When I was a kid, I loved Cracker Jack.... it came in boxes with that little Cracker Jack boy and his dog pictured on the label. I think it was seven cents a box when I first became aware of this special treat.
My dad loved sweets, and he and I would always share a Hershey's chocolate bar (five cents back then) or a bag of M&Ms, also five cents in the 1950s. And for a special treat, a box of Cracker Jack. Daddy ate the peanuts, I ate the popcorn. It was a perfect arrangement because I didn't like peanuts (still don't) and my father said the sticky popcorn got stuck in his teeth.
In the 1950s, Cracker Jack had a tiny surprise inside the box... a charm-sized animal or doll, a little ring or a tiny toy. I don't exactly remember when they stopped including those miniatures in their boxes of Cracker Jack.... now they have paper riddles and jokes and puzzles. Kids today don't know what they're missing, and the adults who once saved all their Cracker Jack toys back in the day can now buy them on eBay for ridiculous amounts of money.
When I was old enough to sit through a two-hour show, daddy and I went to Madison Square Garden in New York City to see Barnum and Bailey's Circus. My dad's favorite parts of the circus were the animal acts and the clowns, and the grilled hot dogs. I didn't much care for hot dogs then (still don't) and besides, hot dogs were messy, and I always had to wear a dress when we went into The City. Popcorn was a much safer choice... not as messy, and just as filling. I would have a box of popcorn in one hand, and a lighted circus necklace around my neck (all the kids would swing those necklaces in a circle when they lowered the bright stage lights and all you could see were thousands of little red dots glowing on necklaces around the arena).
In high school, popcorn was out and pizza became the snack of choice.... friends would meet at the local pizza place after school, or on the weekends. Either by the slice or a whole pie, depending on how many kids were there, pizza was definitely the thing to eat if you were going to ruin your dinner or splurge on calories in the 1960s. My dad was still driving the bus for the Transit Authority when I was in high school, and there were days when I would meet him at the last stop on his line, and ride half the way back along the Avenue with him, getting off at the bus stop nearest to where we lived. Most often than not on those days, daddy would give me a box of Cracker Jack as I got off the bus, saying "Don't forget to save me the peanuts!"
Pizza didn't last long as the 'treat of choice' as I got older and started worrying about calories. One slice of pizza was fine, but when you were with a lot of friends, just one slice was hard to do.... so it was best to move on to a healthier snack. Popcorn was 'in' again, and big companies were producing multi-paged catalogs with all sorts of flavored popcorn. When I was working at the library up in New York, our director would order huge tins of gourmet popcorn at Christmas and at Easter. The caramel flavor (similar to Cracker Jack) was always the first to go, with the cheese-flavored popcorn sticking around till the very last. Once the caramel popcorn was gone, I wasn't interested in the other flavors. Those popcorn companies are still in business, with the biggest one being in Chicago, I believe..... it had been featured on one of the Oprah shows, and if that isn't a life-saving endorsement for a business, then I don't know what else would be.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had a small apartment up in New York, about a twenty-minute drive away from my job at the library. With a healthy snack in mind, I bought one of those hot-air heated popcorn makers. All you needed was a good quality brand of corn kernels, and like magic, you had fresh and delicious popcorn that didn't even need a drop of butter. (Never liked butter on popcorn, and still don't.)
One thing about that hot-air popcorn maker, my whole apartment smelled like a movie theater as the kernels were popping. Which was kind of appropriate because the popcorn would be made before or during an old movie from the library's collection of VCR tapes. Casablanca..... Out of Africa.... Gone With The Wind.... An American in Paris.... Breakfast at Tiffany's..... certainly all of those films, and so many more, were popcorn-worthy.
When I moved to Texas, the big popcorn-thing here turned out to be kettle corn. Sort of sweet, like Cracker Jack, but lighter and not as sticky. Definitely addictive.... once you start eating kettle corn, it becomes your meal. Somehow, just having a handful doesn't work. Kettle corn is made in huge copper pots over an open flame, most likely found at country fairs and street celebrations in small towns. I've tried making kettle corn at home.... it just doesn't work, doesn't taste the same. Without the big copper pot and the open flame, it's just not worth the time and the calories.
Except for buying a bag of kettle corn at small-town festivals, I've been staying away from popcorn. What used to be an every-night treat in my little New York apartment is now just a whisper of memory. A small bag of Cracker Jack is nice, but not as memorable as those little boxes that would fit into my dad's shirt pocket. And I remember one Christmas long ago when my husband put a gold and diamond ring into a Cracker Jack bag that he wrapped up in Santa-and-snowmen wrapping paper.
Popcorn has such innocence to it, all that golden deliciousness wrapped up tightly and puffed up inside a tiny corn seed. The aroma of popping corn reminds me of the circus with my dad, and country fairs with street vendors yelling "Get y'all's kettle corn here!" What is especially touching to me is that just the sound of popcorn kernels bursting and exploding from the heat brings back so many memories.... and I can actually hear the dialogue of all those old movies that were 'popped' into the VCR in my tiny little apartment back in New York.
"Here's looking at you, kid." (Was there ever anyone better than Bogart?)
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Ghosts of Christmases Past...
Every night when I plug in the little light that shines into the Nativity set that my dad bought before I was born, little Christmas memories crawl across my mind like a fast-forwarding movie....
My Uncle Mino and my dad used to put knife marks into the chestnuts before they were heated up in the oven after dinner on Christmas Eve. Uncle Mino would make a cross into his half of the chestnuts, my dad would make an X. You would think, both marks being almost alike in size and design, that either mark would let enough steam escape so the chestnuts wouldn't explode in my grandmother's oven. Every year, however, there would be a discussion between my uncle and my dad as to which mark was the proper one, which mark was the most efficient, which was the most Christmas-worthy. The final decision was never committed to a lasting part of family tradition, but those chestnut discussions are still talked about to this day.
On Christmas Day, my Aunt Edie would proudly show the rest of the family how she decorated the large wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey that everyone shared the month before. Every Thanksgiving, no matter who carved the turkey, they were instructed by Aunt Edie to not only save the wishbone for her, but to not let the knife scratch or cut into that wishbone. Edie would soak the wishbone in warm soapy water, getting off all the meat residue. By the time she was finished cleaning and polishing up that wishbone, it looked like a fine piece of ivory. When the wishbone reached that exalted state, Edie began to create her masterpiece. First came a coat of clear nail polish. After that dried, she would paint the wishbone with her current favorite color of nail polish. (She swore that Revlon made the best polish, for both nails and wishbones.) After two or three coats of color, Edie would brush on another coat of clear nail polish. She would sprinkle the still-wet wishbone with glitter, tiny glass beads, the tiniest seed pearls, or brightly colored sequins. Aunt Edie had to plan the design before that last coat of clear polish, and she worked fast to decorate one side of the wishbone before it dried, then she'd repeat the process on the other side. The result was a sparkling and embellished turkey wishbone that she would wrap in tissue paper until it was revealed at my grandmother's house on Christmas. We all ooohed and aaahed over her creativity.... and by the time I was in high school, my grandmother had about a dozen painted and blinged-out wishbones displayed in her china cabinet.
The adults in our family had Christmas dinner in the dining room.... the kids ate at the children's table in the kitchen. In the dining room, the 'good' china was used; in the kitchen, the kids used the everyday plates. Our family never had paper plates or plastic utensils, and paper cups weren't even used in the backyard for barbeques. My Uncle Mino would never eat food served on a paper plate, not even when he worked in the city and had lunch at the corner deli or at the cafeteria in his office building. At one particular deli, where Uncle Mino was a good customer, he asked the waitress if he could please have his lunch on a 'real' plate, otherwise he just couldn't eat there. This deli had the most delicious New York-style hot dogs, something that Mino loved to eat during the summer months. He asked the waitress so nicely, and she spoke to her boss, and they provided a restaurant-style china plate for Mino whenever he ate there during his lunch hour. In our family, we all learned early on to appreciate the time it took to make good food, and we also learned that presentation and protocol was just as important as the taste. I think of all of that at Christmas time, because when I use my own collection of Christmas-design plates during the months of November and December, I have to wonder why no one in our family ever thought to use bright and festive Christmas plates at this time of the year, considering how much they all loved Christmas. Maybe our family was just too big to have a third set of dinner plates. And probably, my grandmother was more practical than I am.
My Aunt Dolly was a saver of gift boxes, ribbons, cards, wrapping paper. If it could be re-used, or made into something new and different, then she saved it... and stored these things up in the attic. At best, all her boxes of "save this" and "save that" became a craft cornucopia for all of us kids when we told her we had nothing to do. There was one Christmas that my Uncle Bernie gave my Uncle Mino a new wrist-watch. I don't remember what brand of watch it was, but I do remember that it came in a very nice wooden box. Everyone in the family still remembers that box, because my dad made such a fuss over the box, rather than appreciating the watch. My dad liked pocket watches, so his brother's new wrist-watch didn't interest him... but that wooden box certainly did, and he just couldn't get over the fact that the watch came in such an expensive box. Daddy made such a to-do over that box that Uncle Bernie made sure that Aunt Dolly saved the box..... and the following Christmas, Bernie wrapped up that watch box and gave it to my dad for Christmas. As soon as my dad unwrapped that gift from Bernie, everyone at the table just cracked up laughing.... hardly anyone could even speak because we were all laughing so hard. I remember my father laughing so hard that he cried. To this day, all you have to say to get my family walking down Memory Lane is "Remember that Christmas when Bernie wrapped up the empty watch box...."
In the 1960s, Uncle Mino's girlfriend Kathryn gave Aunt Dolly a beautiful silk garland of green holly and red berries..... it came from a shop in Manhattan, and no one in the family had ever seen anything quite like it. Aunt Dolly hung up the garland on the archway between the living room and the dining room. That particular archway had a wooden, fancy-swirled rod supporting a swag of satin curtains hanging between the two rooms. The silk leaves and the bright red berries of the garland were just the perfect Christmas touch for that space. When the Christmas decorations were taken down in January, that garland was the last bit of Christmas happiness to get packed away. The following year, it was the first decoration to be taken out of its storage box. When Kathryn passed away, the family was just devastated by her sudden and unexpected death. Even though Mino and Kathryn never married, they saw one another every weekend and Kathryn was very much a part of the family. Aunt Dolly was so saddened by Kathryn's death that Christmas came early that year..... that beautiful garland was taken from its box and hung up on the archway months before any of the other Christmas decorations came down from the attic. Kathryn's garland stayed up on that archway for years and years afterwards, never being taken down except for cleaning, and the garland was still there in 2009 when the family home was put up for sale.
When I was a kid, our tree was put up in the dining room, in the corner opposite the piano. The Nativity set that I now display in the living room of our Texas home was always underneath the Christmas tree when I was a kid. My mother would set it up at the center of the tree, on top of the tree-skirt which she would cover with a rolled-out piece of cotton batting. No one ever questioned the 'snow' scene around the manger, until I got older and let everyone know that Christ was born in a desert, not at the North Pole. This Nativity set has a lot of individual pieces...... the family, the wise men, the shepherds, a donkey, a camel, a cow, and a lot of sheep. When I was little, I would take the sheep from the Nativity set and bring them into the living room. I would put the sheep on the sofa and read stories to them, or make believe I was the teacher and the sheep were my students. My mother was constantly having to rescue the sheep and return them to the crèche, telling me that if I wasn't careful with them, their legs would break off and they wouldn't be able to follow the shepherds. Either I was very careful with the sheep years ago, or my mother rescued them just in time, because all of the sheep survived without damage to their legs. When my husband and I first saw this house, I knew that the dining room was not only big enough for the furniture we had, but also large enough for a Christmas tree that would touch the ceiling. Since we've been in this house, the real tree has always had pride-of-place in a corner of the dining room. I have quite a few Christmas trees in all of the other rooms, but the dining room tree gets the vintage bubble lights and the antique ornaments. The Nativity set is on the buffet in the living room, resting on gold-dusted bits of hay instead of a blanket of cotton snow, and I've got the same hay pieces dripping from the roof of the crèche. There are no little children to play with the sheep, and all the animals around the manger look quite content.
My Uncle Mino and my dad used to put knife marks into the chestnuts before they were heated up in the oven after dinner on Christmas Eve. Uncle Mino would make a cross into his half of the chestnuts, my dad would make an X. You would think, both marks being almost alike in size and design, that either mark would let enough steam escape so the chestnuts wouldn't explode in my grandmother's oven. Every year, however, there would be a discussion between my uncle and my dad as to which mark was the proper one, which mark was the most efficient, which was the most Christmas-worthy. The final decision was never committed to a lasting part of family tradition, but those chestnut discussions are still talked about to this day.
On Christmas Day, my Aunt Edie would proudly show the rest of the family how she decorated the large wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey that everyone shared the month before. Every Thanksgiving, no matter who carved the turkey, they were instructed by Aunt Edie to not only save the wishbone for her, but to not let the knife scratch or cut into that wishbone. Edie would soak the wishbone in warm soapy water, getting off all the meat residue. By the time she was finished cleaning and polishing up that wishbone, it looked like a fine piece of ivory. When the wishbone reached that exalted state, Edie began to create her masterpiece. First came a coat of clear nail polish. After that dried, she would paint the wishbone with her current favorite color of nail polish. (She swore that Revlon made the best polish, for both nails and wishbones.) After two or three coats of color, Edie would brush on another coat of clear nail polish. She would sprinkle the still-wet wishbone with glitter, tiny glass beads, the tiniest seed pearls, or brightly colored sequins. Aunt Edie had to plan the design before that last coat of clear polish, and she worked fast to decorate one side of the wishbone before it dried, then she'd repeat the process on the other side. The result was a sparkling and embellished turkey wishbone that she would wrap in tissue paper until it was revealed at my grandmother's house on Christmas. We all ooohed and aaahed over her creativity.... and by the time I was in high school, my grandmother had about a dozen painted and blinged-out wishbones displayed in her china cabinet.
The adults in our family had Christmas dinner in the dining room.... the kids ate at the children's table in the kitchen. In the dining room, the 'good' china was used; in the kitchen, the kids used the everyday plates. Our family never had paper plates or plastic utensils, and paper cups weren't even used in the backyard for barbeques. My Uncle Mino would never eat food served on a paper plate, not even when he worked in the city and had lunch at the corner deli or at the cafeteria in his office building. At one particular deli, where Uncle Mino was a good customer, he asked the waitress if he could please have his lunch on a 'real' plate, otherwise he just couldn't eat there. This deli had the most delicious New York-style hot dogs, something that Mino loved to eat during the summer months. He asked the waitress so nicely, and she spoke to her boss, and they provided a restaurant-style china plate for Mino whenever he ate there during his lunch hour. In our family, we all learned early on to appreciate the time it took to make good food, and we also learned that presentation and protocol was just as important as the taste. I think of all of that at Christmas time, because when I use my own collection of Christmas-design plates during the months of November and December, I have to wonder why no one in our family ever thought to use bright and festive Christmas plates at this time of the year, considering how much they all loved Christmas. Maybe our family was just too big to have a third set of dinner plates. And probably, my grandmother was more practical than I am.
My Aunt Dolly was a saver of gift boxes, ribbons, cards, wrapping paper. If it could be re-used, or made into something new and different, then she saved it... and stored these things up in the attic. At best, all her boxes of "save this" and "save that" became a craft cornucopia for all of us kids when we told her we had nothing to do. There was one Christmas that my Uncle Bernie gave my Uncle Mino a new wrist-watch. I don't remember what brand of watch it was, but I do remember that it came in a very nice wooden box. Everyone in the family still remembers that box, because my dad made such a fuss over the box, rather than appreciating the watch. My dad liked pocket watches, so his brother's new wrist-watch didn't interest him... but that wooden box certainly did, and he just couldn't get over the fact that the watch came in such an expensive box. Daddy made such a to-do over that box that Uncle Bernie made sure that Aunt Dolly saved the box..... and the following Christmas, Bernie wrapped up that watch box and gave it to my dad for Christmas. As soon as my dad unwrapped that gift from Bernie, everyone at the table just cracked up laughing.... hardly anyone could even speak because we were all laughing so hard. I remember my father laughing so hard that he cried. To this day, all you have to say to get my family walking down Memory Lane is "Remember that Christmas when Bernie wrapped up the empty watch box...."
In the 1960s, Uncle Mino's girlfriend Kathryn gave Aunt Dolly a beautiful silk garland of green holly and red berries..... it came from a shop in Manhattan, and no one in the family had ever seen anything quite like it. Aunt Dolly hung up the garland on the archway between the living room and the dining room. That particular archway had a wooden, fancy-swirled rod supporting a swag of satin curtains hanging between the two rooms. The silk leaves and the bright red berries of the garland were just the perfect Christmas touch for that space. When the Christmas decorations were taken down in January, that garland was the last bit of Christmas happiness to get packed away. The following year, it was the first decoration to be taken out of its storage box. When Kathryn passed away, the family was just devastated by her sudden and unexpected death. Even though Mino and Kathryn never married, they saw one another every weekend and Kathryn was very much a part of the family. Aunt Dolly was so saddened by Kathryn's death that Christmas came early that year..... that beautiful garland was taken from its box and hung up on the archway months before any of the other Christmas decorations came down from the attic. Kathryn's garland stayed up on that archway for years and years afterwards, never being taken down except for cleaning, and the garland was still there in 2009 when the family home was put up for sale.
