prayerful of dreams - 2008-06-28
preschool princess - 2008-06-16
life with my sweetheart - 2008-04-29
the fast approach of four - 2008-04-12
lighting up my own life - 2008-03-08

2002-02-10 - 11:43 a.m.

My Italian Great Grandfather was a dapper little man. He was as bald as they come, but to my small eyes, his head was a shiny olive that glistened in the sun. He forever was smiling, and to this day I can not think of him, without catching the reflection of his beaming grin. He came to America on one of the large passenger ships at the turn of the Century and passed through Ellis Island. He was all of 7 years old. He was accompanied by several of his teen aged brothers and under their careful tutelage , took up smoking at age 8. Women and wine, were soon to follow.

One day fate was bored and put him in the path of all of our destiny. He met my strapping Blonde, blue eyed Polish Lithuanian Great Grandmother, named Mary Ann and was instantly smitten. Alas she had two much older and fiercely protective Pollock brothers who were not about to see a barely five feet tall Romeo make off with their family prize . So, he just continued to make eyes at Mary Ann and then one day he also made a baby. And you would not believe how fast those two brothers chased him to the alter, with there swollen ankled sister dressed all in white, waiting for her grinning rogue groom. She was about 6 inches taller than him. and that was the only time her waist was ever smaller that his, because she soon overflowed with life and children.

My grandfather came hurtling head first into the world, on June 20, 1920. He was born on the kitchen table. His sixteen yr old mother fighting and clawing him into the world, leaving behind finger rake marks , carved deep into the antique wood. This is the same table that the family ate off of for the next 50 years.

She went on to have 3 more children in quick succession. and there is a photograph that exists of them, standing by their depression era family car, my great grandfather tiny and grinning widely. He appears so small in comparison to his stocky bride, who is wearing a peasant smock dress , her huge bosom straining at the seams, and bursting with roundness. She is unsmiling and worn down by poverty and her 4 rapscallion children, the two boys with dirty faces and oversized pants rolled up at the bottom and impish little caps, whilst the two pristine girls are beguiling in carefully folded curls and doll like dresses. The sepia edges of the now aged photo, blurring out the sound of the rattling hum of the antique Ford cars driving past and the giggling joi de vie of the children. My Great Grandmother is probably 24 yrs old in this picture but looks 50. She would be dead at 41 of a massive heart attack.

My bereived great grandfather, newly widowed, went back to the old country for a visit. He came home, laden with wedges of parmesean cheese, several large sides of prosciotto and a new bride. He was gifted the village spinster, a round little lady whose brothers happily fawned her off on the prosperous short Italian American man. Her name was Antoinette. She was 37 years old, with nary a prospect in sight. She spoke not a word of English and life had turned her hair shades of blue and grey. For all the times I ever saw her, she was always dressed in black. Black pants, and a huge black blouse, once again, straining at the seams of her giant bosom. All his life, my great grandfather was married to women that were easily twice his size. And he always had a mischievous grin, like he carried a delicious secret.

His mourning children were none to pleased when he showed up with his new bride. Life was not easy for many years, as everyone tried somewhat difficultly to adjust to the way things had become. Antoinette struggled to get used to her new life in America, in this small town in Rhode Island, where everyone had cars and noone kept goats. She cooked all the grandchildren's pet rabbits, which were kept in a pen in the back yard and served it to them for dinner. And then made the mistake of telling them afterwards in broken english that she had just served them flopsy and mopsy stew, which they had so greedily consumed and then promptly burst into horrified sobs when they realized what they had just devoured.

But, my mother loved her. Because she spent many many hours over at that narrow house, playing in the backyard, and talking to Antoinette and eating her favourite treat, stale italian bread in a bowl, with milk and sugar on top. My mother eating spoonful after spoonful of the soggy concoction served on the antique wood table, that her father had spilled out onto.

And Antoinette's English improved, and she stopped telling the children that she had cooked their rabbit's even though she never actually stopped cooking them. She kept a little garden out back, and one day in 1960 she planted a twig from a friends weeping willow tree. and tended carefully to it.

The weeping willow tree grew and grew and grew, and the bunnies kept multiplying and the peppers and tomatoes and string beans forever ripening on the vine, and my round little step great grandmother spent the next 20 years of her life, tethered to the cramped 6 foot wide kitchen serving meal after meal to grandchild after grandchild. and life stopped at 4 0'clock every day, because that was when my fastidious little Great grandfather took coffee and biscuits. His canary on his shoulder, both of them whistling Italian arias in operatic unison, and the lil yellow bird delicately sipping creamy coffee out of the saucer. and sharing crumbs of buttery cookies. My great grandmother would have *loved* to have cooked that canary, but new better than to try. Little papa ( that was our nickname for him) would then put on his fez hat and camel overcoat, and tucking a hershey bar in his front breast pocket, and head over to my grandparent's restaurant next door for his nightly cigar chomping, whiskey swilling, small stakes poker games.

and still the willow tree grew and grew. and the grandchildren started having their own children. and it did not take us long to figure out that little papa always had a stash of Hershey bar's in his pockets that we would try to covet. And he laughingly let us steal them, and watched amusedly as we stained our faces with chocolate, and attempted in vain to use our tongues to get at the last traces of chocolate smeared just out of reach on our chubby cheeks.

and for all the days of my life, the willow tree was 30 feet tall and offered a boundless canopy of shade in the chicken pecked, dirt strewn back yard. The white house that was my great grandfather's home for 50 years, started looked smaller and smaller on that busy main street in Cranston Rhode Island. The passing of the decades brought a Steel factory next door and a rusted chain link fence ran along one side of the white house, and the abandoned train tracks that criss crossed behind the house, went still from disuse and fell into disrepair. My mother grew up balancing herself on those tracks, her dirt covered arms spread open so she would not fall and skipping along between the tracks amusing herself for all the hours of her childhood. and it was to this grass less back yard that we came, to visit Little papa and Lil granma and eat nests of steaming Spaghetti and Meatballs and flavourful roasted chicken and peppers and plates piled hgh with eggplant parmigiana and endless bowls of Italian Wedding soup.

