My grandmother on my mother's side.... such an odd-sounding phrase, but that's how my dad's family referred to her..... "your grandmother on your mother's side." Grandma Irma had pride of place, pride of family, pride of heart and home. She grew up in Rome, very near the Vatican, and her family was one of means. They didn't advertise their affluence, but quietly went their way knowing that their lives were easier than most, which only meant they had more responsibility to help those with less.
I don't know what prompted Grandma Irma to get on a ship and sail across the Atlantic, but when she arrived at Ellis Island she wasn't very happy. Her family had told her that the streets of America were filled with opportunity and paved with golden stones. When Irma got to New York City, she found narrow streets paved with cobblestones and hundreds of dirty-faced children who were either trying to sell newspapers or steal apples and oranges. "I cried when I saw the Statue of Liberty, but I cried harder when I saw the streets of New York."--- that's what Grandma Irma told me when I was a little girl, and she was still saying the same thing in the 1980s.
Grandma Irma's house was always as quiet as a church, as compared to the house of my grandparents on my dad's side which was always filled with family. My mother's mother had three children, my dad's mother had nine (12, actually, but three died very young).....my dad's family provided many more aunts and uncles and cousins, so that house was very rarely quiet.
I don't know how many family members were left in Rome when Irma decided to come to the United States. She didn't talk all that much about her family "on the other side" (as she called Italy). And when I was young, I never got into the habit of asking a lot of questions. I listened to any and all stories concerning both sides of the family.... I paid attention to whatever was talked about at the kitchen and dining room tables of my childhood, but I didn't ask for details or embellishments. One of my cousins (on my mother's side) went to Rome in the 1980s and met cousins of Grandma Irma's.... they welcomed her with open arms and she stayed in their villa as if they'd known her all their lives. When my cousin unpacked and brought out photographs of Irma and her children and grandchildren, the family in the villa cried for hours, literally getting tear-stains on the pictures.
When I was little, I would stay at Grandma Irma's for an over-night, or a weekend, and sometimes even a week in the summer. I would watch my grandmother wash clothes by hand (she didn't get a washing machine until the late 1960s), and then I would hand her the clothespins as she hung the wash out on the line to dry in the sun. I remember summer days when it was so hot that by the time we got the last of the clothes on the line, the pieces that were hung up first were already dry and ready to be taken down.
My grandmother made all of her own clothes, and I would sit and watch her cut patterns and sew dresses with matching jackets on the sewing machine that was in a bright corner of her dining room. Grandma would take me to Gertz and Macy's to look at ladies' dresses....... she would study the styles, touch the fabrics, look at the seams on the insides of the clothes, and then she would tell me "I can make this.... and it won't be so expensive." We would then walk to the fabric store where Grandma would look through countless bolts of fabric...... she would feel each one with her fingertips, then fold a bit of the edge over to see what sort of crease it would make. I remember her telling me that even if you sewed the most beautiful dress in the world, it wouldn't be comfortable if the fabric wasn't right. Grandma would find the perfect fabric, pick out the zipper and the buttons and the thread... and then she would go home and cut out the pattern, free-hand, just by remembering the dress she had seen in the store.
Grandma Irma paid all of her utility bills in cash, by walking from her house to the telephone company, the electric company, and the gas company. The telephone was in the downstairs hallway, on a little wooden bench that had a tiny desk on one side and a seat on the other. Two floors and a basement in that house, and just one phone.... those old bakelite phones rang very loudly, so you could hear it all over the house and out in the yard...... getting to it before it stopped ringing was the tricky part. When I got to be a teenager, and started running towards the phone when it rang, Grandma would tell me "Don't run in my house.... it's only the phone, not a fire."