When I was a kid, our tree was put up in the dining room, in the corner opposite the piano. The Nativity set that I now display in the living room of our Texas home was always underneath the Christmas tree when I was a kid. My mother would set it up at the center of the tree, on top of the tree-skirt which she would cover with a rolled-out piece of cotton batting. No one ever questioned the 'snow' scene around the manger, until I got older and let everyone know that Christ was born in a desert, not at the North Pole. This Nativity set has a lot of individual pieces...... the family, the wise men, the shepherds, a donkey, a camel, a cow, and a lot of sheep. When I was little, I would take the sheep from the Nativity set and bring them into the living room. I would put the sheep on the sofa and read stories to them, or make believe I was the teacher and the sheep were my students. My mother was constantly having to rescue the sheep and return them to the crèche, telling me that if I wasn't careful with them, their legs would break off and they wouldn't be able to follow the shepherds. Either I was very careful with the sheep years ago, or my mother rescued them just in time, because all of the sheep survived without damage to their legs. When my husband and I first saw this house, I knew that the dining room was not only big enough for the furniture we had, but also large enough for a Christmas tree that would touch the ceiling. Since we've been in this house, the real tree has always had pride-of-place in a corner of the dining room. I have quite a few Christmas trees in all of the other rooms, but the dining room tree gets the vintage bubble lights and the antique ornaments. The Nativity set is on the buffet in the living room, resting on gold-dusted bits of hay instead of a blanket of cotton snow, and I've got the same hay pieces dripping from the roof of the crèche. There are no little children to play with the sheep, and all the animals around the manger look quite content.
Monday, December 2, 2013
The Family Charm Bracelet.
There is a link-style bracelet that became very popular in the 1990s... the links are stainless steel with gold accents, and each individual link locks together, sort of like the links on a watch-band. I don't know exactly which company designed this particular style of bracelet, but it's called an "Italian charm bracelet." I had bought one of those bracelets for my cousin F up in New York..... she's not really a jewelry person, but the significance of the links (with very personalized pictures and embellishments) make it an interesting accessory, and F is a big fan of such detail.
When I first got the bracelet for F, I had one link for each letter of her first name, and then every other link had something identifiable to her alone. She absolutely loved it, and began making similar bracelets for other family members. When that mission was completed, F had the brilliant idea of making a Family Charm Bracelet.... with charms for each of the uncles and aunts, or the cousins, or whoever was deemed charm-worthy for the bracelet. (She was indeed on a roll with the Italian charm bracelets, and still is.)
F searched the Internet looking for specific charms to celebrate each family member, and I decided to do the same on a Family Charm Bracelet of my own. Searching the Internet sites for Italian Charms gives you unlimited access to every type of charm you could possibly imagine... and if you can't find exactly what you're looking for, then some companies will custom-make whatever you request. The charms are very affordable, with a price range for every budget. Only the solid 14k gold charms will get even close to breaking the bank.
On my Family Charm Bracelet, I used individual letter links to spell out the family's last name. I decided to honor the children of my grandparents (my dad, my aunts and uncles) on my bracelet. Nothing against all of my cousins, but with one link for each cousin, that would make about three bracelets.
The letters of the family name are gold, set onto the stainless steel links. The link just before the first letter of the name is an Italian flag, because (needless to say at this point) my family is Italian. For the links honoring each person, I attached them from the oldest to the youngest as they fell into the birth order.
The link after the last letter of the family name shows a ballroom-dancing couple... that link is for my Uncle Larry, whom I was named after. Larry was an award-winning ballroom dancer... it was his first love and his life's passion.... and it was a pity that his life was so short.
The next link shows the Pearl Harbor Monument, in honor of my Uncle Jimmy who died there when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Jimmy died before I was born, but one of his two sons was my godfather.
The following link is a bright red cardinal, for my Aunt Dolly. The cardinal has always been her favorite bird. I cannot even begin to count the number of times she would call me to the kitchen window in Grandma's house because she saw a cardinal in the bird bath or at the feeder.
The next link is the Chinese sign for Happiness, for my Aunt Edie. She loved every kind of Oriental artwork, and her home was filled with black lacquer Oriental furniture. Aunt Edie believed that Chinese women were the most beautiful, the most graceful.
The next link shows the actor Jackie Gleason's face in a full moon--- the logo of "The Honeymooners" television show, very popular in the 1950s and still showing on TV stations all over the country in re-runs ever since. This link is for my dad.... he loved Jackie Gleason, and loved "The Honeymooners" because Gleason's character was a bus driver for the New York City Transit Authority, the same job my dad held for nearly 40 years.
The following link is a gem-shaped diamond filled with tiny sparkles, for my Aunt Jaye. Jewelry was my Aunt Jaye's passion.... there wasn't a piece of jewelry that she didn't love, and if it had diamonds or pearls on it, she loved it even more. Her jewelry collection was an investment and a treasure, something to be proud of, to be taken care of, to be worn and enjoyed.
The link after that is a tiny Lincoln copper penny, for my Uncle Mino. He collected coins for years, and was constantly looking for the rarest of the rare Lincoln pennies. His coin collection was the most pampered, the most polished... and the most appreciated. He would sit us down at Grandma's kitchen table and explain each particular marking on the coins, telling us that "Money isn't everything, it's just a collection of metals and paper."
The next link shows a black bowling ball with a few white bowling pins, for my Uncle Tony. Bowling was his all-time, life-long sport. I believe that baseball was his first love, but being a champion bowler was easier to achieve and longer-lasting as he got older. Tony continued to bowl until he could no longer drive himself to the bowling alley and get a decent score for his team.
The next link shows a cosmetic case with lipstick and eye shadow, for my Aunt Angela. She was the youngest of my grandparents' children, and the most adventurous in experimenting with color and cosmetics. Angela was beautiful without a drop of make-up, as were all of my aunts, but Angela's make-up case and her talent for application made her a stand-out beauty.
The link after that is a German Shepherd dog, for Grandpa's dog "Major." This huge and gentle dog let my generation of cousins ride him like a horse, dress him up for parties, and play with him for hours without one complaint. Grandpa taught Major to say his prayers, shake hands, fetch balls that had rolled into the street, and protect all of us kids from doing stupid things. If we so much as opened the gate to leave the yard, Major would bark as if the sky were falling.
The next link is a deck of cards, for Grandpa. He loved playing poker in the dining room with his sons, and he loved to play solitaire at the kitchen table. He taught every child in my generation the rules of solitaire as soon as were old enough to read the numbers on the cards. We didn't realize until we were much older that in doing so, Grandpa was also teaching us patience and honesty, as well as the fine art of enjoying solitude.
The link next to that one is a ball of yarn with knitting and crochet needles, for Grandma. My grandmother could knit and crochet everything, without a pattern. All she had to do was look at a finished piece, count the stitches, study the pattern, and off she would go to her chair by the kitchen window. Grandma's delicate hands crafted the finest, most beautiful doilies, tablecloths, bedspreads, shawls.... the list of her handmade accomplishments is endless, and everyone in the family was given such beautiful gifts throughout the years.
I wear my Family bracelet nearly every day...... it is rich in honor and history, it lets me remember my grandparents and their children, and most importantly, it never lets me forget who I am and where I come from.
"Family is always family, no matter what happens."
When I first got the bracelet for F, I had one link for each letter of her first name, and then every other link had something identifiable to her alone. She absolutely loved it, and began making similar bracelets for other family members. When that mission was completed, F had the brilliant idea of making a Family Charm Bracelet.... with charms for each of the uncles and aunts, or the cousins, or whoever was deemed charm-worthy for the bracelet. (She was indeed on a roll with the Italian charm bracelets, and still is.)
F searched the Internet looking for specific charms to celebrate each family member, and I decided to do the same on a Family Charm Bracelet of my own. Searching the Internet sites for Italian Charms gives you unlimited access to every type of charm you could possibly imagine... and if you can't find exactly what you're looking for, then some companies will custom-make whatever you request. The charms are very affordable, with a price range for every budget. Only the solid 14k gold charms will get even close to breaking the bank.
On my Family Charm Bracelet, I used individual letter links to spell out the family's last name. I decided to honor the children of my grandparents (my dad, my aunts and uncles) on my bracelet. Nothing against all of my cousins, but with one link for each cousin, that would make about three bracelets.
The letters of the family name are gold, set onto the stainless steel links. The link just before the first letter of the name is an Italian flag, because (needless to say at this point) my family is Italian. For the links honoring each person, I attached them from the oldest to the youngest as they fell into the birth order.
The link after the last letter of the family name shows a ballroom-dancing couple... that link is for my Uncle Larry, whom I was named after. Larry was an award-winning ballroom dancer... it was his first love and his life's passion.... and it was a pity that his life was so short.
The next link shows the Pearl Harbor Monument, in honor of my Uncle Jimmy who died there when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Jimmy died before I was born, but one of his two sons was my godfather.
The following link is a bright red cardinal, for my Aunt Dolly. The cardinal has always been her favorite bird. I cannot even begin to count the number of times she would call me to the kitchen window in Grandma's house because she saw a cardinal in the bird bath or at the feeder.
The next link is the Chinese sign for Happiness, for my Aunt Edie. She loved every kind of Oriental artwork, and her home was filled with black lacquer Oriental furniture. Aunt Edie believed that Chinese women were the most beautiful, the most graceful.
The next link shows the actor Jackie Gleason's face in a full moon--- the logo of "The Honeymooners" television show, very popular in the 1950s and still showing on TV stations all over the country in re-runs ever since. This link is for my dad.... he loved Jackie Gleason, and loved "The Honeymooners" because Gleason's character was a bus driver for the New York City Transit Authority, the same job my dad held for nearly 40 years.
The following link is a gem-shaped diamond filled with tiny sparkles, for my Aunt Jaye. Jewelry was my Aunt Jaye's passion.... there wasn't a piece of jewelry that she didn't love, and if it had diamonds or pearls on it, she loved it even more. Her jewelry collection was an investment and a treasure, something to be proud of, to be taken care of, to be worn and enjoyed.
The link after that is a tiny Lincoln copper penny, for my Uncle Mino. He collected coins for years, and was constantly looking for the rarest of the rare Lincoln pennies. His coin collection was the most pampered, the most polished... and the most appreciated. He would sit us down at Grandma's kitchen table and explain each particular marking on the coins, telling us that "Money isn't everything, it's just a collection of metals and paper."
The next link shows a black bowling ball with a few white bowling pins, for my Uncle Tony. Bowling was his all-time, life-long sport. I believe that baseball was his first love, but being a champion bowler was easier to achieve and longer-lasting as he got older. Tony continued to bowl until he could no longer drive himself to the bowling alley and get a decent score for his team.
The next link shows a cosmetic case with lipstick and eye shadow, for my Aunt Angela. She was the youngest of my grandparents' children, and the most adventurous in experimenting with color and cosmetics. Angela was beautiful without a drop of make-up, as were all of my aunts, but Angela's make-up case and her talent for application made her a stand-out beauty.
The link after that is a German Shepherd dog, for Grandpa's dog "Major." This huge and gentle dog let my generation of cousins ride him like a horse, dress him up for parties, and play with him for hours without one complaint. Grandpa taught Major to say his prayers, shake hands, fetch balls that had rolled into the street, and protect all of us kids from doing stupid things. If we so much as opened the gate to leave the yard, Major would bark as if the sky were falling.
The next link is a deck of cards, for Grandpa. He loved playing poker in the dining room with his sons, and he loved to play solitaire at the kitchen table. He taught every child in my generation the rules of solitaire as soon as were old enough to read the numbers on the cards. We didn't realize until we were much older that in doing so, Grandpa was also teaching us patience and honesty, as well as the fine art of enjoying solitude.
The link next to that one is a ball of yarn with knitting and crochet needles, for Grandma. My grandmother could knit and crochet everything, without a pattern. All she had to do was look at a finished piece, count the stitches, study the pattern, and off she would go to her chair by the kitchen window. Grandma's delicate hands crafted the finest, most beautiful doilies, tablecloths, bedspreads, shawls.... the list of her handmade accomplishments is endless, and everyone in the family was given such beautiful gifts throughout the years.
I wear my Family bracelet nearly every day...... it is rich in honor and history, it lets me remember my grandparents and their children, and most importantly, it never lets me forget who I am and where I come from.
"Family is always family, no matter what happens."
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The Family's Senior Moments... Angela.
This little girl was the last child of my grandparents. Born in the early 1930s, Grandma called Angela her 'change of life baby.' Angela, small and petite, became a living, breathing baby-doll to her older sisters, who were in their late teens and early twenties when she was born.
Somewhere along the way, Angela was given the nick-name of "Sookie" by her brothers and sisters...... I have no idea how that name came to be, but that's what most of my generation of cousins called her: Aunt Sookie. When my dad was in the Army during World War II, he wrote the name "Sookie" in white paint on the front of his jeep.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, mostly everyone in the family dropped the name Sookie and began to call her Angela again. To us kids who were so used to calling her Aunt Sookie, calling her Aunt Angela sounded very adult and it was hard to say without falling into giggles over her given name. (As if the name Sookie wasn't giggle-worthy?)
Angela inherited her mother's talent for baking.... cakes and breads and pies and cookies... anything and everything could be mixed together from scratch and baked in special pans with special baking tools. She loved to bake... and would rather bake than cook because she thought that cooking a meal was more messy than baking a dessert. "Besides, everyone loves desserts.... not everyone loves everything that I cook," Angela would say.
Angela married an Irish man..... Uncle Bernie. They had one son, my cousin S. Uncle Bernie learned to eat all the Italian foods cooked by my grandmother and my aunts, and he loved it all and said he'd never eaten so well until he became part of the family. On every holiday, there would always be a bowl of mashed potatoes for Uncle Bernie, cooked especially for him because he enjoyed them so much..... he didn't care for the sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving, or the roasted potatoes at Christmas. Grandma would say: "He's Irish... the Irish like their mashed potatoes... don't touch those potatoes, they're for Bernie."
When Angela and Bernie were first married, they lived in a little cottage by a lake in Spring Valley. From their front door, you could walk down to the small beach and put your toes into the lake, or swim out to the wooden platform in the middle of the water. I don't actually remember just where Spring Valley was, but it was surely out of the city limits. No noises from traffic, no bus lines, no subways. Just lots of green trees and houses without sidewalks. It was a magical place for our generation of cousins and we all loved to be invited up there for the day, a weekend, or a week during the Summer. We all thought our cousin S (Angela and Bernie's son) was the luckiest boy on the planet to be living in such a carefree place where no one seemed to be concerned about locked doors and kids playing in the front yard without supervision. They eventually moved out of that little cottage and into a high-rise condo.... no one in the family had ever lived in such a fancy-dancy place before and it was a culture shock to my generation of cousins. We all missed that tiny little cottage by the lake.
At all of the family parties and get-togethers, all of my dad's sisters would be dressed in classic black dresses, with smart-looking hats and black shoes. They were all beautiful, without a doubt, but they all preferred black dinner dresses instead of any other color. Except for Angela.... she would walk in with the brightest dress, the most flamboyant hat, the most colorful shoes and purses. Like all of her sisters, she was beautiful, but in that family sea of black dresses, Angela was like a brilliant rainbow. My generation of cousins couldn't wait to see what she was wearing at all the parties, holiday dinners, christenings, weddings. We were a big family... there were a lot of parties and celebrations, and many occasions for dressing up. Angela never disappointed... she always had the biggest and most-feathered and beribboned hats, the most colorful dresses, and she wore eye shadow before any of her sisters dared to try that colorful cosmetic.
In the 1960s, Uncle Bernie and Aunt Angela and their son S went on a trip to Disneyland, and they didn't drive there, they took a plane. This was a big event in the family, since until that time, hardly anyone had ever been out of New York state, much less on a plane. My generation of cousins thought that S was the luckiest kid in the family..... while the rest of us were content to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney" on television every Sunday night, S was actually going to Disneyland. "He's going to see Mickey Mouse! And he may even see Walt Disney!" We all wished we could jump into a suitcase and stow away on the plane with them.
The night before their plane flight, they stayed at my grandparents' house because it was so close to the airport. I remember Angela on that night, not wanting to mess up her hair-do...... she had gone to the beauty salon that morning and her hair was done up in a fancy French Twist with a few curls at the back. She didn't want to put her head down on a pillow and mess up her hair. I remember Angela saying "What would Mr. Disney say if I show up there in a crushed French Twist?" Angela slept sitting up that night, propped up with three pillows, and when she left for the airport, her hair-do was salon perfect and ready for Disneyland.
I don't exactly remember when Angela and Bernie split up, but it was a shock to the whole family. They seemed so happy together, always surrounded by that bride-and-groom-on-top-of-the-wedding-cake aura. I never asked any questions about their problems, and it just always seemed to me that Angela never stopped loving her husband, long after they'd been separated. At one of the holiday dinners when Bernie was no longer around, there was an absence of mashed potatoes on the dining room table. Aunt Dolly always made them just for Uncle Bernie, and it seemed to me that the holiday table just wasn't complete somehow, even though Bernie was the only one who usually ate them.
In the early 1990s, I went to dinner with Angela and my cousin R. It was a spur-of-the-moment visit with Angela, since R and I were out driving and right near the small apartment where Angela lived. The three of us decided to have dinner at a small local Italian restaurant not far from the apartment. All during dinner, Angela talked about growing up with her sisters and brothers, her marriage to Bernie, her son S, the little cottage in Spring Valley, the large modern condo. She didn't mention details about the break-up of her marriage, but I remember her saying "And before I knew what was happening, Poof! Just like that! It was all over! And now I have this tiny kitchen and most of my baking pans are still in the packing boxes."