Then, the canary died, and the replacement died and then even his replacement died. The years were yellowing my shiny little papa. His tobacco stained lungs started to fail. And my grandfather was not about to sit idly and watch it happen. He collected the still smiling frail bag of bones that my little papa had become, and flew to the Dominican Republic to try and get him a controversial new radical treatment that was not yet approved in the United States. And he prayed and held his father's small hand in his, and made oversea phonecalls to report how things were going. In less than 2 weeks, my little papa died, still wearing his dapper smile.

My grief stricken grandfather flew home,cluthing his fathers unused return ticket broken hearted that his father was not in the seat next to him, but rather, in the underbelly of the plane, in a mahogany casket, tucked in amidst the tourist's luggage.

And the funeral took place with much pomp and Italian splendour, at the Large Catholic Cathedral where all the children and grandchildren and now great grandchildren had been Baptized and confirmed and some married. Acres of white lily's filled the church, and tears stained the aisles. And the tiny birds outside,bowed there small heads and trilled Italian Aria's. and saddest of all, Sales of hershey bar's plummetted.

and my eternal black wearing great grandmother was upset because my little papa could not be buried in Italy. You can not transport the desceased through more than one International port, and since he had died in the Carribean, and been transported home, there was no way he could be shipped back to Italy. She was very distraught over this, because she planned to be buried in Italy. And when a Widower dies, there is alot of controversy amongst the family, because obviously the living children of the First wife, legitimately want their father buried next to their beloved mother. It caused a bit of grief and ultimately little papa, was buried in the ground next to his first wife, MaryAnn and construction began on an above ground marble and stone masoleum. Years later, when it was finished, she had him dug back up and relocated into the mausoleum. Little granma, visited him every day. I think she spent more time with him, dead than she did when he was alive, because the poker games no longer cut into his day, taking him away from her. Sometimes she left little handpicked wilted flowers on MaryAnn's grave, I am sure as a way to appease her guilt for having MaryAnn's husband relocated for all eternity.

My little granma is still alive. She is 88 years old. And she moved back to Italy 2 years ago. to die. And she holds family above all else, but in the end, she wanted to be near her blood relatives, the nieces and nephews that she never knew because once upon a time her life was here, in America, beneath a Willow tree covered back yard, alive with throngs of grandchildren. It is a bit strange to me, that she chose to return to a home she left behind. But I guess her heart belongs to the Sea filled Italian countryside of Amantea. She has a little ground floor stone apartment, and sleeps with the shutters open to the turquoise sea. And every day, she oversees the building of her mausoleum. She watches the workers, to make sure that they do not try to cheat her by taking a break or overcharge her for their hours. She is spending the last few years of her life, getting ready for her death. She sends me shaky scrawled cards at Christmas and Easter, and hungers for any news of the family. And now that my sister has a baby, she is a Step GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHER. Not to bad for someone who never had any children of her own. My mother once told me, that little grandma had been pregnant, late in life. And lost the baby at five months. She had named him Michael. and my heart aches for her, that she not only lost her only child, that never grew to even be born but also her husband of 20 years whom she would spend the next 25 years mourning, and alas, in a way, she lost all of us, when she chose to return home to her past. a past that no longer is as she remembers it. All the family that she knew when she lived in Amantea, are now entombed in there own mausoleums. She lives amongst the vague scattered offspring of her siblings. and she pretends that she does not remember speaking English or miss American T.V. and I am sure she shuts out the thought of my little papa, in his crypt, unvisited by anyone for the last few years. No more half wilted flower bouquets on MaryAnn's grave either. and my own beloved grandfather lays in the ground in Florida in a Veteran's cemetary that I have only been to once, on the saddest day of my life, the day his flag draped coffin was lowered into the steaming desert baked florida ground.

but life is all about choices. and this is her choice. She lives and consequently will die, according to her choice. and I choose to remember things as they once were. There is an old 35 mm home movie, taken of me, in Florida, and I am a chubby tan little 2 yr old, with the blonde ringlets, stuffed into red shorts and a ruffly cropped top, and I have the garden hose. Ah, the power I possess. You can see it gleaming in my sparkling with mischief green eyes, as I wield my weapon at all the laughing adults. I brandish it like a 9 barrel shot gun, showing no mercy, chasing first my grandfather around in wide circles and then, little papa. They laugh and flee from me, in mock horror, as I manage to chase them down and douse them with my evil water rays. My great granma, stands off to the side, watching with a smile, but she is not actually a part of the game. She is a silent observor. Before long, my 24 year old parents are chasing me like school children at recess, and slipping on the wet slick grass that I leave behind in my terror strewn wake. The laughter is muted. The movie is silent, but in my head, I can hear it, I can hear the sounds of our ribbon strewn laughter filling the spaces around us. and that is how I choose to remember us.

I do not want a mausoleum. I do not care where I lie, because I live more in that moment , than most any other consequent one to date.

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