The electric company was Grandma's biggest challenge. My grandmother didn't like to pay the electric company one penny more than she had to. She did all of her cleaning and cooking in the early morning hours (she got up at 5:30 every day). Sewing was done between noon and three, because the sun was best in the dining room during those hours. If I went upstairs for any reason during the day, the first thing Grandma would say to me when I got back downstairs was "Did you turn off the electric upstairs?" I couldn't tell her I did if I had left lights on because somehow she would know....... and she would send me back upstairs to turn out the light. As I went back up the stairs, I would hear Grandma saying: "Do you have a friend working at the electric company who's going to pay the bill for me?" To this day, leaving lights on during daylight in empty rooms just drives me nuts. I don't turn on lights until I really need them, and in rooms where I keep a small lamp on at night, it's always a very low-wattage bulb. (The reason is that I still don't have a friend at the electric company....)
At four o'clock every afternoon, Grandma Irma would have a cup of tea. She drank two cups of coffee every morning, but the late afternoon was reserved for tea. Her kitchen cabinets were filled with the most delicate and beautiful tea cups and saucers... nearly all of them were mis-matched. Grandma Irma loved pretty china, but she didn't want to spend a lot of money on them. Her reason: "They break in the sink. If you pay ten dollars for a cup and it breaks, you're throwing away ten dollars. But if you pay one dollar for a cup, you're saving nine dollars when it breaks."
Grandma would take me to Gertz and Macy's, and we would go up to the second floor of those department stores and she would show me the expensive sets of fine china. She would look at the patterns and tell me which were her favorites, but she wouldn't buy anything from those displays. We would get back on the escalator and go down to the basement of those stores, where the sale items were kept. Each store had tables filled with discounted and discontinued china patterns, and Grandma would look for her favorites, or find something similar. Sometimes the tea cups and saucers would be in sets, and sometimes there would be just a cup without a saucer, or a saucer without a cup. Grandma would match a cup to a saucer..... not an exact match, but she would always find two pieces that did indeed 'go together.' Every day when it was time for tea, she would look into her cabinet and choose a different cup and saucer... and when I was there, she would let me pick out my own. If I picked the same set two days in a row, she would tell me to "Look again.... this way another cup and saucer gets to the table."
One of my grandmother's favorite things to do, especially on a rainy day, was to take out all those cups and saucers, wash them all in the sink, dry them carefully with soft towels, and then re-arrange them in her kitchen cabinets. When I was little, she let me help with the drying. As I got older, she would let me wash the cups and saucers, and then as Grandma dried the sets, I would get up on the step-stool and re-arrange them on the shelves. She would always say the same thing when I was done: "Bella.... bellisima.... that looks better than it did the last time." And we would close the glass doors of the cabinet and admire the cups and saucers, and then at tea time, we would pick out our favorites.
Quiet as a church.... I just remember Grandma Irma's house being like a church...... you could hear every little thing that went on inside and outside that house. She didn't get a television until the late 1960s, and I don't even remember that house having a radio. If my grandmother wanted music, she would sing.... words in Italian that always had different melodies. I don't know if she was singing a real song, or just adding a melody to everyday words. During the Spring and Summer, when all the windows were open, we could hear the birds singing in the yard, kids playing on the street behind her house, and the sounds of the buses and the elevated trains going by on The Avenue. On the days when the traffic patterns were changed at the airports, we would hear the jets flying over her house and my grandmother would make the 'sign of the cross' and then close her eyes for a few seconds. When I first saw her do that, I thought she was saying a prayer that the plane would fly safely. When I got older, she told me all those little prayers weren't exactly for the passengers.... she had been asking God not to let the plane crash on her house. For all of her life, my grandmother never got on a plane. Her theory was that if God wanted her to fly, she would have been born with wings.
Grandma Irma lived a simple life..... with simple rules: Don't take what doesn't belong to you, and don't be jealous of what other people have. Don't leave lights on if you're not in the room, and don't even turn lights on if the sun is shining. Pay your bills on time, don't borrow money, don't buy what you can't afford. Don't disrespect any person because you're no better than anyone else. Take care of yourself, your home, your children, your soul. She saved every penny that she could, bringing dollars and coins to the bank every Monday and watching the balance in her savings passbook grow with deposits and interest. I once asked my grandmother if she was saving up for something special. Her answer was "Life is special. I'm saving for my life." When my grandmother died, she had money in the bank, she didn't owe a penny to anyone, all her bills were paid, and there was 'life money' saved and invested for her family.