I spoke to Uncle Bernie in the late 1990s. He had gotten in touch with my Uncle Tony out in Arizona, and he gave a phone number where he could be reached "by anyone in the family who would like to say hello." Uncle Bernie at that time wasn't in the best of health and my Uncle Tony thought that calls from the family would brighten his day, his week, his year. To make my Uncle Tony happy, I called Bernie to say hello.... and we had a very nice conversation. Uncle Bernie talked of the little cottage in Spring Valley, the big apartment in the condo-complex, and he remembered the holidays with the family. "Your Aunt Dolly made the best mashed potatoes, and Grandma made lasagna that no one can duplicate." Uncle Bernie talked of Uncle Mino's fastidiousness, Aunt Jaye's leopard coat, Aunt Edie's opera gowns, my dad's love of driving, Uncle Tony's bowling. I listened to family stories that day that I hadn't heard in years, and the sound of Bernie's laughter was as infectious as it was when I was a kid.
Angela passed away in 2010..... she was in her mid 70s, and her death shocked everyone in the family. She was the youngest of our grandparents' children, and no one expected an early passing for her. My Aunt Dolly, who was 97 at that time, was just beside herself with grief. Even now, at 100 years of age, Aunt Dolly still talks of Angela's passing as something that "wasn't right... it should not have happened to such a young girl." Forever young, forever the baby of the family... that's how Angela will always be remembered.
Somewhere along the way, Angela was given the nick-name of "Sookie" by her brothers and sisters...... I have no idea how that name came to be, but that's what most of my generation of cousins called her: Aunt Sookie. When my dad was in the Army during World War II, he wrote the name "Sookie" in white paint on the front of his jeep.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, mostly everyone in the family dropped the name Sookie and began to call her Angela again. To us kids who were so used to calling her Aunt Sookie, calling her Aunt Angela sounded very adult and it was hard to say without falling into giggles over her given name. (As if the name Sookie wasn't giggle-worthy?)
Angela inherited her mother's talent for baking.... cakes and breads and pies and cookies... anything and everything could be mixed together from scratch and baked in special pans with special baking tools. She loved to bake... and would rather bake than cook because she thought that cooking a meal was more messy than baking a dessert. "Besides, everyone loves desserts.... not everyone loves everything that I cook," Angela would say.
Angela married an Irish man..... Uncle Bernie. They had one son, my cousin S. Uncle Bernie learned to eat all the Italian foods cooked by my grandmother and my aunts, and he loved it all and said he'd never eaten so well until he became part of the family. On every holiday, there would always be a bowl of mashed potatoes for Uncle Bernie, cooked especially for him because he enjoyed them so much..... he didn't care for the sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving, or the roasted potatoes at Christmas. Grandma would say: "He's Irish... the Irish like their mashed potatoes... don't touch those potatoes, they're for Bernie."
When Angela and Bernie were first married, they lived in a little cottage by a lake in Spring Valley. From their front door, you could walk down to the small beach and put your toes into the lake, or swim out to the wooden platform in the middle of the water. I don't actually remember just where Spring Valley was, but it was surely out of the city limits. No noises from traffic, no bus lines, no subways. Just lots of green trees and houses without sidewalks. It was a magical place for our generation of cousins and we all loved to be invited up there for the day, a weekend, or a week during the Summer. We all thought our cousin S (Angela and Bernie's son) was the luckiest boy on the planet to be living in such a carefree place where no one seemed to be concerned about locked doors and kids playing in the front yard without supervision. They eventually moved out of that little cottage and into a high-rise condo.... no one in the family had ever lived in such a fancy-dancy place before and it was a culture shock to my generation of cousins. We all missed that tiny little cottage by the lake.
At all of the family parties and get-togethers, all of my dad's sisters would be dressed in classic black dresses, with smart-looking hats and black shoes. They were all beautiful, without a doubt, but they all preferred black dinner dresses instead of any other color. Except for Angela.... she would walk in with the brightest dress, the most flamboyant hat, the most colorful shoes and purses. Like all of her sisters, she was beautiful, but in that family sea of black dresses, Angela was like a brilliant rainbow. My generation of cousins couldn't wait to see what she was wearing at all the parties, holiday dinners, christenings, weddings. We were a big family... there were a lot of parties and celebrations, and many occasions for dressing up. Angela never disappointed... she always had the biggest and most-feathered and beribboned hats, the most colorful dresses, and she wore eye shadow before any of her sisters dared to try that colorful cosmetic.
In the 1960s, Uncle Bernie and Aunt Angela and their son S went on a trip to Disneyland, and they didn't drive there, they took a plane. This was a big event in the family, since until that time, hardly anyone had ever been out of New York state, much less on a plane. My generation of cousins thought that S was the luckiest kid in the family..... while the rest of us were content to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney" on television every Sunday night, S was actually going to Disneyland. "He's going to see Mickey Mouse! And he may even see Walt Disney!" We all wished we could jump into a suitcase and stow away on the plane with them.
The night before their plane flight, they stayed at my grandparents' house because it was so close to the airport. I remember Angela on that night, not wanting to mess up her hair-do...... she had gone to the beauty salon that morning and her hair was done up in a fancy French Twist with a few curls at the back. She didn't want to put her head down on a pillow and mess up her hair. I remember Angela saying "What would Mr. Disney say if I show up there in a crushed French Twist?" Angela slept sitting up that night, propped up with three pillows, and when she left for the airport, her hair-do was salon perfect and ready for Disneyland.
I don't exactly remember when Angela and Bernie split up, but it was a shock to the whole family. They seemed so happy together, always surrounded by that bride-and-groom-on-top-of-the-wedding-cake aura. I never asked any questions about their problems, and it just always seemed to me that Angela never stopped loving her husband, long after they'd been separated. At one of the holiday dinners when Bernie was no longer around, there was an absence of mashed potatoes on the dining room table. Aunt Dolly always made them just for Uncle Bernie, and it seemed to me that the holiday table just wasn't complete somehow, even though Bernie was the only one who usually ate them.
In the early 1990s, I went to dinner with Angela and my cousin R. It was a spur-of-the-moment visit with Angela, since R and I were out driving and right near the small apartment where Angela lived. The three of us decided to have dinner at a small local Italian restaurant not far from the apartment. All during dinner, Angela talked about growing up with her sisters and brothers, her marriage to Bernie, her son S, the little cottage in Spring Valley, the large modern condo. She didn't mention details about the break-up of her marriage, but I remember her saying "And before I knew what was happening, Poof! Just like that! It was all over! And now I have this tiny kitchen and most of my baking pans are still in the packing boxes."
I spoke to Uncle Bernie in the late 1990s. He had gotten in touch with my Uncle Tony out in Arizona, and he gave a phone number where he could be reached "by anyone in the family who would like to say hello." Uncle Bernie at that time wasn't in the best of health and my Uncle Tony thought that calls from the family would brighten his day, his week, his year. To make my Uncle Tony happy, I called Bernie to say hello.... and we had a very nice conversation. Uncle Bernie talked of the little cottage in Spring Valley, the big apartment in the condo-complex, and he remembered the holidays with the family. "Your Aunt Dolly made the best mashed potatoes, and Grandma made lasagna that no one can duplicate." Uncle Bernie talked of Uncle Mino's fastidiousness, Aunt Jaye's leopard coat, Aunt Edie's opera gowns, my dad's love of driving, Uncle Tony's bowling. I listened to family stories that day that I hadn't heard in years, and the sound of Bernie's laughter was as infectious as it was when I was a kid.
Angela passed away in 2010..... she was in her mid 70s, and her death shocked everyone in the family. She was the youngest of our grandparents' children, and no one expected an early passing for her. My Aunt Dolly, who was 97 at that time, was just beside herself with grief. Even now, at 100 years of age, Aunt Dolly still talks of Angela's passing as something that "wasn't right... it should not have happened to such a young girl." Forever young, forever the baby of the family... that's how Angela will always be remembered.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
The Family's Senior Moments.... Tony.
Another boy-baby for my grandparents.... they named him Anthony, but of course called him Tony. My grandmother and all of my aunts agreed that Tony was a happy baby who grew into a very happy little boy, who then matured into an immensely happy man.
Tony loved to play with his brothers when they were kids, and his favorite games involved a ball, particularly a baseball as he got older. Tony was quick, very coordinated, and extremely talented with a ball and a bat. When he was older and playing baseball on school teams, a scout for the New York Yankees discovered him and wanted him to join The Yankees. Talk about a young boy's dream coming true.
However, back in the day, The Yankees had lots of physical requirements, one of which was height. Unfortunately, Tony was one inch (just one tiny inch!) below the minimum height requirement for the team. The offices of The New York Yankees sent Tony a letter stating exactly that, and Uncle Tony kept that letter forever, taking it out of the "strong box" from time to time to show his sons and his nieces and nephews.
One of my Uncle Tony's greatest treasures was a wooden baseball bat that he used when he was a young player. He kept that bat polished and cleaned and he intended to pass it on to his sons. His only mistake with that bat was that he stored it in the third-floor attic storage room in Grandma's house. The family joke was that once something was put either into the family safe or into the storage room of the attic, it stayed there forever. (Aunt Dolly was in charge of such things, and she didn't like to disturb anything once it was in a safe place.)
When Uncle Tony moved to Long Island, that bat stayed up in the attic. Years later, when he moved across the country, the bat still stayed tucked away in that attic. When I brought my dad to visit his brother in Arizona, he and Uncle Tony talked about that bat, wondering just where in the attic it was stored, and if they could get it out of that attic without Dolly knowing about it. (That never happened.) A couple of years later, my husband and I flew out to Arizona to visit Uncle Tony and his family, and of course, he got to talking about his bat "up in the attic," and he showed us the letter from the New York Yankees. Before we left Arizona, one of my cousins drove me to a sporting goods store and I bought the best New York Yankees wooden bat that I could find and gave it to my Uncle Tony as a surprise. I can still see him now, sitting in his chair with tears in his eyes, holding onto that Yankee bat and just speechless with gratitude.
During World War II, Uncle Tony was in the Marines. My grandmother cried when he joined, because her other sons explained to her that the Marines were" the first called in and the last called out." He was the youngest son, and my grandparents worried about him the most. Uncle Tony fought against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the war. He didn't talk much about his own war stories, and the fact that he was responsible for the death of enemy soldiers didn't make him proud. "I just did what I had to do.... I did what they told me.... and then I kissed the ground in New York when I got home all in one piece." My grandmother had begun lighting candles and saying extra prayers when her four sons were soldiers during World War II, and she didn't stop when the war ended because one of her sons never made it home.
Uncle Tony fell in love with and married "an Irish girl," as Grandma called my Aunt M. "She's an Irish girl who can cook, who can keep house, and who can keep my son happy." And that she did..... Aunt M and Uncle Tony were married for 64 years before Tony passed away in 2011. They were the happiest couple, always smiling, always laughing. Aunt M always said "Tony makes me laugh.... he's always so positive and so happy."
"Happy" does not even begin to describe the bond of love Tony and M shared during their long and successful marriage. Every other marriage of my grandparents' children ended in divorce. Not so with Tony and M. One reason for that, according to my dad: "Tony and M never let anything or anyone come between them, not even the family."
Aunt M once told me a story about their first house out on Long Island.... my grandmother, along with Aunt Edie, Aunt Jaye, and Aunt Dolly, drove out there for a visit. They arrived unannounced, before lunch time, while Uncle Tony was at work. Aunt M was surprised, but of course greeted them graciously... they had driven a lot of miles from Queens and she wanted to make her husband's family feel 'at home.'
While Aunt M was in the kitchen fixing lunch for all of them, her sisters-in-law were indeed making themselves at home and very comfortable in the living room. They had re-arranged M's furniture, her lamps, her knick-knacks... and when Aunt M walked back into her living room, they told her "Doesn't it all look better this way?"
It was at that point that Uncle Tony walked in the door..... and after he said hello to his mother and his sisters, Aunt M asked him to come into the kitchen. Without making a loud fuss, Aunt M firmly told her husband to "Get in that living room and tell your sisters to put my living room back the way it was." And Uncle Tony did exactly that.... and his sisters moved everything back to their original positions..... and Aunt M set the kitchen table for lunch and then smilingly told everyone "Lunch is served!"
Uncle Tony and Aunt M had two sons, my cousins T and D. When we were all kids, we would have holiday dinners at the "children's table" in the kitchen, with me and T being in charge of the younger kids, because we were the two oldest in that generation of cousins. When we all played games in the indoor front porch at my grandparents' house, it was T who would turn out the porch light and tell ghost stories, scaring all of us just enough so that we were sitting on the edge of our seats, but not frightening us to the point that we wanted to run out of the porch.
In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, cousin T joined the Marines..... and just as the family worried about his father serving in the Marines during World War II, my grandmother began lighting candles and saying prayers again for her grandson. I can still remember cousin T walking into Grandma's kitchen in his Marine uniform for the first time..... my grandmother sat down and cried, and my grandfather said "You look just like your father did in The Big War."
My grandfather's dream was to have a home filled with sons who would go into the family business of house-building, concrete, brick-work. Uncle Tony was the only son who even came close... he was an expert carpenter and could make anything out of wood. If you wanted something built in your house, you called Tony to do it..... my aunts would just explain what they wanted and then walk away, confident that the finished job would be right, would be perfect. Uncle Tony always said "Do it once, and do it right, or don't even do it at all." He was so proud of everything that he designed and built, and he had a sense of respect for fine wood.
Uncle Tony was always "the fun uncle." He believed that if you didn't have fun in this life, then what was the point of living in the first place. Tony played ball with his sons, went to all of their sports games, watched baseball and football on television, and he was a champion bowler on a prize-winning team. It was either in the 1960s or the 1970s that Uncle Tony won a brand new Chevrolet when he bowled a perfect 300 game, and he was so very proud of that accomplishment. Uncle Tony bowled for years, and stayed a team member until it was clear to him that he couldn't bowl as well as he used to because of his age. "When your score starts to hurt the team, it's time to quit," he told us.
Just as Uncle Tony was the first of my grandparents' children to move out of Queens (all the way out to Islip, Long Island), he was also the first of the family to move out of New York state. When Uncle Tony and Aunt M retired from their jobs, their plan was to move west, to Arizona. The rest of the family didn't believe him. "You're not going anywhere!"--- that's what they kept telling him. Even when Tony and M arranged for the moving van, the family still didn't believe they would go through with the move. The family told him: "You were born in New York... you need to stay in New York." Uncle Tony asked the family to show him the book where that rule was written down, and then he said "Where my wife goes, I go. Period."
Tony and M did indeed move to Arizona, and within a few years, their two sons and their families were also living out west. Their very close-knit family unit was back together under the Arizona sun, and the rest of the family back in Queens and on Long Island were shaking their heads in disbelief.
My aunts and uncles (those who never left New York) don't get on planes very often, if at all. Uncle Tony kept asking everyone to come out and visit them in Arizona. Except for my dad, who flew out there once with me, not one of Tony's other brothers or sisters ever made the trip.
Uncle Tony and his family thrived out in Arizona. Their two sons have children, and those children now have children, making my cousins T and D grandfathers. I still shake my head in wonder that most of my generation of cousins who once sat at Grandma's "children's table" are now grandparents.
My Uncle Tony passed away in 2011... he was in his mid-80s, and my Aunt M misses him every day, every day. When Uncle Tony died, his plan was not to have a long and sad "Italian wake." He wanted his family to be happy, to go out for dinner, to remember all the good times and not be sad over his passing. Of course, everyone was sad over his passing, but we all certainly remembered the good times we had with him. Uncle Tony loved dogs and cats, and his pets over the years were very much loved and pampered. Instead of sending flowers when Uncle Tony died, I went to the local supermarket and bought as many bags and cans of dog food and cat food that would fit into the trunk of my car. I drove straight to the local animal shelter in town and donated it all, in my Uncle's name. I know that would have made him smile.
Tony loved to play with his brothers when they were kids, and his favorite games involved a ball, particularly a baseball as he got older. Tony was quick, very coordinated, and extremely talented with a ball and a bat. When he was older and playing baseball on school teams, a scout for the New York Yankees discovered him and wanted him to join The Yankees. Talk about a young boy's dream coming true.
However, back in the day, The Yankees had lots of physical requirements, one of which was height. Unfortunately, Tony was one inch (just one tiny inch!) below the minimum height requirement for the team. The offices of The New York Yankees sent Tony a letter stating exactly that, and Uncle Tony kept that letter forever, taking it out of the "strong box" from time to time to show his sons and his nieces and nephews.
One of my Uncle Tony's greatest treasures was a wooden baseball bat that he used when he was a young player. He kept that bat polished and cleaned and he intended to pass it on to his sons. His only mistake with that bat was that he stored it in the third-floor attic storage room in Grandma's house. The family joke was that once something was put either into the family safe or into the storage room of the attic, it stayed there forever. (Aunt Dolly was in charge of such things, and she didn't like to disturb anything once it was in a safe place.)
