mattea

"Niobe's eyes are bigger than her stomach," my grandmother used to tell my mother. Which, actually, was not saying all that much, since I've frequently been told that my eyes are as large and round as not just saucers, but dinner plates. But what she meant, of course, was that I want things desperately, but, once I get them, am not quite sure what to do with them. Years later, in precisely the same tone of someone stating a moderately interesting, but undeniable, fact, my grandmother described my stepmother to my slightly shocked 13-year-old self in the following terms: "She's big as a barn. She can't cook. She doesn't know how to keep house. She must be good in bed."

My father was my grandmother's only living child and neither of his wives were, in my grandmother's view, nearly good enough for him. While my parents were married, my grandmother cordially detested my mother, Elinor. But after my mother ran off with the babysitter, she became St. Elinor, at least when my grandmother discussed her with my father's new wife, which was constantly. "Elinor was so tiny," she would tell my stepmother, "Do you know that she had trouble buying clothes because none of the stores carried such a small size? And Elinor has such a successful career. When she was in medical school, none of the men could believe that she had two babies at home and still did better on every test than they did." My stepmother, who, needless to say, met none of these descriptions, would smile gamely and try to change the subject. But, malicious as my grandmother could be, I never doubted that she loved me. We had the same pointy chin and the same mouth that looked sad, even when we weren't.

My grandmother's been gone for many years, but I'm thinking of her today, because I'm driving out to see my niece, who, though she looks nothing like my grandmother, has exactly the same name, first and last. Her first name is, I think, pretty, and just unusual enough that people usually ask to hear it twice. It's Mattea. Pronounced Matt-TEE-ah. And spelled the same way my grandmother spelled it: M as in mnemonic, A as in aye, T as in tsar, T as in darjeeling, E as in eye, A as in are.