For a simple woman whose English language was scattered with Italian phrases, Grandma Irma seemed to have a good grasp of what really mattered in this world. Her needs were simple, but her expectations were high. She expected everyone to be nice, be kind, be respectful, to be grateful. She would see a person in a wheelchair on The Avenue, and she would smile at them, and then later tell me to "Say a prayer to God that you have two healthy legs to walk on." When Grandma saw a blind person waiting for a bus or trying to cross a street, she would go over and ask if she could help. Later on, her words to me were: "Say a prayer to God that you have two good eyes."
Grandma Irma passed away in her own home, about 25 years ago. She was nearly 94 years old, and she had been up on a step-stool because it was a rainy day. She had taken down all of her tea cups and saucers, washed them and dried them, and she was re-arranging the sets in her kitchen cabinet when she had a stroke. She was brought to the hospital but she never re-gained consciousness, and for that, the family was grateful. The stroke was massive, and had she lived, she would have been helpless. Grandma had never been in a hospital before.... she gave birth to her three children in her own home, with a midwife, and she was never sick enough to be hospitalized. One of her rules was to "Take care of yourself... if you get sick, it costs money... unless you have a friend who's a doctor."
In one of my own glass-fronted kitchen cabinets, I have a mis-matched tea cup and saucer from Grandma Irma's collection. The cup has a delicate pedestal, which lifts it up from the base of the saucer. I remember the very day we bought those pieces.... the cost of the cup was one dollar, the price of the saucer was just fifty cents. They were purchased in the Gertz department store on The Avenue.... I chose the cup, my grandmother found the saucer. Grandma didn't usually pay as much as one dollar for a tea cup, but because of the unusual pedestal on its base, she made an exception. (In the 1950s and 1960s, one dollar and fifty cents could buy a big bag of groceries.) After she paid for that set, I told my grandmother that maybe I would grow up and have a friend who made pretty china tea cups.
Sometimes on rainy days, I take Grandma's cup and saucer out of the cabinet, wash it and dry it, and put it back.... always in the same place. I have tea every day, but I only use my grandmother's tea cup and saucer if I'm sitting at the dining room table. I'm very careful with it because if it breaks in the sink, it cannot be replaced. In today's world, one dollar and fifty cents isn't expensive at all for a china tea cup and saucer, but the memories those pieces hold are priceless.
I have lots of tea cups, all of which could be re-arranged in the cabinets on rainy days, but it was more fun playing with the tea cups when Grandma was around to help.... "Bella.... bellisima...."
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
The Family's Senior Moments.... Angelina and Frank
Angelina and Frank were my grandparents, on my dad's side. If memory serves me correctly, my grandmother was just 16 years old when she married my grandfather, who was just a year or two older than his young bride. As was the custom in those days with Italian-Catholic families, my grandparents had lots of children. Twelve to be exact, with nine of the twelve surviving into adulthood. Those nine have been chronicled here in other "Senior Moments" entries.
Grandpa was the undisputed boss of his household, but it was Grandma who was the heart of my grandparents' home. Grandpa may have built that big old house with his own two hands, but it was Grandma who kept the house alive with her heart.... alive with generations of children and their children, alive with memories, alive with love. Grandpa was indeed the boss of his home, but my grandmother had her own theory about that. She would tell us that "The husband is the engine of the family, but the wife is the gasoline."
Not being perfectly fluent in English, my grandparents spoke to all of my generation with sentences that were half in Italian, half in English. Somehow, we knew exactly what they were saying, and we all managed to learn some Italian along the way. My generation was not taught to speak in fluent Italian, as was my dad's generation. All of my cousins agreed that our parents didn't teach us Italian because they wanted to have that language all to themselves so they could speak to one another without us knowing every word that was being said at the dinner table.