When Uncle Tony moved to Long Island, that bat stayed up in the attic. Years later, when he moved across the country, the bat still stayed tucked away in that attic. When I brought my dad to visit his brother in Arizona, he and Uncle Tony talked about that bat, wondering just where in the attic it was stored, and if they could get it out of that attic without Dolly knowing about it. (That never happened.) A couple of years later, my husband and I flew out to Arizona to visit Uncle Tony and his family, and of course, he got to talking about his bat "up in the attic," and he showed us the letter from the New York Yankees. Before we left Arizona, one of my cousins drove me to a sporting goods store and I bought the best New York Yankees wooden bat that I could find and gave it to my Uncle Tony as a surprise. I can still see him now, sitting in his chair with tears in his eyes, holding onto that Yankee bat and just speechless with gratitude.
During World War II, Uncle Tony was in the Marines. My grandmother cried when he joined, because her other sons explained to her that the Marines were" the first called in and the last called out." He was the youngest son, and my grandparents worried about him the most. Uncle Tony fought against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the war. He didn't talk much about his own war stories, and the fact that he was responsible for the death of enemy soldiers didn't make him proud. "I just did what I had to do.... I did what they told me.... and then I kissed the ground in New York when I got home all in one piece." My grandmother had begun lighting candles and saying extra prayers when her four sons were soldiers during World War II, and she didn't stop when the war ended because one of her sons never made it home.
Uncle Tony fell in love with and married "an Irish girl," as Grandma called my Aunt M. "She's an Irish girl who can cook, who can keep house, and who can keep my son happy." And that she did..... Aunt M and Uncle Tony were married for 64 years before Tony passed away in 2011. They were the happiest couple, always smiling, always laughing. Aunt M always said "Tony makes me laugh.... he's always so positive and so happy."
"Happy" does not even begin to describe the bond of love Tony and M shared during their long and successful marriage. Every other marriage of my grandparents' children ended in divorce. Not so with Tony and M. One reason for that, according to my dad: "Tony and M never let anything or anyone come between them, not even the family."
Aunt M once told me a story about their first house out on Long Island.... my grandmother, along with Aunt Edie, Aunt Jaye, and Aunt Dolly, drove out there for a visit. They arrived unannounced, before lunch time, while Uncle Tony was at work. Aunt M was surprised, but of course greeted them graciously... they had driven a lot of miles from Queens and she wanted to make her husband's family feel 'at home.'
While Aunt M was in the kitchen fixing lunch for all of them, her sisters-in-law were indeed making themselves at home and very comfortable in the living room. They had re-arranged M's furniture, her lamps, her knick-knacks... and when Aunt M walked back into her living room, they told her "Doesn't it all look better this way?"
It was at that point that Uncle Tony walked in the door..... and after he said hello to his mother and his sisters, Aunt M asked him to come into the kitchen. Without making a loud fuss, Aunt M firmly told her husband to "Get in that living room and tell your sisters to put my living room back the way it was." And Uncle Tony did exactly that.... and his sisters moved everything back to their original positions..... and Aunt M set the kitchen table for lunch and then smilingly told everyone "Lunch is served!"
Uncle Tony and Aunt M had two sons, my cousins T and D. When we were all kids, we would have holiday dinners at the "children's table" in the kitchen, with me and T being in charge of the younger kids, because we were the two oldest in that generation of cousins. When we all played games in the indoor front porch at my grandparents' house, it was T who would turn out the porch light and tell ghost stories, scaring all of us just enough so that we were sitting on the edge of our seats, but not frightening us to the point that we wanted to run out of the porch.
In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, cousin T joined the Marines..... and just as the family worried about his father serving in the Marines during World War II, my grandmother began lighting candles and saying prayers again for her grandson. I can still remember cousin T walking into Grandma's kitchen in his Marine uniform for the first time..... my grandmother sat down and cried, and my grandfather said "You look just like your father did in The Big War."
My grandfather's dream was to have a home filled with sons who would go into the family business of house-building, concrete, brick-work. Uncle Tony was the only son who even came close... he was an expert carpenter and could make anything out of wood. If you wanted something built in your house, you called Tony to do it..... my aunts would just explain what they wanted and then walk away, confident that the finished job would be right, would be perfect. Uncle Tony always said "Do it once, and do it right, or don't even do it at all." He was so proud of everything that he designed and built, and he had a sense of respect for fine wood.
Uncle Tony was always "the fun uncle." He believed that if you didn't have fun in this life, then what was the point of living in the first place. Tony played ball with his sons, went to all of their sports games, watched baseball and football on television, and he was a champion bowler on a prize-winning team. It was either in the 1960s or the 1970s that Uncle Tony won a brand new Chevrolet when he bowled a perfect 300 game, and he was so very proud of that accomplishment. Uncle Tony bowled for years, and stayed a team member until it was clear to him that he couldn't bowl as well as he used to because of his age. "When your score starts to hurt the team, it's time to quit," he told us.
Just as Uncle Tony was the first of my grandparents' children to move out of Queens (all the way out to Islip, Long Island), he was also the first of the family to move out of New York state. When Uncle Tony and Aunt M retired from their jobs, their plan was to move west, to Arizona. The rest of the family didn't believe him. "You're not going anywhere!"--- that's what they kept telling him. Even when Tony and M arranged for the moving van, the family still didn't believe they would go through with the move. The family told him: "You were born in New York... you need to stay in New York." Uncle Tony asked the family to show him the book where that rule was written down, and then he said "Where my wife goes, I go. Period."
Tony and M did indeed move to Arizona, and within a few years, their two sons and their families were also living out west. Their very close-knit family unit was back together under the Arizona sun, and the rest of the family back in Queens and on Long Island were shaking their heads in disbelief.
My aunts and uncles (those who never left New York) don't get on planes very often, if at all. Uncle Tony kept asking everyone to come out and visit them in Arizona. Except for my dad, who flew out there once with me, not one of Tony's other brothers or sisters ever made the trip.
Uncle Tony and his family thrived out in Arizona. Their two sons have children, and those children now have children, making my cousins T and D grandfathers. I still shake my head in wonder that most of my generation of cousins who once sat at Grandma's "children's table" are now grandparents.
My Uncle Tony passed away in 2011... he was in his mid-80s, and my Aunt M misses him every day, every day. When Uncle Tony died, his plan was not to have a long and sad "Italian wake." He wanted his family to be happy, to go out for dinner, to remember all the good times and not be sad over his passing. Of course, everyone was sad over his passing, but we all certainly remembered the good times we had with him. Uncle Tony loved dogs and cats, and his pets over the years were very much loved and pampered. Instead of sending flowers when Uncle Tony died, I went to the local supermarket and bought as many bags and cans of dog food and cat food that would fit into the trunk of my car. I drove straight to the local animal shelter in town and donated it all, in my Uncle's name. I know that would have made him smile.
Monday, November 25, 2013
The Family's Senior Moments... Carmine.
This boy-child came into the world being a fussy baby... and that characteristic followed Carmine for the rest of his life. When Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" became so popular, we used to joke that Uncle Mino was an Italian version of Felix.
I don't remember anyone in the family calling Uncle Mino by his given name of Carmine, except maybe one of his sisters or brothers if they wanted to get his attention quickly. I don't even know how the name of "Mino" came into being, but everyone in the family called him by that nick-name, pronounced as Minnu. When Uncle Mino introduced himself to anyone outside the family, he always used his given name Carmine, and that was also how his signed his legal signature. Come to think of it, no one other than the family called him Mino.
Uncle Mino was neat and tidy as a child, even neater as a young adult, and fastidious as he got older. He wanted his shirts ironed a certain way, his food served on nice-looking china, and his clothing came from only the best men's stores that New York City had to offer. He always said "Buy the best and it will last forever." He always did, and his clothes were always classic, current, and perfectly pressed, and they did indeed last for decades.
During World War II, Uncle Mino was in the Navy and assigned to a submarine. He had such a strong attention to detail at that time of his life that the captain of the ship requested that Carmine be assigned as his valet. (I'm positive that the captain addressed him as Carmine, not Mino.) Uncle Mino would tell us his war stories when we were kids..... how he had to keep the captain's uniforms wrinkle-free, his shoes shined like mirrors, and his medals polished like gold. I distinctly remember one night at my grandmother's kitchen table when my dad told his brother: "Enough with your war stories... while you were shining shoes, I was fighting Germans."
After the War, Uncle Mino became a draftsman, which led him to a career in architecture. He was a brilliant artist, and could draw just about anything with a pencil and a "proper piece of paper," as he called it. New York City was Uncle Mino's favorite place for sight-seeing..... he would walk around the streets with his eyes looking up at the details on the old buildings. Whenever anyone in the family mentioned going into The City, Uncle Mino would tell them "Look up! Don't forget to look up at the buildings!" One of the last structures that Uncle Mino worked on before retiring from the architectural firm was the Jacob Javits Center on W. 34th Street in Manhattan. He retired only because his company started using computers for their designs, and Uncle Mino was definitely 'old school' when it came to his artwork.
When my generation of cousins were kids, Uncle Mino would pay us for the coins we collected on Halloween. In the 1950s and 1960s, a lot of people would give out pennies and nickels to the trick-or-treating kids, rather than candy. Uncle Mino was an avid coin collector, and he just knew that one day he would come across a very rare coin that had been dropped into one of our Halloween bags. If we gave him 60 cents worth of pennies, he would give us a crisp one-dollar bill. Then Uncle Mino would spend hours polishing up those pennies till they were bright and shining, adding the older ones to his collection.
There was an afternoon in the Spring when I was in the 4th or 5th grade, and Uncle Mino came home with a very small lemon tree in a tin bucket. His plan was to take the tree out of the little bucket, re-plant it with good soil in a large ceramic planter, and keep the plant in the corner of Grandma's kitchen near his chair. That particular corner got a lot of sun during the day, and Uncle Mino had visions of that tree growing up to the ceiling and producing enough lemons to keep the family in lemonade. (My grandmother made the best lemonade, which everyone just loved.)
Into the corner went the newly replanted lemon tree.... right into that sunny corner by Uncle Mino's place at the kitchen table. The tree grew taller over the years, and it did indeed reach the ceiling. However, not one solitary lemon ever grew on that tree. Uncle Mino would talk to the tree, remove old leaves very carefully, and he never allowed anyone to water it. His theory was that the tree needed just one consistent caretaker in order to thrive. Of course, the family made a joke over that tree, because it never did produce any lemons, but Mino took care of that tree for nearly 20 years. When I was in high school, my dad got a couple of very small lemons from the store and managed to tie them onto Mino's tree with fishing line. When Mino walked into the kitchen that particular morning, he stopped in his tracks and his mouth opened in surprise..... but within seconds, he realized that bright yellow lemons wouldn't have sprouted from the tree over-night. He quickly removed the lemons, telling my dad that the thin fishing line would cut into the branches of his tree. "Your lemon tree is a lemon," my dad would tell him.
Uncle Mino got married in the early 1950s. I remember his wife clearly, because she was blond and very pretty, and not Italian. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The marriage, however, didn't last. I've no idea why, but if I had to guess, I would imagine my Uncle's fastidiousness would be right up there at the top of the list of reasons for their divorce. Mino's wife left the state of New York, taking the two children with her. The kids were very young at the time, and Mino's ex-wife kept them away from their father and away from the rest of the family. Uncle Mino didn't see his children for the rest of his life. Two years after Uncle Mino passed away, a young man rang my grandmother's doorbell, and told Aunt Dolly that he was Mino's son. Aunt Dolly of course saw the family resemblance, but had to break the news that Mino had died.
In the early 1960s, Uncle Mino met a woman at work named Kathryn. She was the perfect partner for my uncle because she loved The City.... loved to go to Broadway shows, loved trying new restaurants, loved all the energy and madness of Manhattan. Mino and Kathryn would walk around The City for hours, taking in shows, going out to eat, and then walking around just looking up, up, up at the details on the older buildings. We all thought that Mino and Kathryn would eventually get married, but Kathryn told my grandmother "Marrying your son would never work out. I love him dearly but I'd end up killing him." Kathryn knew how fussy and non-flexible Mino was, and she could tolerate his habits on a friendly social basis, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn't live with those characteristics. Mino and Kathryn stayed friends for two decades, until Kathryn passed away. My uncle had gone to her apartment to pick up her for a date, and Kathryn didn't answer the doorbell. Uncle Mino found the superintendent of the apartment building and they both went back to the apartment door with the key. They found Kathryn in her bed, having died during the night..... it was later found out that she died of a heart attack. Uncle Mino was crushed... it saddened him for years afterwards, and he never dated another woman.
Mino loved all of his nieces and nephews as if they were his own children. He was forever bringing us gifts from The City... he would walk around Manhattan on his lunch-hour and if he saw something in one of the stores that would be "good for the kids," he would buy it and bring it home. One such gift was a very expensive telescope that was nestled into a huge wooden box lined with velvet. It was so elegant that Uncle Mino made us all wash our hands before we even touched the box. Mino would carry the telescope into the yard on clear nights, pointing out the constellations and making us memorize their names and the correct spelling of each. We were probably the only kids in the neighborhood who had their own backyard sky show. That telescope was eventually given to my cousin T, who showed the most interest in the sky. Twenty years ago, that same cousin left his job in the corporate world, bought more telescopes, and started his own star-gazing business that is very successful and very fulfilling to this day.
Uncle Mino went through World War II with hardly getting a scratch, thanks to his position as valet for the captain of the submarine he was assigned to during the War. In his mid 70s, Uncle Mino had to be admitted to the hospital for a simple gall bladder operation. Everything went fine... he came home and was told to rest until his follow-up appointment with his surgeon. My Aunt Dolly took care of her brother's every need, not even letting him walk down the stairs to the kitchen for his meals, for fear of disrupting the stitches from the operation. On a sunny March morning in 1999, Aunt Dolly asked Mino what he'd like for breakfast. "You know what? I'd really like some hot oatmeal today," he told her. And those were the last words he ever spoke.... when Aunt Dolly brought his breakfast up on a tray, Uncle Mino was dead, resting on his own pillow in his own bed, with the covers neatly pulled up and folded by his chest. The family would later find out that he died of a heart attack.
With my generation of cousins, and the generation that followed, we all agreed that you had to understand Uncle Mino before you could love him. And without a doubt, we all loved him. There was nothing we asked him for that he couldn't find for us in The City, that magical place where he went to work every day, taking a bus and two trains to get from Grandma's house in Queens to his office building in the heart of The City. When my generation graduated school and began looking for jobs, Uncle Mino would tell us "Go into Manhattan.... go to The City.... it has more to offer than Queens and Long Island." We would ask "More money?" And Uncle Mino would answer "Money? Who cares about money? Manhattan has more history, and that's what counts!"
I don't remember anyone in the family calling Uncle Mino by his given name of Carmine, except maybe one of his sisters or brothers if they wanted to get his attention quickly. I don't even know how the name of "Mino" came into being, but everyone in the family called him by that nick-name, pronounced as Minnu. When Uncle Mino introduced himself to anyone outside the family, he always used his given name Carmine, and that was also how his signed his legal signature. Come to think of it, no one other than the family called him Mino.
Uncle Mino was neat and tidy as a child, even neater as a young adult, and fastidious as he got older. He wanted his shirts ironed a certain way, his food served on nice-looking china, and his clothing came from only the best men's stores that New York City had to offer. He always said "Buy the best and it will last forever." He always did, and his clothes were always classic, current, and perfectly pressed, and they did indeed last for decades.
During World War II, Uncle Mino was in the Navy and assigned to a submarine. He had such a strong attention to detail at that time of his life that the captain of the ship requested that Carmine be assigned as his valet. (I'm positive that the captain addressed him as Carmine, not Mino.) Uncle Mino would tell us his war stories when we were kids..... how he had to keep the captain's uniforms wrinkle-free, his shoes shined like mirrors, and his medals polished like gold. I distinctly remember one night at my grandmother's kitchen table when my dad told his brother: "Enough with your war stories... while you were shining shoes, I was fighting Germans."
After the War, Uncle Mino became a draftsman, which led him to a career in architecture. He was a brilliant artist, and could draw just about anything with a pencil and a "proper piece of paper," as he called it. New York City was Uncle Mino's favorite place for sight-seeing..... he would walk around the streets with his eyes looking up at the details on the old buildings. Whenever anyone in the family mentioned going into The City, Uncle Mino would tell them "Look up! Don't forget to look up at the buildings!" One of the last structures that Uncle Mino worked on before retiring from the architectural firm was the Jacob Javits Center on W. 34th Street in Manhattan. He retired only because his company started using computers for their designs, and Uncle Mino was definitely 'old school' when it came to his artwork.
When my generation of cousins were kids, Uncle Mino would pay us for the coins we collected on Halloween. In the 1950s and 1960s, a lot of people would give out pennies and nickels to the trick-or-treating kids, rather than candy. Uncle Mino was an avid coin collector, and he just knew that one day he would come across a very rare coin that had been dropped into one of our Halloween bags. If we gave him 60 cents worth of pennies, he would give us a crisp one-dollar bill. Then Uncle Mino would spend hours polishing up those pennies till they were bright and shining, adding the older ones to his collection.
There was an afternoon in the Spring when I was in the 4th or 5th grade, and Uncle Mino came home with a very small lemon tree in a tin bucket. His plan was to take the tree out of the little bucket, re-plant it with good soil in a large ceramic planter, and keep the plant in the corner of Grandma's kitchen near his chair. That particular corner got a lot of sun during the day, and Uncle Mino had visions of that tree growing up to the ceiling and producing enough lemons to keep the family in lemonade. (My grandmother made the best lemonade, which everyone just loved.)
