Grandma Irma

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...."