In a corner of the basement in my grandparents' house was a little door leading to "la guandine," the wine cellar. In this room were shelves of glass jars holding Grandma's tomato sauce, summer fruits, winter vegetables. On the other side of la guandine was the wine press for Grandpa's wine. My grandfather would pick the finest grapes he could find, and press those through a wooden machine with a wrought iron handle that somehow magically made a deep red wine that he would pour into tall bottles. My cousins and I would laugh because the wine bottle would be so large, but the wine glasses themselves would be very small.
When we brought that to Grandpa's attention, he would tell us that if you drank the best wine and ate the best food, you only needed a little bit to be satisfied. "Eat junk and you will eat too much. Eat well and you will feast on very little." As always, when Grandpa told us one of his beliefs, he would punctuate his thought with a firm upward tilt of his chin, as if daring us to question his truth. We never did.
In my grandparents' kitchen, there was a wooden plate hung up on the wall.... on it were hand-painted letters saying "No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best." My generation of cousins all learned how to read letters and words from that plate, and it hung in the same spot for over 50 years. I think it was my cousin R who gave Grandma that plate, and it never went un-noticed or un-appreciated in all those years.
Grandma's kitchen was the shining star of that house.... always something cooking on top of the stove or in the oven, with food so delicious that just the thought of eating out in a restaurant would get everyone saying "Eat out? What for? Who can cook better than Mama?" I do believe that the only time dinners were eaten out were at family weddings in large Italian catering halls.
When my Aunt Angela got married, my grandmother didn't trust the catering facility to make the cream puffs as well, or as beautiful, as she could. Not a problem... Grandma spent days and days making 300 cream puffs in the shapes of little swans, filled with a sweet cream that had the chef at the catering hall asking for her recipe. My grandmother declined: "I should give my recipe to you? You, Mr. Big Chef with your fancy hat, should know how to make a cream puff without help from Angelina."
My grandparents watched very little television, but there were a few programs that they wouldn't think of missing. Ted Mack's Amateur Hour was a favorite, as well as The Ed Sullivan Show, and Grandma would never miss "Queen For a Day." Grandpa liked wrestling, and he would move his chair up close to the television for those shows because he didn't want to miss anything.
I remember that Grandma would have tears in her eyes every time she heard Nat King Cole singing.... she said that "The angels in heaven must have voices like this man." And one of Grandpa's favorites was Louis Armstrong..... whenever he was on television, Grandpa would take his handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his forehead and make believe he was singing along with Louis...... it was just so funny. Grandpa hardly ever did something as whimsical as that, but he just thought Louis Armstrong was the King of television. Hearing Grandpa's Italian versions of Louis Armstrong's songs is one of my best memories of my grandfather.
In the afternoons, both my grandparents would take some leisure time. Not that they sat in a chair and did nothing, but they sat at the kitchen table and did what they loved to do...... for Grandpa, it was playing Solitaire..... for Grandma, it was either knitting or crocheting. Grandpa loved playing cards, and he and his sons would play poker after Sunday dinners and on the holidays. They never played for money..... they used poker chips and hard-shelled nuts for betting. "I'll see your two pecans, and raise you three walnuts."
But Solitaire was Grandpa's way of relaxing.... and whichever of the grandchildren happened to be in the house at the time, they learned not only the numbers, the card suits, the rules of the game... they learned patience and honesty as well. "Never cheat," Grandpa would tell us. "No one likes a cheater, no matter what. You cheat once, you're done. No one will trust you again. And then what?" (And up would go his chin, in that tilt towards heaven, and you knew not to question his theory.)
My grandparents loved their family, loved their home, and the unique simplicity of their lives is testament that one didn't need to be rolling in money in order to be on top of the world. Sunday dinners and holiday dinners were important family gatherings.... adults ate in the dining room at the 'big table,' and the kids would be in the kitchen, at the 'children's table.' I don't remember the family saying "Grace" before those big meals, but I do remember Grandpa raising his wine glass, looking all around the table, and saying "My family.... my family."
