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.
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