09.2 Hist 20 podcast: Hedda 1980-1989

Hedda in the 9th decade of the 20th C

Transcript

University of California UCOP | Hist20 Podcast 9.2

Hi guys. This podcast checking in with Hedda is hard. And I think you might know why. This is the decade that

Hedda dies. And it's kind of hard saying goodbye to her at this stage. I got used to talking about her every week

and finding out new things about her. And the fact is I'm not done finding out stuff about my great-grandmother.

This class has given me an opportunity to explore her past through a series of documents and conversations with

family members. And while this decade makes me sad because I really don't like the fact that she dies, fact is

she's been dead for a while now. And so in a sense, I'm revisiting the loss, but that loss happened a while ago.

And what I also noticed is that during the course of this quarter, she was very much alive. She was with us. I

introduced her to you. I've met a lot of you want deviled eggs, her deviled eggs. So on the one hand, it's a hard

podcast to start, but I realize that the proof is in the pudding. I think we've all enjoyed exploring her life, and I'm

going to continue. And so that's how I'm going to keep her alive for a little while longer.

But I do want to tell you the decade of the '80s is the decade when my family returned to Belgium in 1982. And I

got to see Hedda a lot more often, whereas for the first sort of in the '70s up until '82, I only saw her in the

summer once. I mean I saw her a couple of times in the summer, and I had this sort of very restrained experience

of my great-grandmother in the summer. Now I got to see her throughout the year. Sometimes, I would drop by

her place, obviously, not unannounced. You don't do that to an 80-year-old woman, but I saw her more often. And

I saw her in different circumstances. Sometimes, she wasn't as well put together as she might have liked.

Sometimes, we just sat around and had tea. Always, she spoke German to me. She didn't speak French with me,

that she spoke with her grandchildren. But because my mother was German, is German, for some strange

reason, she spoke in German with me.

And this is also the decade as she's growing older. I was seeing her more often, but I'm seeing less of her in a

way. That one of the most emblematic images of Hedda happens. So this is late. This is some time probably the

summer of 1985, and I know it's the summer because we're at the beach. And something you might have noticed

about Hedda, I don't know if I talked about how she dressed, but she was an unbelievably elegant woman. And

there are photographs of her in the portfolio where you can see that there's this woman-- always wore pantyhose.

I mean she wore heels, and she wore skirts and dresses. I don't think I ever saw her wearing a pair of pants. And

her hair was always impeccable. And as she grew older and her hair grew thinner, she didn't lose her vanity. She

might have been losing her hair, but she wasn't losing her vanity. So she started wearing really elegant wigs. She

had a particular one. So she always had a wig on so that she would look put together. She always had lipstick on.

I actually never saw her without lipstick, all the way to the end. And she always had fantastic jackets.

But this memory I have of her. So I think it's the summer of 1985, maybe '86. It was a hot summer, and she wasnot wearing pantyhose. She was not wearing any of her fancy jackets. She was wearing one of her daughter's

muumuus at the beach. And she wasn't wearing a wig. And I honestly thought somebody had taken her over, but

she was sitting at the beach with her naked feet in the sand, nibbling on salt pretzel sticks, enjoying herself like

she was 12 years old. She had a mischievous grin on her face as she nibbled on these things and looked at me.

And she raised a relatively penciled eyebrow and just handed the bag to me just saying, you want some? I'm

never going to forget Hedda that way. I mean, to me, she will always be a very elegant woman. But I think part of

what was so fascinating about her was that that elegant woman with the wig, with the high heeled shoes, and the

lipstick, that was her front. And the real Hedda, I think, was the one nibbling at the age of 86 on a bag of salted

pretzels sticks at the beach. Finally not caring enough because now we could see her exactly as she was. No wig.

Just a muumuu. God, that look was-- that was strange.

The summer after that, I went away. I traveled, and that was the summer that Hedda decided she had had

enough, literally. It was the summer of 1987. She was going to turn 87 on August 10th, as you know. And

sometime in June, my mother told me. She just had enough. She was bored. Most of her friends were gone. And

clearly, there wasn't much for her to get dressed for anymore. And so in June, she sort of-- she stopped. She

wasn't interested in eating any more. She stayed home. She stayed in bed. She pretty much told my mother she

was done with it. She'd had enough. And in true Hedda fashion, when she put her head to something, she

accomplished it. And so around the beginning of July, probably just a month before she was going to turn 87,

Hedda breathed her last breath and passed on to another realm. And that's that. That's the 80s for Hedda.

Well I'm really grateful you guys stuck around for this story this long. And I hope you realize that while Hedda

wasn't around when I started telling the story. She's been gone for, wow-- how many years? 30 years now? She's

still very much alive in my mind. And I'm really grateful you guys gave me the opportunity to rediscover her and

start writing about her. And maybe someday, I'll publish a book about her with a lot more details. Until then, well,

so long, Hedda. I love you.