When those big meals were cooked in that house, you could smell the aromas of the sauce and the lasagna, the roasted chicken and sausage.... it seemed like the house was just surrounded by these delicious cooking smells that lingered in the air. The house to the left of my grandparents' home was owned by an Italian family, but the house on the right had an Irish family with three boys. Every time Grandma started cooking, those three boys would sit in the driveway, right near Grandma's kitchen windows, and they would just sit there and enjoy the cooking odors coming from those windows. Without fail, each and every time, Grandma would fix three plates for those three boys, and call them from the back door to "come and get some good Italian food." I can still remember those boys, carefully holding the hot plates filled with my grandmother's cooking, and they would walk back to their house as if they were carrying precious gold. The next morning, they would bring back the plates, all washed and dried and ready for the next meals. As Grandma put the plates back into the cabinet, she would say the same thing each time: "Those Irish girls... they don't know how to cook for their children."
I think my grandparents were disappointed and disenchanted when their children's marriages began falling apart, one by one. Divorce was an "American thing," definitely not Italian. My grandparents expected their married children to stay married, to work out their problems, to keep their families together, no matter what. It just didn't happen that way. Except for my Uncle Tony and Aunt Margie, who were married forever, and except for my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Mary, whose marriage ended when Jimmy was killed at Pearl Harbor, all of the other family marriages ended in divorce.
It saddened my grandparents, especially at the Sunday and holiday dinners, to have parts of their family "missing" from the celebrations. When divorces came between the parents, the children were sometimes absent from the family for years. Then, as those children got older and started returning to my grandparents' house, they were welcomed with wide-open arms, no questions asked, as if they'd never left. And it was comforting to walk into that big old house and see that nothing had changed.... the furniture was not only the same, but in the same places. The dishes in the kitchen were the same, the kitchen chairs were in the same places, even little things like the salt and pepper shakers and the napkins--- everything was exactly the same. That was just so important, especially to a kid whose life had been turned upside-down through divorce.
My grandfather passed away in the early 1970s.... they found him in the upstairs hallway early one morning. He had walked out of the bedroom, on his way down the hall to the bathroom, and he had collapsed on the floor. He never regained consciousness. My grandmother was crushed beyond words. After the funeral and the burial, Grandma stayed in their room, in their bed, not wanting to go downstairs. My Aunt Dolly brought up her meals, brushed and braided Grandma's hair, and told her that Papa would have wanted her to go on living. Grandma didn't agree. She felt her place was with her husband, and that's where she wanted to be. Grandma passed away less than a year later, and everyone, including the doctor, said that she died of a broken heart.
My grandparents were unmistakably the glue that held the family together. They came to the United States on a ship that brought them from Naples to New York City, and they never looked back. They were Italian through and through, and they kept their heritage alive and intact, but they came here to become Americans, and that's exactly what they did. Their sons fought in World War II, their daughters worked in the garment district of Manhattan. Grandpa bought land in Queens and built his house three stories high.... built it with his own hands and his own heart. When my grandparents passed away, the house was never the same without them in it. We all still called it "Grandma's house," but without Grandma and Grandpa in it, the heart of the house just never beat as strongly.
The family's house is empty now. All of my aunts and uncles have passed away, except for Aunt Jaye who's in an assisted living facility, and 100-yr-old Aunt Dolly who lives in Florida with my cousin. It would be Aunt Dolly's greatest wish-come-true if someone in the family would want to live in "Papa's house." I can't see that happening. The house stands in the middle of a once-proud neighborhood of European immigrants that has lost every ounce of its pride over the years. The European immigrants are all gone... Aunt Dolly being the last to move.
My grandfather built his home to last forever, and it has. My grandmother loved her children and their children, and their children.... and there are now six generations of the family that started with Angelina and Frank and their dream to cross the Atlantic and begin a new life in America.
Grandpa was the undisputed boss of his household, but it was Grandma who was the heart of my grandparents' home. Grandpa may have built that big old house with his own two hands, but it was Grandma who kept the house alive with her heart.... alive with generations of children and their children, alive with memories, alive with love. Grandpa was indeed the boss of his home, but my grandmother had her own theory about that. She would tell us that "The husband is the engine of the family, but the wife is the gasoline."