Into the corner went the newly replanted lemon tree.... right into that sunny corner by Uncle Mino's place at the kitchen table. The tree grew taller over the years, and it did indeed reach the ceiling. However, not one solitary lemon ever grew on that tree. Uncle Mino would talk to the tree, remove old leaves very carefully, and he never allowed anyone to water it. His theory was that the tree needed just one consistent caretaker in order to thrive. Of course, the family made a joke over that tree, because it never did produce any lemons, but Mino took care of that tree for nearly 20 years. When I was in high school, my dad got a couple of very small lemons from the store and managed to tie them onto Mino's tree with fishing line. When Mino walked into the kitchen that particular morning, he stopped in his tracks and his mouth opened in surprise..... but within seconds, he realized that bright yellow lemons wouldn't have sprouted from the tree over-night. He quickly removed the lemons, telling my dad that the thin fishing line would cut into the branches of his tree. "Your lemon tree is a lemon," my dad would tell him.
Uncle Mino got married in the early 1950s. I remember his wife clearly, because she was blond and very pretty, and not Italian. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The marriage, however, didn't last. I've no idea why, but if I had to guess, I would imagine my Uncle's fastidiousness would be right up there at the top of the list of reasons for their divorce. Mino's wife left the state of New York, taking the two children with her. The kids were very young at the time, and Mino's ex-wife kept them away from their father and away from the rest of the family. Uncle Mino didn't see his children for the rest of his life. Two years after Uncle Mino passed away, a young man rang my grandmother's doorbell, and told Aunt Dolly that he was Mino's son. Aunt Dolly of course saw the family resemblance, but had to break the news that Mino had died.
In the early 1960s, Uncle Mino met a woman at work named Kathryn. She was the perfect partner for my uncle because she loved The City.... loved to go to Broadway shows, loved trying new restaurants, loved all the energy and madness of Manhattan. Mino and Kathryn would walk around The City for hours, taking in shows, going out to eat, and then walking around just looking up, up, up at the details on the older buildings. We all thought that Mino and Kathryn would eventually get married, but Kathryn told my grandmother "Marrying your son would never work out. I love him dearly but I'd end up killing him." Kathryn knew how fussy and non-flexible Mino was, and she could tolerate his habits on a friendly social basis, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn't live with those characteristics. Mino and Kathryn stayed friends for two decades, until Kathryn passed away. My uncle had gone to her apartment to pick up her for a date, and Kathryn didn't answer the doorbell. Uncle Mino found the superintendent of the apartment building and they both went back to the apartment door with the key. They found Kathryn in her bed, having died during the night..... it was later found out that she died of a heart attack. Uncle Mino was crushed... it saddened him for years afterwards, and he never dated another woman.
Mino loved all of his nieces and nephews as if they were his own children. He was forever bringing us gifts from The City... he would walk around Manhattan on his lunch-hour and if he saw something in one of the stores that would be "good for the kids," he would buy it and bring it home. One such gift was a very expensive telescope that was nestled into a huge wooden box lined with velvet. It was so elegant that Uncle Mino made us all wash our hands before we even touched the box. Mino would carry the telescope into the yard on clear nights, pointing out the constellations and making us memorize their names and the correct spelling of each. We were probably the only kids in the neighborhood who had their own backyard sky show. That telescope was eventually given to my cousin T, who showed the most interest in the sky. Twenty years ago, that same cousin left his job in the corporate world, bought more telescopes, and started his own star-gazing business that is very successful and very fulfilling to this day.
Uncle Mino went through World War II with hardly getting a scratch, thanks to his position as valet for the captain of the submarine he was assigned to during the War. In his mid 70s, Uncle Mino had to be admitted to the hospital for a simple gall bladder operation. Everything went fine... he came home and was told to rest until his follow-up appointment with his surgeon. My Aunt Dolly took care of her brother's every need, not even letting him walk down the stairs to the kitchen for his meals, for fear of disrupting the stitches from the operation. On a sunny March morning in 1999, Aunt Dolly asked Mino what he'd like for breakfast. "You know what? I'd really like some hot oatmeal today," he told her. And those were the last words he ever spoke.... when Aunt Dolly brought his breakfast up on a tray, Uncle Mino was dead, resting on his own pillow in his own bed, with the covers neatly pulled up and folded by his chest. The family would later find out that he died of a heart attack.
With my generation of cousins, and the generation that followed, we all agreed that you had to understand Uncle Mino before you could love him. And without a doubt, we all loved him. There was nothing we asked him for that he couldn't find for us in The City, that magical place where he went to work every day, taking a bus and two trains to get from Grandma's house in Queens to his office building in the heart of The City. When my generation graduated school and began looking for jobs, Uncle Mino would tell us "Go into Manhattan.... go to The City.... it has more to offer than Queens and Long Island." We would ask "More money?" And Uncle Mino would answer "Money? Who cares about money? Manhattan has more history, and that's what counts!"
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
The Family's Senior Moments... Giaconda.
My grandparents gave another operatic name to this girl-baby born in 1920. "La Giaconda" is what Grandpa used to call her... which eventually was pronounced like Ja-goan-da by her brothers and sisters who had trouble with the proper vowel placement when they were little. As the years went along, the family started calling her Jaye, and that's what mostly stuck.
Aunt Jaye... always very distinctive from my first memories of her. She was pure fashion with a passion, and she loved every feminine accessory to go along with the latest styles. Pretty shoes, fancy purses, lavish furs, anything with a leopard design, and jewelry.... Aunt Jaye was the Jewel Queen of the family.
My Aunt Dolly swore by classic styles, and still does to this day, but Aunt Jaye opted for the most attention-getting outfits which screamed Hollywood from head to toe. For as long as I can remember, Aunt Jaye's make-up was "close-up perfect," with false eyelashes that brought out the vamp in her, and magenta-colored lipstick that was unmistakably her signature color. Because of that bright magenta on her lips, I had cousins who cringed at the thought of a kiss hello from Aunt Jaye, and still other cousins who would hide behind a chair, their parents, or a tree, just to avoid that magenta kiss. And along with that kiss went a face-pinch.... as Aunt Jaye kissed you on one side of your face, her hand would be pinching the other side of your face as she told you how much you looked like "the family." (My cousin D would always tell her: "Well, who else would I look like?")
I've seen many photographs of my Aunt Jaye over the years, and the pictures taken of her when she was in her 20s and 30s were absolutely stunning. Even into her 40s, if you didn't know who she was, you would swear you were looking at a close-up of the latest Hollywood actress who was set to star in a film with Clark Gable or Cary Grant. Jaye was honestly that beautiful, and she just oozed glamour from her perfectly-coiffed hair to the satin sheen of her petite shoes.
Aunt Jaye's husband, Uncle T, owned a nightclub in The City...... she had meals cooked for her by the chefs there, so she never had to worry about messing up her own kitchen with food preparation. Aunt Jaye didn't like to cook, didn't want to cook, and had no intention of learning how to cook for the whole family. I would imagine that after all those years growing up in my grandmother's kitchen, some sort of culinary talent would have rubbed off on her. But Aunt Jaye was determined to take full advantage of the well-skilled chefs in her husband's restaurant. The dining room in Jaye's house was gorgeous, dripping with crystal chandeliers and beautiful china, but the family never went there for a meal. If you wanted a Sunday dinner or a holiday feast, then everyone went to Grandma's.
Uncle T's nightclub was a well-known hot spot in the hey-day of The City, and Aunt Jaye could be found there dancing the night away--- and her dancing was elegant, without fault. The club was frequented by regulars who loved to hear big-band music, and also by celebrities who liked the anonymity and privacy of the club. My mother and my dad used to go there for dinner and dancing every payday.... and my mother once danced with Jimmy Durante who was a regular patron there.
Aunt Jaye and Uncle T had one child, a daughter R, born barely four months after me. Because of our closeness in age, we grew up as sisters, inseparable in everything but temperament. I was the quiet one, R was more flamboyant. R seems to have inherited our Uncle Larry's dancing gene, because she can ballroom-dance circles around anyone else on a dance floor. My cousin R also inherited her mother's passion for fashion, and she thrives on always looking her best, as if she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue.
When our generation of cousins were kids, Aunt Jaye was like a movie star to us. When the family got together at Grandma's for a big dinner, Jaye was the one who always arrived later than everyone else. My dad would say: "Jaye doesn't just walk into this house, she makes an entrance." And she certainly did.... we all couldn't wait to see what she was wearing. Always an elegant hat, a Hollywood-worthy dress, ropes of pearls, the most beautiful shoes, and to top it all off, a fur coat. I can distinctly remember "petting" one of her furs because it was just so soft and I couldn't resist. Aunt Jaye scolded me: "Don't touch my coat.... you'll hurt the fur!" My dad once told his sister: "If you're so worried about hurting the poor animals who died for that coat, why don't you just wear a paper bag over that dress?"
Aunt Jaye was immensely loyal to, and protective of, the family. Jaye, like Grandpa, always believed "Family is always family, no matter what." We were all at a christening party for one of my cousin's children in the early 1990s. I had picked up my dad, and along with a man I was dating at the time, the three of us drove out to the Island to join the family at the party. Not five minutes after we had arrived, my Aunt Jaye pulled me over to the side of my cousin's backyard and asked me why I had brought "a stranger" to the party. "He's not a stranger.... he's my date," I told Aunt Jaye. She was not satisfied. "This is a family party, and he's not family." I was at a loss for words, or pretty close to it..... so I just looked at my aunt and said "What are we here? The Royal Family?" Aunt Jaye pursed her magenta lips and then said "We're better than the Royal Family, we're Italian... and don't you forget it."
Loyal. Fiercely loyal, always. There are days now, however, when Aunt Jaye can barely recognize her family. Other days, she cannot remember their names. Nearly two years ago, Aunt Jaye's memory capability began to fade... the result of a stroke of sorts. No need to go into all the medical details..... suffice it to say that Aunt Jaye is now a quiet shadow of her once overwhelmingly ebullient self. She can no longer live at home..... my cousin R had to make the hardest decision of her life, to move her mother into a nursing facility.
I speak to Aunt Jaye over the phone, after my cousin R tells her who I am and makes sure she understands. Once Jaye realizes exactly who I am, that I am her brother's daughter, her voice on the phone sounds happy and enthusiastic, bubbling with love.... she'll tell me how good her daughter is to her, how much she loves her, how much she misses seeing their little dog. She'll ask me how I'm feeling, and she will tell me to give her regards to my husband. At the end of the conversation, she will say: "Don't forget that I love you... I love all my family." As she says those words, I swear that I can almost feel her pinching my face like she did so many years ago.
My cousin R told me that she brought a photograph of her parents to her mother's room in the hospital.... the photo sits in a pretty gilded frame on the table beside Aunt Jaye's bed. The picture was taken decades ago, when both Jaye and Uncle T were at the height of their life together, the height of their health and good looks. They're dressed in their finest, ready for dinner and dancing. Uncle T was a handsome man, Aunt Jaye was a strikingly beautiful woman. I know that my cousin R wants to remember her parents just that way, and it must be very hard for R to see the quiet little woman who waits for her visits. Aunt Jaye is no longer the one making an entrance into Grandma's house. Now it's my cousin R who's making that entrance, into the nursing facility to visit her mother.
It goes without saying that the family misses their Hollywood star.... their Giaconda, their Jaye. No one expected, at nearly 93 years of age, for Aunt Jaye to not be able to live in her own house anymore. Considering the extent of Aunt Jaye's memory loss, it would indeed be a blessing if she were blissfully unaware of her surroundings.... if when my cousin R goes to visit her every evening, Jaye thinks she's just coming home from work, not coming into the hospital for a visit.
When I speak to Aunt Jaye over the phone, I picture her as she always was... perfectly coiffed and dressed, with beautifully manicured hands and nails, false eyelashes, and that striking magenta lipstick. Aunt Jaye still wears her signature lipstick color.... the only difference is that the magenta now has to be applied by her daughter. My cousin R is overwhelmingly thankful that she still has her mother. Their lives changed overnight, in the blink of an eye, in one heart-beat of a moment.
In that one solitary heart-breaking moment, the exuberance and essence of Aunt Jaye disappeared.... vanished forever from the woman we all knew and loved. But the angels are kind at times... when whispers of the family somehow make contact with Aunt Jaye's consciousness, that's when her eyes light up and she remembers exactly who she is, who she was, and the family she came from. "Family is family, no matter what happens."
Aunt Jaye... always very distinctive from my first memories of her. She was pure fashion with a passion, and she loved every feminine accessory to go along with the latest styles. Pretty shoes, fancy purses, lavish furs, anything with a leopard design, and jewelry.... Aunt Jaye was the Jewel Queen of the family.
My Aunt Dolly swore by classic styles, and still does to this day, but Aunt Jaye opted for the most attention-getting outfits which screamed Hollywood from head to toe. For as long as I can remember, Aunt Jaye's make-up was "close-up perfect," with false eyelashes that brought out the vamp in her, and magenta-colored lipstick that was unmistakably her signature color. Because of that bright magenta on her lips, I had cousins who cringed at the thought of a kiss hello from Aunt Jaye, and still other cousins who would hide behind a chair, their parents, or a tree, just to avoid that magenta kiss. And along with that kiss went a face-pinch.... as Aunt Jaye kissed you on one side of your face, her hand would be pinching the other side of your face as she told you how much you looked like "the family." (My cousin D would always tell her: "Well, who else would I look like?")
I've seen many photographs of my Aunt Jaye over the years, and the pictures taken of her when she was in her 20s and 30s were absolutely stunning. Even into her 40s, if you didn't know who she was, you would swear you were looking at a close-up of the latest Hollywood actress who was set to star in a film with Clark Gable or Cary Grant. Jaye was honestly that beautiful, and she just oozed glamour from her perfectly-coiffed hair to the satin sheen of her petite shoes.
Aunt Jaye's husband, Uncle T, owned a nightclub in The City...... she had meals cooked for her by the chefs there, so she never had to worry about messing up her own kitchen with food preparation. Aunt Jaye didn't like to cook, didn't want to cook, and had no intention of learning how to cook for the whole family. I would imagine that after all those years growing up in my grandmother's kitchen, some sort of culinary talent would have rubbed off on her. But Aunt Jaye was determined to take full advantage of the well-skilled chefs in her husband's restaurant. The dining room in Jaye's house was gorgeous, dripping with crystal chandeliers and beautiful china, but the family never went there for a meal. If you wanted a Sunday dinner or a holiday feast, then everyone went to Grandma's.
Uncle T's nightclub was a well-known hot spot in the hey-day of The City, and Aunt Jaye could be found there dancing the night away--- and her dancing was elegant, without fault. The club was frequented by regulars who loved to hear big-band music, and also by celebrities who liked the anonymity and privacy of the club. My mother and my dad used to go there for dinner and dancing every payday.... and my mother once danced with Jimmy Durante who was a regular patron there.
Aunt Jaye and Uncle T had one child, a daughter R, born barely four months after me. Because of our closeness in age, we grew up as sisters, inseparable in everything but temperament. I was the quiet one, R was more flamboyant. R seems to have inherited our Uncle Larry's dancing gene, because she can ballroom-dance circles around anyone else on a dance floor. My cousin R also inherited her mother's passion for fashion, and she thrives on always looking her best, as if she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue.
When our generation of cousins were kids, Aunt Jaye was like a movie star to us. When the family got together at Grandma's for a big dinner, Jaye was the one who always arrived later than everyone else. My dad would say: "Jaye doesn't just walk into this house, she makes an entrance." And she certainly did.... we all couldn't wait to see what she was wearing. Always an elegant hat, a Hollywood-worthy dress, ropes of pearls, the most beautiful shoes, and to top it all off, a fur coat. I can distinctly remember "petting" one of her furs because it was just so soft and I couldn't resist. Aunt Jaye scolded me: "Don't touch my coat.... you'll hurt the fur!" My dad once told his sister: "If you're so worried about hurting the poor animals who died for that coat, why don't you just wear a paper bag over that dress?"
Aunt Jaye was immensely loyal to, and protective of, the family. Jaye, like Grandpa, always believed "Family is always family, no matter what." We were all at a christening party for one of my cousin's children in the early 1990s. I had picked up my dad, and along with a man I was dating at the time, the three of us drove out to the Island to join the family at the party. Not five minutes after we had arrived, my Aunt Jaye pulled me over to the side of my cousin's backyard and asked me why I had brought "a stranger" to the party. "He's not a stranger.... he's my date," I told Aunt Jaye. She was not satisfied. "This is a family party, and he's not family." I was at a loss for words, or pretty close to it..... so I just looked at my aunt and said "What are we here? The Royal Family?" Aunt Jaye pursed her magenta lips and then said "We're better than the Royal Family, we're Italian... and don't you forget it."
Loyal. Fiercely loyal, always. There are days now, however, when Aunt Jaye can barely recognize her family. Other days, she cannot remember their names. Nearly two years ago, Aunt Jaye's memory capability began to fade... the result of a stroke of sorts. No need to go into all the medical details..... suffice it to say that Aunt Jaye is now a quiet shadow of her once overwhelmingly ebullient self. She can no longer live at home..... my cousin R had to make the hardest decision of her life, to move her mother into a nursing facility.
I speak to Aunt Jaye over the phone, after my cousin R tells her who I am and makes sure she understands. Once Jaye realizes exactly who I am, that I am her brother's daughter, her voice on the phone sounds happy and enthusiastic, bubbling with love.... she'll tell me how good her daughter is to her, how much she loves her, how much she misses seeing their little dog. She'll ask me how I'm feeling, and she will tell me to give her regards to my husband. At the end of the conversation, she will say: "Don't forget that I love you... I love all my family." As she says those words, I swear that I can almost feel her pinching my face like she did so many years ago.
