“My Ma liked a good joke, Jeanne. She had a great sense of humor,” Mom tells me. Mom’s eighty-two years-old, lives in a nursing home, and it’s many, many, many years since Nanny’s been gone.

“She used to joke and say, Mary, did you have your brasciole today?!”

Named after her Ma, my mother’s birth name is Mary. Her Pop nicknamed her “Marie,” and that’s the name she used. I learned her birth name when I was in my twenties, and found her birth certificate while organizing files. It simply was never mentioned, one of many silent episodes that occurred in my maternal side of the family.

“What’s so funny about that?” I frown and try to figure out the joke. Brasciole is a flattened, round steak, stuffed with an Italian seasoned breadcrumb mixture and tied with kitchen twine into a tubular shape. It’s browned, then dropped in gravy to cook. I chalk-up Mom’s words as meaningless conversation, one that leaves me stumped at trying to figure something out, a feeling I’ve had over and over again in our relationship.

“She called a man’s member a brasciole!” said Mom.

I laugh, not only from the joke, but from the pure pleasure of having a laugh with Mom, from the pure pleasure of remembering Nanny, the pure pleasure of women connecting, from grandmother, mother, daughter. A sense of humor filters out through a lifetime of domestic abuse, child abuse, elder abuse. A sense of humor peeps out in my dementia-afflicted Mom.