Written In November 1979, At Twenty Years-Old

(Today’s clarification is in parentheses).

My roommate sits and watches t.v., and talks about people on Welfare and how people try to squeeze money out of the government. What a shame! I sit and laugh, and cringe inside. I think bitterly – accusing her, in my mind. You try and raise four children on your own. Clothing, feeding, helping them grow, doing everything possible to help them grow in a Catholic, private school. Tuition and uniforms for each child. You try to make them happy on Christmas and birthdays, and the first day of school. It’s hell.

Welfare is the worst thing on earth, and the best. Best for helping people, worst for tearing apart personal lives. Making each person a status quo.

My three sisters and I were on Welfare when my parents were divorced – when I was 10 years-old. But, this isn’t what this story is about.

I have chosen to write about my mother, the parent that brought me into this world, and the parent who brought me up. (Raised me).

I felt in my heart that I should write about her all of the time. (Only write about her, and not my father). Yet, my mind always said to write about my father. My mind said he was the one you never knew, the one you loved as a child, and the one you want to know as an adult.

My mind is a terrible thing to listen to. All of my life, I wanted to write about my father because I loved him. Even though I never heard from him, even though he never supported us with anything, even though I never saw him. I loved him and that was enough.

Last week, my father died. Eve of Halloween. Halloween shall never be the same.

I am in school. I go to college in New Haven, CT. I am a Junior, majoring in Studio Art. I love ceramics and graphic design, and I am still confused as to which direction my life should lead.

Anyhow, last Tuesday, my little sister, Maria, called and said he had died. A policeman had come to my mother’s home and had told her. The policeman had gotten a call from the police of a neighboring city, saying that the body of my father was in the city’s morgue.

Anyhow, I am off the track. Details don’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how he died. He was an alcoholic.

Scene: Christmas at Nanny’s. Parents divorced. I’m about ten years-old, Donna’s twelve, Barb’s eight, and Maria’s six.

We leave Nanny’s house late on Christmas night, under a cold, clear, winter sky, the bright, white moon follows us home. The moon twinkles at me, shivers, won’t let me get out of its sight. I shiver in response, huddle up to my baby sister, Maria, to try to keep warm in the blue, cold Dodge, as Mom drives through the quiet back roads of Darien to Stamford. We are the last to leave out of our extended family’s gathering at Nanny’s – the last to leave due to the fact that Mom doesn’t want to be alone, with just us girls. She wants to put us right to bed. We are the last to leave because it’s lonely to go home to our little apartment on Seaside Avenue after the divorce. I can’t help but feel badly, as cousins leave Nanny’s, with both of their parents. How weird life is, as we try to find our way, fatherless, husbandless.

My body pushes against Maria, who is in the middle of the back seat, as Barb pushes against her on the other side, to steal the heat given off by a bundled up, snuggly girl. I try not to touch the cold metal harshness of the car door. Donna sits up-front, in her usual spot, next to Mom.

Sharp air startles our sleepy eyes, and not until the car warms up will they slowly, tiredly close to little girls’ dreams under the light of hundreds of stars, a canopy over our bedtime.

Christmas Day spent at Nanny’s: The whirl and chatter of adults with booming voices, laughter, and the singing of carols, as radio music whips through the house. The sounds flow up the chimney, along with the sparkling flicks of Uncle Pippi’s fire from the crackling logs in the fireplace. In our matching, floral, holiday dresses, my sisters and I have to sit on the sofa next to Grandpa, instead of at our usual place on the hearth, with our legs sprawled out on the soft, bluish rug. Even Grandpa seems uncomfortable as he places a gnarly hand up to a cheek, quietly contemplating, as he’s told where to sit, his usual armchair given over to one of my aunts.

“Be good, girls. Be quiet. Don’t get your dresses dirty. Behave! Wish everyone a Merry Christmas!” says Mom. She tries to keep normal what is not normal.

