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This Mother’s Day, don’t forget about the supermoms: grandmas

Early on weekday mornings, my mother-in-law boarded one bus in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, then switched to another for the 90-minute trip to our apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. Now just past 65, Antoinette Chirichella suffered from severe osteoarthritis that forced her to walk with a waddle.

She had only recently retired from her job as a seamstress in a factory. She had hunched over a sewing machine for 47 years — a career started when she dropped out of eighth grade at age 14 to help support her family of six — and raised her only child by herself. Now she was reporting for duty in the highest of callings: to take care of her two grandchildren for the day.

Our kids knew her as grandma, while everyone else called her Nettie. 

She would arrive at the front door to our apartment, thereby instantly freeing my wife, Elvira, and me to go to our full-time jobs. Handsome and olive-skinned, with warm brown eyes and a saintly smile, Grandma Nettie then devoted herself to looking after Michael and Caroline, ages seven and two, until we came home.

Now let’s fast-forward 30 years.........

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