Hot off the presses of my grandmother’s favorite magazine, People, this past year were the headlines documenting Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set a Watchman. What grabbed the headlines wasn’t merely the hype—for Lee had come out of a long seclusion to publish her first book since To Kill a Mockingbird—but the subject matter. It is about the difficult day that comes for each of us, when we realize our parents are not the infallible gods of our childhood, but human just like us—when we can no longer view them through our Atticus Finch-tinted glasses if we wish to understand them and, in the end, love them.
Fittingly when that day came for me, it was Grandmom herself who sat with me, this woman who spent more time with me than any other except my mother, at Pica’s restaurant. I share it now, not because it was our most memorable meal together—certainly that honor falls to something she made—but because it was our most profound. We talked of the old days, and I was finally old enough to understand. Then she cried, and we ate together—two things she did a lot in our company.
Fittingly when that day came for me, it was Grandmom herself who sat with me, this woman who spent more time with me than any other except my mother, at Pica’s restaurant. I share it now, not because it was our most memorable meal together—certainly that honor falls to something she made—but because it was our most profound. We talked of the old days, and I was finally old enough to understand. Then she cried, and we ate together—two things she did a lot in our company.
Italians have a term for the unification of the many kingdoms that finally formed the Italy we know today: Risorgimento. Only a few decades later, Grandmom’s parents, Charlie and Mary, left for America. Soon they welcomed her, the newborn Anna Marie Ettorre, in 1937, too late for the Hoovervilles and too young to be kissed by a GI at the Navy Yard. She joined the family as the young Scout embroiled in the adult world of her brother, Henry, and her sister fourteen years her senior, Norma. Their childhoods, because of the timing of their births, could hardly have been more different. Grandmom didn’t feel the Depression. But past the façade of clashing personalities—Aunt Norma often said, “She was Charlie’s daughter, and I was Mary’s”—theirs was the bond that would last a lifetime. When it came time to move to the suburbs with my grandfather, who paved the way for Grandmom by leaving her the Cedar Lane house in Upper Darby? It was Aunt Norma. And decades later, when Father Time had claimed Aunt Norma’s driver’s license, it was Grandmom who revved up the Nissan, cranked up the Great American Songbook, and picked up her older sister for a night out at dinner.
The defining moments of her life occurred well before her grandchildren came along to sweeten it. She married young, young even for the old days. Some in the 49th Street neighborhood had compared her to Elizabeth Taylor. She went to Our Lady of Angels, maybe even once or twice to the 6 am mass after a night out with her friends. She welcomed and raised a large family. She worked at, she told us with a wink, the office of the largest township in the world, Upper Darby. She stood a driver’s seat away from the tragic hit-and-run that killed her great friend, Phyllis, on Chichester Avenue, and she only told us that story once.
We can describe her years with us in many ways.
Artistic with a tool in her hand. She stitched things up. It might have been Uncle Johnny’s jacket or a gash in my mom’s face.
Unforgiving in her old-school values. If I didn’t pay for my date, Grandmom was clear, the punishment would be much worse than the boccola.
Masterful with a meal. We know the meaning of feasting together in an Italian family. The tradition went back to her own mother, when Grandmom helped her roll dough and literally crank out homemade pasta on Sundays. We became the beneficiaries of that weekly apprenticeship. Her philosophy was simple. Salt was in. Recipes and measuring were blasphemy. We learned to make our own by watching and peppering her with questions, for she took pride in passing her passion to us, and now our gnocchi and penne and chicken soups and tomato sauces have a bit of our personalities in them, but mostly hers.
Enamored of her stories, the soap operas and the stars of Hollywood, rarely missing a General Hospital even in the pre-DVR era.
Terse with the millennial cashiers at Eckerd or CVS who regarded her half-dozen bottles of seltzer water by asking, “Do you want a bag for that?”
“Do you want to get paid?” she replied, famously and swiftly.
Illustrative with her stories. Her eye for detail was sharp, and when she told stories or recounted her day she always produced a narrative punctuated with her signature, “And here,” before revealing the story’s next beat.
But above all, generous. The time she spent with us and the sacrifices she made for us are our enduring memories. Four times she spent a weekend with my brother Brian or me in such exotic locales as York and Scranton just so we could play in baseball tournaments there. She ordered the ribeye at the hotel Ruby Tuesday with us each night, and she treated. Countless more weekends we slept over her apartment, awoke to pancakes sweetened with vanilla extract, and shared pizza after coming right here for the Saturday evening mass. When Brian had no money in college, she pawned an old ring. When he had no car, she lent him hers. When I had no coat for the winters in northern Indiana, she bought me one.
Until we were old enough to drive, it was Grandmom who shuttled us around, and we didn’t realize what a sacrifice that was until we were older. The traffic of Delaware County. The interstellar distances of Chester County. We spent years of our childhood in the Civic or the Nissan with her. A car ride with Grandmom meant she ruled the radio. Soon we were singing with her to “Reggae Dancin’” and other Kool and the Gang hits. But mostly it was Rod Stewart. He reinvigorated his career with his raspy renditions of Grandmom’s glory-days hits, and she could not get enough. She’d receive the same album as gifts from different people in the family. Six albums later—and she had all of them—the opening notes of “You Go to My Head” fully embodied setting off from a Drexeline parking spot. The all-time leader in plays was “These Foolish Things.” The scent of smoldering leaves, the wail of steamers.
Steamers no longer wail along the Delaware. This raises the question: What foolish things will remind us of her? A long wooden spoon, the People crossword, a glass brimming with ice. A Motown ticket, QVC talent touting the newest gadget, the street signs along Broad that she knew by heart. A Morton salt container, whose rightful position is upside-down. The muffled bustle of State Road from seven stories up. Fragile crosses folded on Palm Sunday, crackling as they age.
Of course, the day that arrived for me and for Scout Finch also arrived at some point for Grandmom’s six children. It is no surprise. We believe the only stainless, sinless ones are the man on the cross and his mother. We look to them to learn how to forgive. But from whom do we learn to apologize? From whom do we acquire the strength to deal with guilt, to learn from our own mistakes? Not from the sinless. No, we turn to the only other godlike people in our lives—our parents.
Grandmom was one of ours. We watched her make difficult decisions with the guidance of her conscience and her unrelenting love for us. We wrestled with forgiveness just as she did. And that brought us closer to her than any combination, however elaborate, of pasta and gravy could have.
She was Italian in her loyalty to us, her family. Now we pray for her own Risorgimento, the Italian name for the wonder that combined two miracles—resurrection and unification. I wish her both.
Given September 2, 2016, at Saint Laurence Church in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
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