“There’s something special for you on the tree, Jeanne,” says Aunt LaLa.

With these simple, little words, I feel loved, wanted. It helps me deal with the pain of missing Daddy. The pain of not feeling wanted by Daddy. Whether it’s true or not, I know it hurts as Mom coldly pushes him away from us. There are no presents from Daddy.

Joyous is the white envelope with “Jeanne” written in a swirly hand, a red curlicue ribbon bobbing at my name. The ribbon is Aunt LaLa’s trademark, found on gifts for everyone. Inside, a ten-dollar bill awaits.

I jump to the tree. It’s a fake tree, yet pretty, with blue tips and red, satiny balls hooked to the branches. I smile as I can’t help wonder why Aunt LaLa has an artificial tree when the yard and the gardens, a step outside the front and back doors, are a nature wonderland. The artificial tree, a product of the 1970s, clean and neat, perfectly shaped, fit the house’s simple décor, with its turquoise, paisley-swirled slipcovers on the livingroom sofa and chairs, and the maple, Windsor-style chairs in the diningroom, all from Sears, Roebuck, and Co., where Aunt LaLa works in the Customer Service department in Stamford. Customer Service fits her, as she’s a giving person. It is no small feat how Aunt LaLa helps fill the void this Christmas.

Ravioli hands roll the dough towards me. I sit at the rectangular, formica-topped table at Nanny’s, brush my white, sock-covered feet along the flour-dusted floor. Mom turns to my little sister, Maria, to find something to keep her busy with. My sisters and I are indoors on a winter day, and Mom needs to keep us out of her hair. Freezing New England, it’s much too cold to be outdoors in the yard. Otherwise, we’d be lying in the snow, waving arms to make wings on snow angels, packing snowballs to team two against two, or sticking tongues out to catch snowflakes, chins tilted up, red, woolen hats matching the red cheeks and noses of four girls.

The snow falls thickly outside the kitchen window that overlooks the driveway. Whispers of sun sprinkle through the frost layering the outer window side. Steam from hot food cooking on the stove, a roasted chicken and potatoes, onions, peppers, in the oven, warm bodies loving hard through cooking, steaming the inner window side. My elbows sit on the light-turquoise, silvery, metallic-flecked, swirled tabletop. Nanny flecks pasta dough with a swirl of her hand, swishes flour over a wooden rolling pin, flattens, smoothes the dough paper thin on the table. She is making raviolis by hand. Aunt LaLa pitches in.

“Here, Jeanne, take the fork. Pinch the edges all around to close up the dough, to hold the cheese inside. That’s it…all around,” says LaLa. Her broad shoulders strongly suggest leadership. She’s the boss of this Italian kitchen. Everyone listens to her and does what she says, including Nanny and Mom. I don’t mind obeying her as kindness shimmers, though I wonder how on earth does she get Mom to listen to her, as Mom won’t listen to anybody.

“Marie, grate the cheese.” LaLa hands Mom the parmesan cheese and the metal hand-grater with its sharp, raised, bumpy edge ready to greet and shave the wedge.

“Make a mound with the flour, then a hole in the center. Break the eggs, then pour them into the hole. Keep a finger bowl of water nearby! Add the olive oil – just a little! Take the fork – that’s it! Quick, quick, quick! Mix it together. Don’t let the eggs run…push the flour towards them. Fold them together. That’s it! Now, we knead.” LaLa runs the instructions to make more dough, as Nanny confirms, in Italian.

I don’t understand her Italian words, but get the gist of it. I watch Nanny’s hands, sticky-covered dough glues, then releases the flour mixture from her fingers. She kneads the dough into a ball. I watch Nanny’s motions, follow the English words sprinkled here and there, and learn how to make pasta dough. I get the job done along with her.

“Watch Nanny, Jeanne. That’s how you’ll learn,” directs Mom. Mom doesn’t need to tell me that. I’m already absorbed into the soothing motion, the pattern, the process of the flour as it turns into dough, then to pinched pockets of cheese.