Not being perfectly fluent in English, my grandparents spoke to all of my generation with sentences that were half in Italian, half in English. Somehow, we knew exactly what they were saying, and we all managed to learn some Italian along the way. My generation was not taught to speak in fluent Italian, as was my dad's generation. All of my cousins agreed that our parents didn't teach us Italian because they wanted to have that language all to themselves so they could speak to one another without us knowing every word that was being said at the dinner table.
In a corner of the basement in my grandparents' house was a little door leading to "la guandine," the wine cellar. In this room were shelves of glass jars holding Grandma's tomato sauce, summer fruits, winter vegetables. On the other side of la guandine was the wine press for Grandpa's wine. My grandfather would pick the finest grapes he could find, and press those through a wooden machine with a wrought iron handle that somehow magically made a deep red wine that he would pour into tall bottles. My cousins and I would laugh because the wine bottle would be so large, but the wine glasses themselves would be very small.
When we brought that to Grandpa's attention, he would tell us that if you drank the best wine and ate the best food, you only needed a little bit to be satisfied. "Eat junk and you will eat too much. Eat well and you will feast on very little." As always, when Grandpa told us one of his beliefs, he would punctuate his thought with a firm upward tilt of his chin, as if daring us to question his truth. We never did.
In my grandparents' kitchen, there was a wooden plate hung up on the wall.... on it were hand-painted letters saying "No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best." My generation of cousins all learned how to read letters and words from that plate, and it hung in the same spot for over 50 years. I think it was my cousin R who gave Grandma that plate, and it never went un-noticed or un-appreciated in all those years.
Grandma's kitchen was the shining star of that house.... always something cooking on top of the stove or in the oven, with food so delicious that just the thought of eating out in a restaurant would get everyone saying "Eat out? What for? Who can cook better than Mama?" I do believe that the only time dinners were eaten out were at family weddings in large Italian catering halls.
When my Aunt Angela got married, my grandmother didn't trust the catering facility to make the cream puffs as well, or as beautiful, as she could. Not a problem... Grandma spent days and days making 300 cream puffs in the shapes of little swans, filled with a sweet cream that had the chef at the catering hall asking for her recipe. My grandmother declined: "I should give my recipe to you? You, Mr. Big Chef with your fancy hat, should know how to make a cream puff without help from Angelina."
My grandparents watched very little television, but there were a few programs that they wouldn't think of missing. Ted Mack's Amateur Hour was a favorite, as well as The Ed Sullivan Show, and Grandma would never miss "Queen For a Day." Grandpa liked wrestling, and he would move his chair up close to the television for those shows because he didn't want to miss anything.
I remember that Grandma would have tears in her eyes every time she heard Nat King Cole singing.... she said that "The angels in heaven must have voices like this man." And one of Grandpa's favorites was Louis Armstrong..... whenever he was on television, Grandpa would take his handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his forehead and make believe he was singing along with Louis...... it was just so funny. Grandpa hardly ever did something as whimsical as that, but he just thought Louis Armstrong was the King of television. Hearing Grandpa's Italian versions of Louis Armstrong's songs is one of my best memories of my grandfather.
In the afternoons, both my grandparents would take some leisure time. Not that they sat in a chair and did nothing, but they sat at the kitchen table and did what they loved to do...... for Grandpa, it was playing Solitaire..... for Grandma, it was either knitting or crocheting. Grandpa loved playing cards, and he and his sons would play poker after Sunday dinners and on the holidays. They never played for money..... they used poker chips and hard-shelled nuts for betting. "I'll see your two pecans, and raise you three walnuts."
But Solitaire was Grandpa's way of relaxing.... and whichever of the grandchildren happened to be in the house at the time, they learned not only the numbers, the card suits, the rules of the game... they learned patience and honesty as well. "Never cheat," Grandpa would tell us. "No one likes a cheater, no matter what. You cheat once, you're done. No one will trust you again. And then what?" (And up would go his chin, in that tilt towards heaven, and you knew not to question his theory.)