My cousin R told me that she brought a photograph of her parents to her mother's room in the hospital.... the photo sits in a pretty gilded frame on the table beside Aunt Jaye's bed. The picture was taken decades ago, when both Jaye and Uncle T were at the height of their life together, the height of their health and good looks. They're dressed in their finest, ready for dinner and dancing. Uncle T was a handsome man, Aunt Jaye was a strikingly beautiful woman. I know that my cousin R wants to remember her parents just that way, and it must be very hard for R to see the quiet little woman who waits for her visits. Aunt Jaye is no longer the one making an entrance into Grandma's house. Now it's my cousin R who's making that entrance, into the nursing facility to visit her mother.
It goes without saying that the family misses their Hollywood star.... their Giaconda, their Jaye. No one expected, at nearly 93 years of age, for Aunt Jaye to not be able to live in her own house anymore. Considering the extent of Aunt Jaye's memory loss, it would indeed be a blessing if she were blissfully unaware of her surroundings.... if when my cousin R goes to visit her every evening, Jaye thinks she's just coming home from work, not coming into the hospital for a visit.
When I speak to Aunt Jaye over the phone, I picture her as she always was... perfectly coiffed and dressed, with beautifully manicured hands and nails, false eyelashes, and that striking magenta lipstick. Aunt Jaye still wears her signature lipstick color.... the only difference is that the magenta now has to be applied by her daughter. My cousin R is overwhelmingly thankful that she still has her mother. Their lives changed overnight, in the blink of an eye, in one heart-beat of a moment.
In that one solitary heart-breaking moment, the exuberance and essence of Aunt Jaye disappeared.... vanished forever from the woman we all knew and loved. But the angels are kind at times... when whispers of the family somehow make contact with Aunt Jaye's consciousness, that's when her eyes light up and she remembers exactly who she is, who she was, and the family she came from. "Family is family, no matter what happens."
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
The Family's Senior Moments... Angelino.
The year was 1919 when my grandmother gave birth to this little boy. I am certain of the year because Angelino was my dad. All of my grandmother's children were born at home, and in that part of the century, birth certificates were issued only for hospital births.
My grandmother's name was Angelina, so this baby boy was named after her, making the name masculine by ending it with an 'o' in place of the 'a.' Neighborhood boys began calling this boy "Little Frank" or "Frankie," most likely because Grandpa's name was Frank. As the years went on, the family picked up that nick-name and they would call him "Frankie" instead of his given name of Angelino.
When my father was baptized, his full name was Angelino Larry (Larry being the name of another brother, born a few years before my father but not living past his 22nd birthday). In his adult years, my dad's friends would call him Larry, his family always called him Frankie, and only in my father's signature on legal documents would Angelino ever appear in print. (Daddy always said he had "more first names than I know what to do with.")
My grandmother always told me that my dad was a happy baby, and a happy little boy. He loved his brothers and sisters and protected them from neighborhood bullies who were known to make fun of the Italians. My father didn't talk much about the family's years in the tenement apartment in Little Italy, other than to say "It was tough. Tough. We all did the best we could and we were glad to get out of there."
When my grandfather had saved enough money to buy property out in 'the countryside,' they moved to Queens in 1922 and grandpa was able to buy a double plot of land on a quiet street. After digging out a full basement underneath the imprint of the house plans, Grandpa built straight up, three floors. Any childhood memories that my dad talked about were centered in that big house on that street in Queens. In the 1920s, there was nothing but woods at the end of that street chosen by my grandfather. In the near future, Idlewild Airport would be built across a highway that was adjacent to the end of Grandpa's quiet street and those tree-filled woods were taken down to make room for houses built by my grandfather. In 1963, when Idlewild became John F. Kennedy Airport, the highway was expanded and Grandpa's street was no longer so quiet.
My grandparents' home became the center of the universe for the entire family as the years went by. When I was little girl, my dad would walk me around the property and show me the spot where he and his brothers used to play ball... the low branch of the apple tree that made it easy for the boys to climb into the tree and land on the roof of the garage... and he showed me the spot in the grass where they would land after jumping from the top of that roof. "Papa always told us we were in America and we could do anything... and we all thought we could fly like birds."
The grammar school was within walking distance of their home, but I remember my dad telling me that "No matter how far away that school was, we would have walked anyway." My grandparents were determined that their children would get an education.... in that part of the century, for children of immigrants, finishing 8th grade was an accomplishment. By the time the 8th- grade graduates were ready for High School, most had taken full-time jobs to help supplement their family's income. My dad became part of that work force. He took whatever odd jobs he could get, bringing home his pay envelope to my grandmother, who would give him a few dollars to keep for himself. My father told me "I didn't need much money. I lived at home, ate at home, and I was too young for fancy suits. What more did I need? I bought a little chocolate now and then, but that was less than a nickel."
Dad's first full-time job was driving a trolley for the New York City Transit Authority. He had routes along Jamaica Avenue, Metropolitan Ave... and along various streets in Brooklyn. The family said my father was "Born to drive... if it had wheels, it was for Frankie." Daddy loved his job, loved to be at the head of his vehicle, loved the responsibility and respected the riding public. His belief was that when you worked for The City, you were ultimately working for a Good Pension. That became his goal: work long and hard, retire and collect your pension, then do what you want after that. Dad's job driving trolley-cars was switched over to driving city buses when the Transit Authority did away with the out-dated trolley lines.
The one thing that disrupted my dad's work plans was World War II. He enlisted at the beginning, with his three brothers. Daddy chose the Army, his brothers chose the Marines and the Navy. When the war was over, one brother was forever lost.
My aunts would refer to those years as "The War." My uncles, along with my dad, wouldn't talk much about what happened while they were fighting for their country. Aunt Dolly always said that "The War changed all of my brothers. Three of them came back filled with sadness and one died filled with shrapnel."
There were two 'war stories' that my father told me when I was growing up, and over the decades of his life, he would repeat these stories time and again, until they began to sound like prayers. In the telling and re-telling, the details never changed, the emotion was as new as if it had occurred just the day before, and the sadness in my father's eyes didn't lessen over the years.
The first story was about a little German girl. My dad was a Staff Sargent and his unit was assigned to a small town in Germany near Dresden. My dad said the town had been destroyed beyond recognition, and the sight of the crumbling and bombed-out churches that had been so lovingly cared for just broke the hearts of everyone in his unit. Dad and some of his soldiers were trying to clean up the inside of the town's church for the people there, who were standing outside on the church steps and crying over the damage. As daddy walked up the center aisle of the church, he said a little blond German girl came out of hiding from underneath one of the pews. "She was only three or four years old, she was burned a little bit and she had no clothes on. The little girl was so scared... she was in shock and she wasn't even crying."
My father said he put down his rifle, took off his uniform shirt, then took off his undershirt and put it on the little girl. "My undershirt was so long that it was hanging down to her toes. She looked down at the bottom of that shirt and she wriggled her toes a little, then she looked up at me and smiled, and then the tears came falling down from her eyes and she couldn't stop crying." Daddy said that he put his uniform shirt back on, picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, then picked up the little girl and carried her out to the German people who were on the steps of the church. He asked the people there if anyone recognized the little girl... did she belong to anyone there... did they know her parents? "They were Germans. They didn't speak English, they didn't understand Italian. What could I do? I walked around the steps of the church and looked at all the women there. I finally found one who looked like my own mother and I put the little girl in her arms and told her "Please take care of this little girl. She's just a baby. Please." Daddy said the woman took off her shawl and wrapped it around the little girl whose hands were clutching the hem of his undershirt and twisting it into a ball of fabric.
My dad always ended that story with the same few sentences: "I never saw that old woman or that little girl again, and our unit was in that town for almost two weeks. I hope they both made it out of there. Horrible what happened to their church. Horrible what happened to their lives. That War was hell. Hell on earth."
The second story of daddy's took place in a small French town. Once again, his unit was sent there to "police the area" and do what they could for the residents. Nearly all of the town's buildings had been either badly destroyed or totally ruined. The town was so small that all of the people there just put every usable and salvageable item they had into one building that had the least damage. With help from the soldiers in my dad's unit, they gathered up tables and chairs, beds and blankets, and any food they could find. In the midst of all this hunting and gathering, a nine-year-old boy walked up to my dad with a bicycle that was nearly broken into two pieces. "Can you fix this for me?" the little boy said to my dad. "Imagine that," daddy told me... "The town is destroyed beyond recognition and the most important thing to that boy was his bicycle." My dad later found out that the boy needed that bicycle to visit his grandmother in the next town, something that he did every day.
When my dad told me this story, he would say that the little French boy reminded him of his nephew and godson R, back at home in my grandmother's house. He said the little boy had tears in his eyes, and my father immediately understood that the broken bicycle was the boy's prized possession. My dad told the boy he would fix the bicycle the best he could. He had soldiers search the town for other bicycles... thinking that he could take parts of other broken bikes to repair this boy's bike. It took five days... but that's exactly what my father did. The little boy couldn't stop crying when my dad gave him a bicycle that he could once again ride.
My father told me that story every time he bought me a new bicycle, and over the years of my childhood, I had a lot of bikes. I was told "Take good care of this bike... there was a little boy in France when I was in the war....." I knew the story by heart by the time I was seven, but I listened to it each and every time as if I'd never heard it before. My dad always cried at the ending, saying "I wonder whatever happened to that little boy."
In the late 1990s, we did indeed find out what happened to that young French boy. With computer access reaching small towns in France, a man in his mid-70s asked his nephew to find "the American soldier who fixed my bicycle during the war." The little boy never forgot my father's name... my dad's family still owned the same house in Queens.... a letter was sent there, and then the family forwarded it to me. It was written in French, and my Aunt Dolly thought I might know someone who could translate it for us. Not only did I get the letter translated, but that Frenchman and I sent letters and gifts back and forth for three years. I was the go-between for the man in France and my dad in New York. My dad would tell me what to write for him, and I used my computer to translate the letters into French, as well as translating the French letters we received into English, which I would read to daddy over the phone. Those letters stopped when the old Frenchman passed away. It was a nice tribute to my dad that in the last part of that old Frenchman's life, he wanted to make contact with his "American soldier."
Those letters from France were filled with love and gratitude and appreciation, from an old man who remembered the kindness of an Army soldier during World War II. My father, at that late stage of his life, not understanding the workings of the Internet at all, couldn't fathom how such a miracle could happen to "an old soldier" who was "just doing his job."
When my dad came home from The War, he vowed never to sign his name on another document for the government. "Last time I did that, they handed me a rifle and the next thing I knew, I was landing on the beach at Normandy." He would repeat that phrase over and over again for the rest of his life.
My Aunt Dolly always told me that The War took away part of my dad's happiness and she believed that he never was able to get it all back. My uncles and my dad didn't talk much about gruesome details, but when they did get to talking about their experiences, daddy was always the one who stopped talking first. He would get very quiet, listen to his brothers for a few minutes, then get up to make himself a cup of coffee and take it to the front porch of my grandparents' house. My dad would tell his brothers "I lived through that War once, I don't want to do it again by talking about it."
Daddy worked for The City for nearly 40 years.... first he drove the trolley cars, and then the buses. It was on his regular bus route along Jamaica Avenue that he met the woman who would eventually become his wife and my mother. Aunt Dolly, who remembers everything about everyone in the family, always said my mother was shy and very quiet, but much smarter than my father. After grammar school, my mother went on to high school and nursing school. Daddy went to work, and then to war, then came back home to work again.
My parents got married in the early Spring of 1951. I was born in 1952, in the middle of the first blizzard of that year. By the time I was in the 4th grade, my parents were separated, and when I started fifth grade, they were divorced. Very unusual for that decade, to have divorced parents, unless you were living in Hollywood. Queens was as far away from Hollywood as you could possibly get.
The dissolution of my parents' marriage was never really clear to me, mainly because everyone in the family had a different theory and a different opinion. Even though they both re-married in the late 1960s, I truly believe that my parents still had feelings for one another. A few family members would not agree, but I'd like to believe that anyway. My dad had given a locket to my mother before they married... this locket had tiny pictures of each of them. While they were married, my mother wore that locket on a necklace every day. After their divorce, daddy wore that same locket on his watch chain, every day, for nearly 40 years. In 2008, both of my parents died within two months of one another.
This son of my grandparents, my father, the man who fought in The War and then came home and spent hours of every day staring out of the porch windows and not saying a word, never wanted to be remembered as a soldier. Daddy felt that his Army years were a part of his life that he willingly gave away for his country, but he didn't want to be honored for that time. "I used a rifle to kill people. I couldn't help the poorest people in the towns we got sent to. I saw churches and schools blown to bits and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I had to dig graves for babies and small children. I had to watch the Jewish people try and walk out of the concentration camps with whatever dignity they possibly had left."
I think the sadness that descended upon my father during The War stayed with him for the rest of his life. At family gatherings, my dad was the life of the party... he could sing like a crooner and dance like Fred Astaire, and put him in a tuxedo and he looked like a matinee idol. But now, when I look at those old family pictures, I can see a touch of sadness in the corners of his eyes. I truly think that my dad wanted very little out of life.... he wanted exactly what his father had: a home filled with his children, a wife who wanted to be just a wife, and a little money in his pocket.
When I was a kid, my father would take quarters and dimes and nickels and let them drop onto the sidewalk in front of stores and in the grass near park benches. His theory was that "Some old man or a little kid is going to find that money and they'll be smiling for the rest of the day." He always bought whatever little kids were selling door-to-door, and he never passed by a down-and-out street person without giving them "a buck or two."
For all of the years my dad drove a bus for The City, he never took a fare from an elderly person, a member of the clergy, or any person that looked like they needed a break. He would tell me "These old people should ride for free, they've been through The Depression. Priests, rabbis, and nuns shouldn't have to pay for anything after giving their lives to the Church. And a person who looks poor is poor." My dad's bus was always on time because my father didn't tolerate lateness... his regular riders knew him by name and depended on him.
My dad earned good money during his working life, and the bus company did indeed give him a great pension when he retired. My father tried to "be retired," but it didn't work for him. "I'm going to be dead a long time.... while I'm still able to drive, I'm going back to work." The family thought he'd take an easy part-time job. Daddy went to Kennedy Airport and started to drive a bus around the airport, taking passengers from one terminal to the other. My father told the family: "This is an easy job... everyone rides for free."
I am my father's oldest child, and I was a "daddy's girl" from day one. Just ask the family, and they'll tell you that I still am. My dad's eyes lit up every time he saw me. Even in my teenaged years when I thought I knew everything, my dad may not have agreed with all of my choices but he never judged, never criticized. When I was little, I told everyone "my daddy can fix everything," and I would bring him broken toys from the neighborhood kids. When I got older and I reminded daddy of that childhood claim of mine, he would quietly say "I fixed all those toys, but I couldn't fix my marriage to your mother."
It was my dad's belief that everyone needed a very good fountain pen and a very good watch. When birthdays and Christmas came around, everyone in the family would be gifted with one or the other from my dad. Daddy even bought fountain pens and watches for the nuns who taught at the grammar school that I attended. My dad's bus-driving job didn't make him a rich man, but he was a smart shopper. Daddy would put pens and watches on lay-away when he found just the right ones. When Bic ballpoint pens got to be so popular decades ago, my dad said that no one who cared about good penmanship would use a ballpoint. And digital watches... daddy hated those. He said it didn't take a craftsman to make that kind of a watch..... "You could train a monkey to do that job. When you buy a watch, get one that was made by hand, and only then will you have a real timepiece."
I could write on and on about this man who was my father, but typing and editing this entry has made me very sad. In my eyes, in my memory, my dad was a kind and generous man who was blind-sided by The War and disappointed with the ending of his marriage to my mother. He carried an Italian/Catholic sense of guilt with him till the last days of his life, believing that he didn't do enough, love enough, succeed enough.
In my opinion, my dad was one of the most successful people I've known. I don't measure success by bank accounts and college degrees. I measure success the way my dad did: "If you share a part of every dollar you have with someone else... if you smile at old people and you're kind to helpless animals... if you believe in tiny miracles... if people remember you with a smile... then when you come to your very last day, you will know you've had a good life."
Daddy died at the age of 89, in June of 2008. In my mind, I can still hear his voice when I called him on the phone....... his "Hello?" would sound quiet and almost whispered. When I told him it was me, he would then say "Hi-ya Larrie!" --- his voice no longer low and wispy. He would make his voice louder and more robust for the duration of the conversation.
At the end of each phone call, my father wanted me to be the first to hang up.
"I don't want to hang up on you," he'd tell me.
"But you're not hanging up on me, daddy, you're just saying good-bye."
"I don't want to say good-bye either."
So I would say good-bye, and tell him I'd talk to him in a few days.
The last part to all of my dad's phone calls was him telling me "Remember that I love you, Larrie... I've always loved you." When I heard that, I knew it was my cue to hang up the phone, because he didn't want to be the first to put the receiver down.
I can still hear my dad's voice in my mind. I would give anything, anything, to really hear his voice again. "Remember that I love you, Larrie... I've always loved you."
My grandmother's name was Angelina, so this baby boy was named after her, making the name masculine by ending it with an 'o' in place of the 'a.' Neighborhood boys began calling this boy "Little Frank" or "Frankie," most likely because Grandpa's name was Frank. As the years went on, the family picked up that nick-name and they would call him "Frankie" instead of his given name of Angelino.