“Take the glass, turn it in the dough, put the circles on the breadboard. Take a spoon – no, not the soup spoon, the teaspoon…that’s it! Put the ricotta cheese mixture on the circle of dough. Try to get some parsley into each ravioli. Not too much cheese, though, or they’ll break when they’re cooking in boiling water.” LaLa orders warmly, places her hand on my hand, turns the glass, shows me how to do it. She flits, like a mother bird, from sink, counter, table, stove, oversees the ravioli-making, cooks the gravy, chops the parsley, washes the dishes.

I turn an upside-down water glass into the flattened dough to cut the dough into circles, lift the circles out with a fork, put the cheese on one circle, place another on top, pinch it all together with the fork running ’round the edges. I learn the pattern of the ravioli, the routine needed to turn them out by the hundreds to feed our army of a family at a Christmas dinner.

The raviolis stack up on the lightly floured breadboards, the puffy pillows of dough and cheese build up a proud pile.

“Lavoro piacevole, Jeanne, avete imparato buon. Nice work, Jeanne, you learned good,” says Nanny. She tells LaLa that she’s tired, and goes to her bedroom to nap, alongside Grandpa.

LaLa gathers the scraps of dough and kneads them into a ball. She grabs a sharp knife and cuts the flattened dough into ribbons, for noodles. I place them on a wooden pasta drying rack that stands on green-striped dishtowels laid out on the washing machine. The noodles hang over wooden dowels, moist dough with flour flecks, and wait to dry overnight in the warm, moist-air kitchen.

On the counter, the percolator’s plugged in and the smell of coffee percolates the air as Mom fixes a slipping barrette in Maria’s hair, hands Barbara a star-shaped cookie with round, colored sprinkle dots on it, and tells Donna to go turn the t.v. on.

“Be quiet. Be good. Nanny’s sleeping,” says Mom.

Not one to talk much, I think, think, think. I don’t tell Mom that I think we already are good. Good, good, good, with Aunt LaLa, in Nanny’s kitchen.

For the second time in my life, (Dear, Sweet, Jesus!), I learn of the burial of a loved one after the fact. First, Daddy, in 1979. Second, Aunt LaLa, in 2013. Regardless of the thoughtless lack of communication by relatives, my love for these two people remain unchanged.

Aunt LaLa helped me find my way in this world, and I thank her for teaching me how to love. I thank her for treating Mom and my sisters with love. I thank her for giving me the name, “Jeannebird.”

Here’s a bit from my book:

“Hi Aunt LaLa!” I call, opening the screened kitchen door off the little slate porch. She lived there with her parents, and brother, Pippi. My words zip through the house to find their way to her.

“Hello, Pop! How are you doin’ today?” Mom says, then orders us to say “hello” to him, as she follows my sisters and me inside.

“Hello, Grandpa!” Four girls greet him as he turns from the window towards us. His bright, white, wispy hair circles the bald crown of his head as he leans against his gray, wool sweater on the back of his chair, placed there by Aunt LaLa. She takes good care of him. He holds a gnarled, sun-tanned hand up to wave “hello” as Mom sits next to him at the kitchen table. Mom’s high cheeks, squarish jaw line, squarish forehead, big, brown eyes, and sun-tanned skin match her father’s.

Aunt LaLa comes into the kitchen. Her grayish-brown hair is beauty-parlored-curled under, right at the shoulders. A pink, flowery blouse matches the pink lipstick on a smiling mouth, curving gently to show pearly teeth. A gentle twinkle in brown eyes reveals the kindness in her heart.

On this lucky day, Aunt LaLa hands me the big, black, metal scissors that rest in a kitchen drawer.

“Go cut some zinnias, Jeanne,” she says, handing me a basket to hold flowers from Grandpa’s garden. Zinnia bouquets will carry her cheerfulness home.