My grandparents loved their family, loved their home, and the unique simplicity of their lives is testament that one didn't need to be rolling in money in order to be on top of the world. Sunday dinners and holiday dinners were important family gatherings.... adults ate in the dining room at the 'big table,' and the kids would be in the kitchen, at the 'children's table.' I don't remember the family saying "Grace" before those big meals, but I do remember Grandpa raising his wine glass, looking all around the table, and saying "My family.... my family."
When those big meals were cooked in that house, you could smell the aromas of the sauce and the lasagna, the roasted chicken and sausage.... it seemed like the house was just surrounded by these delicious cooking smells that lingered in the air. The house to the left of my grandparents' home was owned by an Italian family, but the house on the right had an Irish family with three boys. Every time Grandma started cooking, those three boys would sit in the driveway, right near Grandma's kitchen windows, and they would just sit there and enjoy the cooking odors coming from those windows. Without fail, each and every time, Grandma would fix three plates for those three boys, and call them from the back door to "come and get some good Italian food." I can still remember those boys, carefully holding the hot plates filled with my grandmother's cooking, and they would walk back to their house as if they were carrying precious gold. The next morning, they would bring back the plates, all washed and dried and ready for the next meals. As Grandma put the plates back into the cabinet, she would say the same thing each time: "Those Irish girls... they don't know how to cook for their children."
I think my grandparents were disappointed and disenchanted when their children's marriages began falling apart, one by one. Divorce was an "American thing," definitely not Italian. My grandparents expected their married children to stay married, to work out their problems, to keep their families together, no matter what. It just didn't happen that way. Except for my Uncle Tony and Aunt Margie, who were married forever, and except for my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Mary, whose marriage ended when Jimmy was killed at Pearl Harbor, all of the other family marriages ended in divorce.
It saddened my grandparents, especially at the Sunday and holiday dinners, to have parts of their family "missing" from the celebrations. When divorces came between the parents, the children were sometimes absent from the family for years. Then, as those children got older and started returning to my grandparents' house, they were welcomed with wide-open arms, no questions asked, as if they'd never left. And it was comforting to walk into that big old house and see that nothing had changed.... the furniture was not only the same, but in the same places. The dishes in the kitchen were the same, the kitchen chairs were in the same places, even little things like the salt and pepper shakers and the napkins--- everything was exactly the same. That was just so important, especially to a kid whose life had been turned upside-down through divorce.
My grandfather passed away in the early 1970s.... they found him in the upstairs hallway early one morning. He had walked out of the bedroom, on his way down the hall to the bathroom, and he had collapsed on the floor. He never regained consciousness. My grandmother was crushed beyond words. After the funeral and the burial, Grandma stayed in their room, in their bed, not wanting to go downstairs. My Aunt Dolly brought up her meals, brushed and braided Grandma's hair, and told her that Papa would have wanted her to go on living. Grandma didn't agree. She felt her place was with her husband, and that's where she wanted to be. Grandma passed away less than a year later, and everyone, including the doctor, said that she died of a broken heart.
My grandparents were unmistakably the glue that held the family together. They came to the United States on a ship that brought them from Naples to New York City, and they never looked back. They were Italian through and through, and they kept their heritage alive and intact, but they came here to become Americans, and that's exactly what they did. Their sons fought in World War II, their daughters worked in the garment district of Manhattan. Grandpa bought land in Queens and built his house three stories high.... built it with his own hands and his own heart. When my grandparents passed away, the house was never the same without them in it. We all still called it "Grandma's house," but without Grandma and Grandpa in it, the heart of the house just never beat as strongly.
The family's house is empty now. All of my aunts and uncles have passed away, except for Aunt Jaye who's in an assisted living facility, and 100-yr-old Aunt Dolly who lives in Florida with my cousin. It would be Aunt Dolly's greatest wish-come-true if someone in the family would want to live in "Papa's house." I can't see that happening. The house stands in the middle of a once-proud neighborhood of European immigrants that has lost every ounce of its pride over the years. The European immigrants are all gone... Aunt Dolly being the last to move.
My grandfather built his home to last forever, and it has. My grandmother loved her children and their children, and their children.... and there are now six generations of the family that started with Angelina and Frank and their dream to cross the Atlantic and begin a new life in America.
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