When my father was baptized, his full name was Angelino Larry (Larry being the name of another brother, born a few years before my father but not living past his 22nd birthday). In his adult years, my dad's friends would call him Larry, his family always called him Frankie, and only in my father's signature on legal documents would Angelino ever appear in print. (Daddy always said he had "more first names than I know what to do with.")
My grandmother always told me that my dad was a happy baby, and a happy little boy. He loved his brothers and sisters and protected them from neighborhood bullies who were known to make fun of the Italians. My father didn't talk much about the family's years in the tenement apartment in Little Italy, other than to say "It was tough. Tough. We all did the best we could and we were glad to get out of there."
When my grandfather had saved enough money to buy property out in 'the countryside,' they moved to Queens in 1922 and grandpa was able to buy a double plot of land on a quiet street. After digging out a full basement underneath the imprint of the house plans, Grandpa built straight up, three floors. Any childhood memories that my dad talked about were centered in that big house on that street in Queens. In the 1920s, there was nothing but woods at the end of that street chosen by my grandfather. In the near future, Idlewild Airport would be built across a highway that was adjacent to the end of Grandpa's quiet street and those tree-filled woods were taken down to make room for houses built by my grandfather. In 1963, when Idlewild became John F. Kennedy Airport, the highway was expanded and Grandpa's street was no longer so quiet.
My grandparents' home became the center of the universe for the entire family as the years went by. When I was little girl, my dad would walk me around the property and show me the spot where he and his brothers used to play ball... the low branch of the apple tree that made it easy for the boys to climb into the tree and land on the roof of the garage... and he showed me the spot in the grass where they would land after jumping from the top of that roof. "Papa always told us we were in America and we could do anything... and we all thought we could fly like birds."
The grammar school was within walking distance of their home, but I remember my dad telling me that "No matter how far away that school was, we would have walked anyway." My grandparents were determined that their children would get an education.... in that part of the century, for children of immigrants, finishing 8th grade was an accomplishment. By the time the 8th- grade graduates were ready for High School, most had taken full-time jobs to help supplement their family's income. My dad became part of that work force. He took whatever odd jobs he could get, bringing home his pay envelope to my grandmother, who would give him a few dollars to keep for himself. My father told me "I didn't need much money. I lived at home, ate at home, and I was too young for fancy suits. What more did I need? I bought a little chocolate now and then, but that was less than a nickel."
Dad's first full-time job was driving a trolley for the New York City Transit Authority. He had routes along Jamaica Avenue, Metropolitan Ave... and along various streets in Brooklyn. The family said my father was "Born to drive... if it had wheels, it was for Frankie." Daddy loved his job, loved to be at the head of his vehicle, loved the responsibility and respected the riding public. His belief was that when you worked for The City, you were ultimately working for a Good Pension. That became his goal: work long and hard, retire and collect your pension, then do what you want after that. Dad's job driving trolley-cars was switched over to driving city buses when the Transit Authority did away with the out-dated trolley lines.
The one thing that disrupted my dad's work plans was World War II. He enlisted at the beginning, with his three brothers. Daddy chose the Army, his brothers chose the Marines and the Navy. When the war was over, one brother was forever lost.
My aunts would refer to those years as "The War." My uncles, along with my dad, wouldn't talk much about what happened while they were fighting for their country. Aunt Dolly always said that "The War changed all of my brothers. Three of them came back filled with sadness and one died filled with shrapnel."
There were two 'war stories' that my father told me when I was growing up, and over the decades of his life, he would repeat these stories time and again, until they began to sound like prayers. In the telling and re-telling, the details never changed, the emotion was as new as if it had occurred just the day before, and the sadness in my father's eyes didn't lessen over the years.
The first story was about a little German girl. My dad was a Staff Sargent and his unit was assigned to a small town in Germany near Dresden. My dad said the town had been destroyed beyond recognition, and the sight of the crumbling and bombed-out churches that had been so lovingly cared for just broke the hearts of everyone in his unit. Dad and some of his soldiers were trying to clean up the inside of the town's church for the people there, who were standing outside on the church steps and crying over the damage. As daddy walked up the center aisle of the church, he said a little blond German girl came out of hiding from underneath one of the pews. "She was only three or four years old, she was burned a little bit and she had no clothes on. The little girl was so scared... she was in shock and she wasn't even crying."
My father said he put down his rifle, took off his uniform shirt, then took off his undershirt and put it on the little girl. "My undershirt was so long that it was hanging down to her toes. She looked down at the bottom of that shirt and she wriggled her toes a little, then she looked up at me and smiled, and then the tears came falling down from her eyes and she couldn't stop crying." Daddy said that he put his uniform shirt back on, picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, then picked up the little girl and carried her out to the German people who were on the steps of the church. He asked the people there if anyone recognized the little girl... did she belong to anyone there... did they know her parents? "They were Germans. They didn't speak English, they didn't understand Italian. What could I do? I walked around the steps of the church and looked at all the women there. I finally found one who looked like my own mother and I put the little girl in her arms and told her "Please take care of this little girl. She's just a baby. Please." Daddy said the woman took off her shawl and wrapped it around the little girl whose hands were clutching the hem of his undershirt and twisting it into a ball of fabric.
My dad always ended that story with the same few sentences: "I never saw that old woman or that little girl again, and our unit was in that town for almost two weeks. I hope they both made it out of there. Horrible what happened to their church. Horrible what happened to their lives. That War was hell. Hell on earth."
The second story of daddy's took place in a small French town. Once again, his unit was sent there to "police the area" and do what they could for the residents. Nearly all of the town's buildings had been either badly destroyed or totally ruined. The town was so small that all of the people there just put every usable and salvageable item they had into one building that had the least damage. With help from the soldiers in my dad's unit, they gathered up tables and chairs, beds and blankets, and any food they could find. In the midst of all this hunting and gathering, a nine-year-old boy walked up to my dad with a bicycle that was nearly broken into two pieces. "Can you fix this for me?" the little boy said to my dad. "Imagine that," daddy told me... "The town is destroyed beyond recognition and the most important thing to that boy was his bicycle." My dad later found out that the boy needed that bicycle to visit his grandmother in the next town, something that he did every day.
When my dad told me this story, he would say that the little French boy reminded him of his nephew and godson R, back at home in my grandmother's house. He said the little boy had tears in his eyes, and my father immediately understood that the broken bicycle was the boy's prized possession. My dad told the boy he would fix the bicycle the best he could. He had soldiers search the town for other bicycles... thinking that he could take parts of other broken bikes to repair this boy's bike. It took five days... but that's exactly what my father did. The little boy couldn't stop crying when my dad gave him a bicycle that he could once again ride.
My father told me that story every time he bought me a new bicycle, and over the years of my childhood, I had a lot of bikes. I was told "Take good care of this bike... there was a little boy in France when I was in the war....." I knew the story by heart by the time I was seven, but I listened to it each and every time as if I'd never heard it before. My dad always cried at the ending, saying "I wonder whatever happened to that little boy."
In the late 1990s, we did indeed find out what happened to that young French boy. With computer access reaching small towns in France, a man in his mid-70s asked his nephew to find "the American soldier who fixed my bicycle during the war." The little boy never forgot my father's name... my dad's family still owned the same house in Queens.... a letter was sent there, and then the family forwarded it to me. It was written in French, and my Aunt Dolly thought I might know someone who could translate it for us. Not only did I get the letter translated, but that Frenchman and I sent letters and gifts back and forth for three years. I was the go-between for the man in France and my dad in New York. My dad would tell me what to write for him, and I used my computer to translate the letters into French, as well as translating the French letters we received into English, which I would read to daddy over the phone. Those letters stopped when the old Frenchman passed away. It was a nice tribute to my dad that in the last part of that old Frenchman's life, he wanted to make contact with his "American soldier."
Those letters from France were filled with love and gratitude and appreciation, from an old man who remembered the kindness of an Army soldier during World War II. My father, at that late stage of his life, not understanding the workings of the Internet at all, couldn't fathom how such a miracle could happen to "an old soldier" who was "just doing his job."
When my dad came home from The War, he vowed never to sign his name on another document for the government. "Last time I did that, they handed me a rifle and the next thing I knew, I was landing on the beach at Normandy." He would repeat that phrase over and over again for the rest of his life.
My Aunt Dolly always told me that The War took away part of my dad's happiness and she believed that he never was able to get it all back. My uncles and my dad didn't talk much about gruesome details, but when they did get to talking about their experiences, daddy was always the one who stopped talking first. He would get very quiet, listen to his brothers for a few minutes, then get up to make himself a cup of coffee and take it to the front porch of my grandparents' house. My dad would tell his brothers "I lived through that War once, I don't want to do it again by talking about it."
Daddy worked for The City for nearly 40 years.... first he drove the trolley cars, and then the buses. It was on his regular bus route along Jamaica Avenue that he met the woman who would eventually become his wife and my mother. Aunt Dolly, who remembers everything about everyone in the family, always said my mother was shy and very quiet, but much smarter than my father. After grammar school, my mother went on to high school and nursing school. Daddy went to work, and then to war, then came back home to work again.
My parents got married in the early Spring of 1951. I was born in 1952, in the middle of the first blizzard of that year. By the time I was in the 4th grade, my parents were separated, and when I started fifth grade, they were divorced. Very unusual for that decade, to have divorced parents, unless you were living in Hollywood. Queens was as far away from Hollywood as you could possibly get.
The dissolution of my parents' marriage was never really clear to me, mainly because everyone in the family had a different theory and a different opinion. Even though they both re-married in the late 1960s, I truly believe that my parents still had feelings for one another. A few family members would not agree, but I'd like to believe that anyway. My dad had given a locket to my mother before they married... this locket had tiny pictures of each of them. While they were married, my mother wore that locket on a necklace every day. After their divorce, daddy wore that same locket on his watch chain, every day, for nearly 40 years. In 2008, both of my parents died within two months of one another.
This son of my grandparents, my father, the man who fought in The War and then came home and spent hours of every day staring out of the porch windows and not saying a word, never wanted to be remembered as a soldier. Daddy felt that his Army years were a part of his life that he willingly gave away for his country, but he didn't want to be honored for that time. "I used a rifle to kill people. I couldn't help the poorest people in the towns we got sent to. I saw churches and schools blown to bits and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I had to dig graves for babies and small children. I had to watch the Jewish people try and walk out of the concentration camps with whatever dignity they possibly had left."
I think the sadness that descended upon my father during The War stayed with him for the rest of his life. At family gatherings, my dad was the life of the party... he could sing like a crooner and dance like Fred Astaire, and put him in a tuxedo and he looked like a matinee idol. But now, when I look at those old family pictures, I can see a touch of sadness in the corners of his eyes. I truly think that my dad wanted very little out of life.... he wanted exactly what his father had: a home filled with his children, a wife who wanted to be just a wife, and a little money in his pocket.
When I was a kid, my father would take quarters and dimes and nickels and let them drop onto the sidewalk in front of stores and in the grass near park benches. His theory was that "Some old man or a little kid is going to find that money and they'll be smiling for the rest of the day." He always bought whatever little kids were selling door-to-door, and he never passed by a down-and-out street person without giving them "a buck or two."
For all of the years my dad drove a bus for The City, he never took a fare from an elderly person, a member of the clergy, or any person that looked like they needed a break. He would tell me "These old people should ride for free, they've been through The Depression. Priests, rabbis, and nuns shouldn't have to pay for anything after giving their lives to the Church. And a person who looks poor is poor." My dad's bus was always on time because my father didn't tolerate lateness... his regular riders knew him by name and depended on him.
My dad earned good money during his working life, and the bus company did indeed give him a great pension when he retired. My father tried to "be retired," but it didn't work for him. "I'm going to be dead a long time.... while I'm still able to drive, I'm going back to work." The family thought he'd take an easy part-time job. Daddy went to Kennedy Airport and started to drive a bus around the airport, taking passengers from one terminal to the other. My father told the family: "This is an easy job... everyone rides for free."
I am my father's oldest child, and I was a "daddy's girl" from day one. Just ask the family, and they'll tell you that I still am. My dad's eyes lit up every time he saw me. Even in my teenaged years when I thought I knew everything, my dad may not have agreed with all of my choices but he never judged, never criticized. When I was little, I told everyone "my daddy can fix everything," and I would bring him broken toys from the neighborhood kids. When I got older and I reminded daddy of that childhood claim of mine, he would quietly say "I fixed all those toys, but I couldn't fix my marriage to your mother."
It was my dad's belief that everyone needed a very good fountain pen and a very good watch. When birthdays and Christmas came around, everyone in the family would be gifted with one or the other from my dad. Daddy even bought fountain pens and watches for the nuns who taught at the grammar school that I attended. My dad's bus-driving job didn't make him a rich man, but he was a smart shopper. Daddy would put pens and watches on lay-away when he found just the right ones. When Bic ballpoint pens got to be so popular decades ago, my dad said that no one who cared about good penmanship would use a ballpoint. And digital watches... daddy hated those. He said it didn't take a craftsman to make that kind of a watch..... "You could train a monkey to do that job. When you buy a watch, get one that was made by hand, and only then will you have a real timepiece."
I could write on and on about this man who was my father, but typing and editing this entry has made me very sad. In my eyes, in my memory, my dad was a kind and generous man who was blind-sided by The War and disappointed with the ending of his marriage to my mother. He carried an Italian/Catholic sense of guilt with him till the last days of his life, believing that he didn't do enough, love enough, succeed enough.
In my opinion, my dad was one of the most successful people I've known. I don't measure success by bank accounts and college degrees. I measure success the way my dad did: "If you share a part of every dollar you have with someone else... if you smile at old people and you're kind to helpless animals... if you believe in tiny miracles... if people remember you with a smile... then when you come to your very last day, you will know you've had a good life."
Daddy died at the age of 89, in June of 2008. In my mind, I can still hear his voice when I called him on the phone....... his "Hello?" would sound quiet and almost whispered. When I told him it was me, he would then say "Hi-ya Larrie!" --- his voice no longer low and wispy. He would make his voice louder and more robust for the duration of the conversation.
At the end of each phone call, my father wanted me to be the first to hang up.
"I don't want to hang up on you," he'd tell me.
"But you're not hanging up on me, daddy, you're just saying good-bye."
"I don't want to say good-bye either."
So I would say good-bye, and tell him I'd talk to him in a few days.
The last part to all of my dad's phone calls was him telling me "Remember that I love you, Larrie... I've always loved you." When I heard that, I knew it was my cue to hang up the phone, because he didn't want to be the first to put the receiver down.
I can still hear my dad's voice in my mind. I would give anything, anything, to really hear his voice again. "Remember that I love you, Larrie... I've always loved you."
Saturday, November 9, 2013
The Family's Senior Moments.... Edie.
This girl-baby was given the operatic name of Aida when she was born. My grandparents pronounced this name "Ai-eee-da," which would explain the Americanization of the name to Anita when she started school. Further on in years, her brothers and sisters began calling her Edie, and that's the name that reigned with the family.
And 'reigned' is the correct word for Edie. She not only had a definite, commanding presence, but she reigned as Queen of The Family. For as long as I can remember, Aunt Edie wanted to have the last word on everything. It was her way or the highway, and she didn't care who liked it. If you wore too short a dress (especially in the 1960s), she not only let you know it, but she would put a pencil mark near your knee to let you know where the hem needed to be. Wrong color nail polish? She'd look through magazines to find just the right color that she thought would be better for you. Same went for hair styles, fashions, shoes, purses, home furnishings.
Aunt Edie was the only one of my aunts who lived in an apartment house, and I thought that was the most marvelous accomplishment when I was a kid. Yellowstone Blvd. in Queens in the 1950s and 1960s was an 'important' location. Right in the heart of one of the nicest parts of the borough, close to The City, and surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of specialty shops where you could buy anything at all shipped in from every country on the globe.
Edie's apartment reflected her sense of style, independence and all things out-of-the-ordinary. Her Yellowstone Blvd. apartment was filled with black lacquer Oriental furnishings that were so different than any of the traditional antiques that were in all of the other family homes.
The first time I went to Aunt Edie's apartment, I remember standing there at the doorway to her living room and just staring.... I didn't know where to look first because everything in her living/dining room just looked so different. Aunt Edie thought I was being quiet and polite that day, and she complimented my three-year-old self on my good behavior. Later on that same day, she would be scolding me because I had sunk my teeth (and left marks!) in one of her Oriental tables. That particular table was hand-painted with delicious looking fruit in baskets and I guess I wanted to see if the fruit was edible. The black lacquer was a soft wood.... my baby teeth were harder than anyone thought... and those two little teeth marks stayed in that table for as long as she owned it, which was as long as she lived. I remember being at a family Christmas party in my early 40s..... Aunt Edie was still telling that story: "Do you remember when Larrie tried to eat the fruit on my little Chinese table?"
Aunt Edie had a heart of gold, even though some people may have thought it was made of brass. She was just so determined to do things 'the right way,' and she just believed that her way was always the right way. Naturally, not everyone in the family agreed with that theory, and there were times when she would clash with her brothers and sisters to the point of a loud discussion that would last for weeks. I can remember my grandmother begging Aunt Edie to "let people make their own decisions... if they make a mistake, then they'll learn a lesson." Aunt Edie's answer to that was always the same: "If they do what I tell them, they won't make a mistake." My grandmother would go back to stirring the sauce or making dough for ravioli and just try and ignore the debate that was going on in her kitchen.
