MY Nanny

My paternal granmother, Elesa Coulier Leafe (Fox) Siler, was called Nanny by all us grandchildren.  I have to say that she was the least inhibited person I personally have ever known.  As children my sister Vickie and I would spend the night with Nanny frequently as she had a daugher, Noresa, our Aunt, who was our age.  My grandmother would always wear these see through night gowns and even though my sister and I would be there she would walk around the house without a robe.  I hated it!  I can remember trying never to look in her direction even when she was talking to me.  She would sit and watch television with us for a while every morning with those stupid gowns on. 
I remember once after my parents switched me to a different school Nanny had to take me to school one morning for some reason or another.  She, having no sense of modesty, wore one of the see through night gowns.  Thank goodness when she picked me up she had had sense enough to at least wear a robe although it didn't cover her well.  I recall I was scared to death that we would have an accident and she would have to get out of the car in that horrible get up.  I sat paralyzed in the back seat of her car praying that she would not have to get out of the car for any reason.  Thankfully she did not.
My grandmother was like this all of my life.  It was like she never learned modesty.  My mother tells tales of Nanny going to the beach with my parents once they were married in the early 1950's and walking down the beach in street clothes as people often did.  Suddenly my grandmother would remove her shirt because she was hot and continue walking along in her bra as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on.  That was something that was simply not done in the 1950's.  My mother nearly died, my father just endured it as she had done this all his life.
Later in my life when I was about 17 my grandparents moved out to live with us in Arizona.  They lived in a mobile home in our back yard for about a year.  By this time it was the mid 1970's and my grandmother had completely given up wearing a bra altogether.  The times were more liberal but she wasn't too very carful about making sure the shirt fabric was thick enough and she wasn't a young woman to be sure.
My father was always a modesty fanatic.  I understood why, he was raised by a woman who had very few modesty lines.  Although she was born in 1906 I guess she was a hippie at heart.  I loved my Nanny but she I told her more than once, "Nanny, go put a bra on!"