Omi’s Little Room

I was killing time today at Adorn, a local vintage shop, when a little folding travel alarm clock caught my eye (yes, pun fully intended). Instantly I thought of my grandmother—our beloved Omi (Rose Spiegel Lichtenthal)—who always traveled with one just like it.

Omi didn’t drive (something I couldn’t quite wrap my kid-brain around), so whenever she came to visit, we picked her up at the Greyhound station in what we considered the big city of New Haven. In her later visits—probably up until 1971, since she passed away in October 1972, just after her 69th birthday—she stayed in what we called the little room. I can still see her perched on the twin bed, carefully placing the alarm clock on the small orange shelf beside it. That shelf lives on: my granddaughter Paisley has it now—painted black—in her own room.

There was always laughter when Omi visited. About what? I couldn’t tell you. But I do have one unforgettable memory: she and I, for reasons lost to time, sitting on the basement stairs. Something struck her so funny she laughed until she peed her pants. (At the risk of TMI, I’ll admit she passed that trait on to me. Thanks, genetics.)

Tick-Tock and Radium Glow

That clock in the shop got me wondering—especially since I just read Radium Girls (Kate Moore is the author, by the way). Could Omi’s little Westclox have had a luminous dial painted with radium? Nothing like a little radioactive bedtime glow to lull you to sleep.

Naturally, I texted my sister Jeanne to see if she had the clock or at least remembered it. She didn’t have it—but here’s where things got weird. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

The Green Stamp Connection

Jeanne wrote back that she never got Omi’s clock, but years ago she’d redeemed S&H Green Stamps for a similar one, precisely because it reminded her of our grandmother. And then the kicker: Jeanne had just found that very clock while cleaning—on the same day I was staring at the one in the vintage shop.

What do you do with that? I called her right away. Turns out, she unearthed her clock at almost the exact time I was admiring the one at the shop. Serendipity, spooky family timing, call it what you want. This sort of thing happens more often than you’d think—like the day Jeanne discovered our great-grandfather’s wallet while I happened to be writing about his death.

How I Picture Her Still

The image I carry of Omi, frozen in time: a petite frame (not short, just delicate), short gray hair, black-rimmed cat-eye glasses (were there rhinestones in the corners? I hope so), a pink cashmere short-sleeved sweater paired with a gray pleated wool skirt, and on her tiny hand, a large aquamarine ring that always seemed almost too big for her. She was soft-spoken, with a distinct Viennese accent that made even grocery lists sound elegant.

It’s been decades since she perched that clock on the little orange shelf, but one look at a vintage Westclox today and suddenly, there she was again—laughing, glowing (hopefully from joy more than radium), and still finding ways to show up right on time.