Elise, for many years worked as a ‘domestic’ for various families who lived on Park Ave.

As a domestic, if you went to work for a middle-class family or an upper-class family, you would usually have to go to live in the house where you were working. If you were working for an upper working-class family, it was more likely that you would live at home and simply migrate over every day to do the work. Wherever you were a servant, the hours of labor were very long. If you lived in, you tended to be remote from your own family and friends. Often you would be living in an alien class environment, and employers didn’t want close contacts between the servants and the family. They certainly didn’t want the servant’s family trooping in. And they didn’t really want the servants going off to spend time with their family.
The times when you would have to work hardest were often the holidays when everyone else was having the day off, because usually then, Christmas, for example, the family for which you worked would be having a big party or dinner and you would have to work to get it all ready. This was her life.
There were also times that the families Elsie worked for would not be home for the holidays and that’s when Elise took the time to ‘use’ her employers’ home to entertain by preparing full course meals and serve HER family. Now this usually meant bribing the doorman of the building so he wouldn’t squeal, and I can still remember a family story that, once, during a full course dinner for 10 or 12 members of our family, the doorbell rang. My mother told me that everyone scattered like roaches do when the lights are turned on. I can also recall a story that my Uncle Ray used to tell that, during the long hot NY City summers, it was not unusual for Elsie to call her stepsister, Catherine, my grandmother and Ray’s mother, and tell her to send Ray and his brother Jimmy over to the Park Ave residence of her employer, ‘with towels’, so they could bath in the bathrooms.
Elise. She joined our family when her father married my grandmother’s mother after her husband passed on. A turn of the century blended family. Elsie…..cantankerous, sharp, biting; the stories of her and my grandfather sometimes not seeing eye to eye on issues are legendary. But, beneath the hair that eventually became wispy, there was kindness. She was happy to belong and happy to do for others.
There’s a lot more that I can write about regarding Elsie. I’ll save these stories for another time. I guess I just wanted to thank Kevin for reminding us that today’s her birthday. Happy Birthday, Elsie…..I’ll get some Rice Pudding tonight (even though it’s not gonna be as good as yours) on the way home…..