Aunt Edie was married and divorced before I was born. She had two children from that marriage, a son and a daughter. Edie's son was the only boy in my grandparents' house during World War II.... all of Edie's brothers had enlisted in the military, so it was just my grandfather and Edies' son for all of the war years, surrounded by "all these girls," as Grandpa would say. Because Aunt Edie's children were so much older than I was when I was in grade school, I thought her son was my uncle and her daughter was my aunt. I addressed them as such during one of the holiday dinners and Aunt Edie lost not a second in correcting me: "R and L are my children, which makes them your cousins, not your uncle and aunt. I am your Aunt. They are your cousins." She had me repeat that whole formal decree so I wouldn't soon forget it. While I was repeating that all back to her, one of my other cousins (of my own age) was whispering "You don't have to listen to her, Larrie... she's only your aunt, not your mother." Which, of course, brought on another lecture from Aunt Edie to that cousin, and another debate with that cousin's mother (which was Edie's younger sister).
Because of Aunt Edie's 'single' status, she went out to The City quite a bit. She was very pretty (as were all of my grandparents' daughters) and Edie attracted various gentlemen callers. That's how she referred to them, giving them numbers over the years. Gentleman Caller #1, Gentleman Caller #2, etc. If she permanently said good-bye to one particular Caller, she didn't re-assign his number to someone else. Reasons for being dismissed by Aunt Edie would be disrespecting either her or anyone in the family, being late for a date, or drinking, smoking, or eating too much. Aunt Edie wouldn't tolerate lateness, except if you got hit by a bus. She had no patience with people who drank too much because she wanted to be driven home, not put in a taxi. As for men who smoked more than one cigarette after dinner, her attitude with that was she didn't want to end up "smelling like an ash tray" by the end of the evening. And if a man ate too much, she just couldn't cope with that at all.... "He might have a heart attack in the middle of a good restaurant and I'll never be able to show my face in there again!"
Aunt Edie liked big spenders, though. She didn't like a man who was cheap with his money, because after all, "What's he going to do with it? Have his bank account buried in his casket?" Edie liked fine restaurants, well-made clothing, the theatre and the opera, and she loved The City. Manhattan was never frowned upon by Aunt Edie. The City was exciting, vivacious, thrilling, and alive, and she loved every bit of it. New York City was like Edie: glittery, sparkling, always ready for a party.
Edie's nick-name was "Sparkle Plenty," given to her by her sister Dolly. No matter what sort of porcelain figurine Edie bought for her apartment, she would douse it with a bit of clear glue and then dust it with gold or silver glitter. Edie's daughter L sent me some Oriental figurines a few years ago because she thought I'd like them for our big Victorian house. The figurines were white porcelain, a man and a woman, in delicate dancing poses.... frozen-in-time Asian dancers that were very fragile and very pretty. If I hadn't known their origin, one look at the gold glitter all over their porcelain costumes would have told me that they began their shelf-life on one of Aunt Edie's tables.
When I was a kid, Aunt Edie's Oriental-style apartment was like walking into a Hollywood movie. And if that hadn't been enough, visiting Aunt Edie along with Aunt Dolly was a special treat because the three of us would walk from that apartment up to Queens Blvd. and have lunch in one of the little coffee shops. Aunt Edie didn't always want to "mess up her kitchen" with cooking. The kitchen table, along with the counter-top and storage cabinets, were embellished with her collection of Oriental figurines, plates, and small lamps. I don't think she wanted to move anything out of the way for a mere sandwich or a bowl of soup.
In our family, especially at my grandmother's, everyone ate at home. No one trusted the ingredients from a restaurant to be fresh and of the best quality. (The exception to that rule was "Mama Leone's Italian Restaurant" in Manhattan.) Aside from that, we all believed that no one on the planet cooked as well as my grandmother and Aunt Dolly anyway, so why bother going out. Aunt Edie risked health and food poisoning every chance she got... she just loved being served, and if she didn't have to cook it, she would bravely choose from a menu of cafes and restaurants that she was familiar with. And I'm positive that if she had ever been served anything that wasn't up to her standards, she would have asked to speak to the chef.
As if it were just yesterday, I can remember sitting in a small cafe with my Aunt Edie and Aunt Dolly, and they had ordered a slice of chocolate cake for me, and one Charlotte Russe for them. Chocolate cake was my favorite dessert as a kid, and I remember telling Aunt Dolly "This cake isn't as good as yours." Aunt Edie told me to be polite and eat as much as I could without making a face. Aunt Dolly told me she would bake me a chocolate cake when we got home. While I was eating my not-so-good chocolate cake, my aunts were oohing and aahing over their Charlotte Russe. Back in the day, a Charlotte Russe was made in individual servings, not in a crowd-sized cake pan. The layers of angel food cake, cream, and berries were stacked in a cardboard cylinder and then sprinkled with powdered sugar and presented on a doily-embellished plate. Without a doubt, each of my aunts could have eaten a Charlotte Russe by themselves, but they preferred to share just one because it was so rich--- rich in both taste and in calories. It was Edie who would count the bites, making sure that Dolly didn't get more than she did.
My generation of 'the cousins' seemed at times to be intimidated by Aunt Edie. She told you what she thought you should do, wear, and be. And if that was in direct contrast to what you were thinking, then you were wrong. As we grew into adults, however, we recognized Aunt Edie's sincerity. She didn't want all of us to be just normal kids, she wanted us to be better than the normal kids.
Edie had a sense of fun which floored us..... as with her tiny French poodle named FiFi. Every Easter, she would use food coloring to dye that little dog pink or blue or yellow, and she would even polish its nails. Edie and FiFi would strut into my grandparents' house as if they were going to the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue. The adults would groan and say "Would you look at that poor dog?" and us kids would be screeching "Look at Aunt Edie's cute little Easter Poodle! She's all pink!!"
Like all of my grandmother's daughters, Edie had a flair for fashion. She loved going to the New York City opera and stage shows, and she had a closet filled with beautiful gowns. She shopped for beautiful shoes and gloves to match, delicate "hose" (as she called it), and purses that were like jewels. When Edie "stepped out," she was noticed by everyone. You just couldn't help admiring how beautifully she put herself together.
Aunt Edie passed away in 2005, a year or two before or after her 90th birthday. She spent the very last part of her life in a nursing home because she could no longer be taken care of in her own home. Her daughter L made sure that "Sparkle Plenty" was always beautifully coifed and dressed in that facility, although the opera gowns remained in a dark closet that Edie wouldn't ever see again.
Aunt Edie had two children (a son and a daughter), both of whom had two children of their own. Edie's son and his wife gave her two grandsons: both are married now, one has a young son, which is Edie's great-grandson. Edie's daughter gave her two granddaughters: one gave her a great-granddaughter, the other gave her three great-granddaughters and one great-grandson. Two of Edie's great-grandchildren now have children of their own, giving Edie three great-great-grandchildren.
I was not in New York for Edie's funeral, but the family told me that when Edie was put to rest in her casket, her daughter picked out one of her most beautiful gowns and her prettiest pair of shoes from her "opera closet." She arranged for her mother's hair and make-up to be fixed just the way Edie liked, and the ultimate result was a beautifully restful Edie who looked very much at peace. I like to imagine that Aunt Edie has been coasting on the puffiest of clouds up there since her passing, keeping company with my grandparents and other family members who have passed on over the years since.
I am certain that Edie has also been watching over her ever-growing branch of the family tree down here, and I can imagine her sprinkling golden glitter wherever she can so everything will be sparkling and pretty. As Aunt Edie always told the family: "A little extra sparkle never hurt anybody."
And 'reigned' is the correct word for Edie. She not only had a definite, commanding presence, but she reigned as Queen of The Family. For as long as I can remember, Aunt Edie wanted to have the last word on everything. It was her way or the highway, and she didn't care who liked it. If you wore too short a dress (especially in the 1960s), she not only let you know it, but she would put a pencil mark near your knee to let you know where the hem needed to be. Wrong color nail polish? She'd look through magazines to find just the right color that she thought would be better for you. Same went for hair styles, fashions, shoes, purses, home furnishings.
Aunt Edie was the only one of my aunts who lived in an apartment house, and I thought that was the most marvelous accomplishment when I was a kid. Yellowstone Blvd. in Queens in the 1950s and 1960s was an 'important' location. Right in the heart of one of the nicest parts of the borough, close to The City, and surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of specialty shops where you could buy anything at all shipped in from every country on the globe.
Edie's apartment reflected her sense of style, independence and all things out-of-the-ordinary. Her Yellowstone Blvd. apartment was filled with black lacquer Oriental furnishings that were so different than any of the traditional antiques that were in all of the other family homes.
The first time I went to Aunt Edie's apartment, I remember standing there at the doorway to her living room and just staring.... I didn't know where to look first because everything in her living/dining room just looked so different. Aunt Edie thought I was being quiet and polite that day, and she complimented my three-year-old self on my good behavior. Later on that same day, she would be scolding me because I had sunk my teeth (and left marks!) in one of her Oriental tables. That particular table was hand-painted with delicious looking fruit in baskets and I guess I wanted to see if the fruit was edible. The black lacquer was a soft wood.... my baby teeth were harder than anyone thought... and those two little teeth marks stayed in that table for as long as she owned it, which was as long as she lived. I remember being at a family Christmas party in my early 40s..... Aunt Edie was still telling that story: "Do you remember when Larrie tried to eat the fruit on my little Chinese table?"
Aunt Edie had a heart of gold, even though some people may have thought it was made of brass. She was just so determined to do things 'the right way,' and she just believed that her way was always the right way. Naturally, not everyone in the family agreed with that theory, and there were times when she would clash with her brothers and sisters to the point of a loud discussion that would last for weeks. I can remember my grandmother begging Aunt Edie to "let people make their own decisions... if they make a mistake, then they'll learn a lesson." Aunt Edie's answer to that was always the same: "If they do what I tell them, they won't make a mistake." My grandmother would go back to stirring the sauce or making dough for ravioli and just try and ignore the debate that was going on in her kitchen.
Aunt Edie was married and divorced before I was born. She had two children from that marriage, a son and a daughter. Edie's son was the only boy in my grandparents' house during World War II.... all of Edie's brothers had enlisted in the military, so it was just my grandfather and Edies' son for all of the war years, surrounded by "all these girls," as Grandpa would say. Because Aunt Edie's children were so much older than I was when I was in grade school, I thought her son was my uncle and her daughter was my aunt. I addressed them as such during one of the holiday dinners and Aunt Edie lost not a second in correcting me: "R and L are my children, which makes them your cousins, not your uncle and aunt. I am your Aunt. They are your cousins." She had me repeat that whole formal decree so I wouldn't soon forget it. While I was repeating that all back to her, one of my other cousins (of my own age) was whispering "You don't have to listen to her, Larrie... she's only your aunt, not your mother." Which, of course, brought on another lecture from Aunt Edie to that cousin, and another debate with that cousin's mother (which was Edie's younger sister).
Because of Aunt Edie's 'single' status, she went out to The City quite a bit. She was very pretty (as were all of my grandparents' daughters) and Edie attracted various gentlemen callers. That's how she referred to them, giving them numbers over the years. Gentleman Caller #1, Gentleman Caller #2, etc. If she permanently said good-bye to one particular Caller, she didn't re-assign his number to someone else. Reasons for being dismissed by Aunt Edie would be disrespecting either her or anyone in the family, being late for a date, or drinking, smoking, or eating too much. Aunt Edie wouldn't tolerate lateness, except if you got hit by a bus. She had no patience with people who drank too much because she wanted to be driven home, not put in a taxi. As for men who smoked more than one cigarette after dinner, her attitude with that was she didn't want to end up "smelling like an ash tray" by the end of the evening. And if a man ate too much, she just couldn't cope with that at all.... "He might have a heart attack in the middle of a good restaurant and I'll never be able to show my face in there again!"
Aunt Edie liked big spenders, though. She didn't like a man who was cheap with his money, because after all, "What's he going to do with it? Have his bank account buried in his casket?" Edie liked fine restaurants, well-made clothing, the theatre and the opera, and she loved The City. Manhattan was never frowned upon by Aunt Edie. The City was exciting, vivacious, thrilling, and alive, and she loved every bit of it. New York City was like Edie: glittery, sparkling, always ready for a party.
Edie's nick-name was "Sparkle Plenty," given to her by her sister Dolly. No matter what sort of porcelain figurine Edie bought for her apartment, she would douse it with a bit of clear glue and then dust it with gold or silver glitter. Edie's daughter L sent me some Oriental figurines a few years ago because she thought I'd like them for our big Victorian house. The figurines were white porcelain, a man and a woman, in delicate dancing poses.... frozen-in-time Asian dancers that were very fragile and very pretty. If I hadn't known their origin, one look at the gold glitter all over their porcelain costumes would have told me that they began their shelf-life on one of Aunt Edie's tables.
When I was a kid, Aunt Edie's Oriental-style apartment was like walking into a Hollywood movie. And if that hadn't been enough, visiting Aunt Edie along with Aunt Dolly was a special treat because the three of us would walk from that apartment up to Queens Blvd. and have lunch in one of the little coffee shops. Aunt Edie didn't always want to "mess up her kitchen" with cooking. The kitchen table, along with the counter-top and storage cabinets, were embellished with her collection of Oriental figurines, plates, and small lamps. I don't think she wanted to move anything out of the way for a mere sandwich or a bowl of soup.
In our family, especially at my grandmother's, everyone ate at home. No one trusted the ingredients from a restaurant to be fresh and of the best quality. (The exception to that rule was "Mama Leone's Italian Restaurant" in Manhattan.) Aside from that, we all believed that no one on the planet cooked as well as my grandmother and Aunt Dolly anyway, so why bother going out. Aunt Edie risked health and food poisoning every chance she got... she just loved being served, and if she didn't have to cook it, she would bravely choose from a menu of cafes and restaurants that she was familiar with. And I'm positive that if she had ever been served anything that wasn't up to her standards, she would have asked to speak to the chef.
As if it were just yesterday, I can remember sitting in a small cafe with my Aunt Edie and Aunt Dolly, and they had ordered a slice of chocolate cake for me, and one Charlotte Russe for them. Chocolate cake was my favorite dessert as a kid, and I remember telling Aunt Dolly "This cake isn't as good as yours." Aunt Edie told me to be polite and eat as much as I could without making a face. Aunt Dolly told me she would bake me a chocolate cake when we got home. While I was eating my not-so-good chocolate cake, my aunts were oohing and aahing over their Charlotte Russe. Back in the day, a Charlotte Russe was made in individual servings, not in a crowd-sized cake pan. The layers of angel food cake, cream, and berries were stacked in a cardboard cylinder and then sprinkled with powdered sugar and presented on a doily-embellished plate. Without a doubt, each of my aunts could have eaten a Charlotte Russe by themselves, but they preferred to share just one because it was so rich--- rich in both taste and in calories. It was Edie who would count the bites, making sure that Dolly didn't get more than she did.
My generation of 'the cousins' seemed at times to be intimidated by Aunt Edie. She told you what she thought you should do, wear, and be. And if that was in direct contrast to what you were thinking, then you were wrong. As we grew into adults, however, we recognized Aunt Edie's sincerity. She didn't want all of us to be just normal kids, she wanted us to be better than the normal kids.
Edie had a sense of fun which floored us..... as with her tiny French poodle named FiFi. Every Easter, she would use food coloring to dye that little dog pink or blue or yellow, and she would even polish its nails. Edie and FiFi would strut into my grandparents' house as if they were going to the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue. The adults would groan and say "Would you look at that poor dog?" and us kids would be screeching "Look at Aunt Edie's cute little Easter Poodle! She's all pink!!"
Like all of my grandmother's daughters, Edie had a flair for fashion. She loved going to the New York City opera and stage shows, and she had a closet filled with beautiful gowns. She shopped for beautiful shoes and gloves to match, delicate "hose" (as she called it), and purses that were like jewels. When Edie "stepped out," she was noticed by everyone. You just couldn't help admiring how beautifully she put herself together.
Aunt Edie passed away in 2005, a year or two before or after her 90th birthday. She spent the very last part of her life in a nursing home because she could no longer be taken care of in her own home. Her daughter L made sure that "Sparkle Plenty" was always beautifully coifed and dressed in that facility, although the opera gowns remained in a dark closet that Edie wouldn't ever see again.
Aunt Edie had two children (a son and a daughter), both of whom had two children of their own. Edie's son and his wife gave her two grandsons: both are married now, one has a young son, which is Edie's great-grandson. Edie's daughter gave her two granddaughters: one gave her a great-granddaughter, the other gave her three great-granddaughters and one great-grandson. Two of Edie's great-grandchildren now have children of their own, giving Edie three great-great-grandchildren.
I was not in New York for Edie's funeral, but the family told me that when Edie was put to rest in her casket, her daughter picked out one of her most beautiful gowns and her prettiest pair of shoes from her "opera closet." She arranged for her mother's hair and make-up to be fixed just the way Edie liked, and the ultimate result was a beautifully restful Edie who looked very much at peace. I like to imagine that Aunt Edie has been coasting on the puffiest of clouds up there since her passing, keeping company with my grandparents and other family members who have passed on over the years since.
I am certain that Edie has also been watching over her ever-growing branch of the family tree down here, and I can imagine her sprinkling golden glitter wherever she can so everything will be sparkling and pretty. As Aunt Edie always told the family: "A little extra sparkle never hurt anybody."
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