After a Thanksgiving dinner of an Italian first course of homemade ravioli, with gravy and braciole, a rolled beef stuffed with cheese, breadcrumbs, and parsley, and then an American second course of turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes, followed by a big, tossed salad that’s supposed to help with digestion, my sisters and I lie in front of the fire at the fireplace hearth in Nanny’s livingroom.  In an unhurried way, Nanny, Aunt LaLa, and Mom clear the diningroom table and set-up for dessert as coffee perks in the kitchen, its’ comforting aroma descends, and fills every corner of the house.  Aunts, uncles, and cousins cluster in spots, the way extended family does, ooh-and-ah over a new baby, chat about a new dress, the gossip of Darien, the local high school football team, the snow that’s coming this weekend to New England.  I wait for the heavenly sweets that will soon cover the table.

Grandpa rests in an armchair in the livingroom, takes out his pipe, and sets to watch football on t.v.  Uncle Pippi, who sits next to him, gets up from the turquoise-swirly-floral patterned armchair to attend to a fire that’s petering out.  He steps in between my sisters and me without a word.  We know to move over, make room for him.  I’m on the left side of him and my sisters are on his right.  Barb and Maria play a game of tic-tac-toe, crayons at the ready to draw x’s and o’s, the thrill to come of who draws the winning line.  Donna flips the pages of a teen fashion magazine, searches for that hip look, the right look.

Uncle Pippi bends at the waist, slides open the chain-like curtain that covers the fireplace.  He pokes a log with a fireplace poker, adds a couple of logs, a newspaper roll, then flicks a match and gets the fire going again.  Flames roar, shoot up the chimney, sparks fly.  I watch his face.  He smiles slightly, chews gum as usual, his square-chiseled jaw moves slowly.  He doesn’t look at me, yet, he knows that I’m here, watching him.

I yearn to jump up, kiss his cheek, and hug him tightly.  I love him very much.  I want to do that to Mom and my sisters, too.  I can’t do that.  I’m not taught how to do that.  I just can’t do it.  Physical affection is seldom shown in this family.  I have to find another way to give thanks.  Someday I will.  Thanks that are said, steady, sown.

I run to college in 1977 to escape Darien and take life into my ravioli hands.  I put things out of mind, including the girl in Uncle Pippi’s garden, Mom’s commanding struggles, and the powerful burden of Daddy.  Like black drops of ink, sprinkles of liquid darkness over the years, he drips in and out.  By the time I’m in high school, our tie comes down to a few letters.  In college, it is one letter and a telephone call, until his death.

People say one can’t run from childhood, yet, I don’t believe that.  I’m sick and tired of Mom’s Italian family that clutches secrets, yet, intoxicating ones slide out of place every once in a while.  When I’m twenty years old, I learn Mom’s birthname, Mary, for the first time.  She was named after Nanny.  Grandpa and everyone else call her Marie, which is an Italian form for Mary.  Marie is the name that I’ve always known.  I’m bewildered about how I don’t know my own mother’s birthname until now and feel cheated since I’m driven to know everything, even about the dead.

“It’s not a big deal.  Mary and Marie mean the same thing.  Don’t make a federal case out of it, Jeanne,” said Mom.  It simply isn’t discussed.

However, even if the names are of the same form, Mary doesn’t mean the same thing as Marie to me.  Mary means my childhood, when the Holy Mary was my true Mother.  Mary means the Mother of Jesus.  Mary means the golden starburst medallion that hangs from the Gothic Revival ceiling at St. Mary’s Church, with its large rose window in the front-facing gable end.  At the center of the medallion is an image of the Virgin, who smiles sweetly at me as I arch my neck upwards and shyly smile back at her.

The name Mary means Nanny and her home, the safe spot.

Mary does not mean Mom.

In college, I denounce Catholicism and tear into art.  My childhood is in every piece of art that I create, yet, I don’t see that back then.  I commit to heal through art of all kinds, yet, I don’t see that back then, either.  An assignment in a fine arts painting class is to reproduce a master’s work and I reach to art history to find an inspirational painting.

Albrecht Dürer, (1471-1528), the greatest of German artists, who traveled to Italy and channeled the forms and ideas of the Italian Renaissance to northern Europe, is my man.  I tell myself that I chose The Virgin With The Iris, that he painted in 1508, not for its religious meaning because I don’t need that garbage anymore, but for the reason that the painting is balanced in design and color.  Therefore, I will learn a lot about technique as I tackle a reproduction.  I aim at the details of the Virgin Mary, who wears a translucent, fine, white veil over long, golden locks, the light and shadows of plants, and the white marble tones of skin, realism at work.

The Virgin Mary nurses sweet, baby Jesus as she sits in a romantic garden, a stone wall and an iris flower behind her, with grasses and plants, a pink rose at her right, a vine tied to wood stakes, a blue sky, and a butterfly that rests on her red cloak.  A long, red gown drapes about her and fills the bottom half of the entire painting.  Her composure is calm, she serenely smiles, focuses only on her contented baby.  There is religious symbolism at work here, including the iris that represents the sword of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin.

Yes, my childhood looks like this painting, from the Virgin’s long, red robe that glazes the hill at Nanny’s house and drapes down to the street, as I roll along the grass, folded in the rich fabric that is soft, soft, soft to the touch.  The red hill envelopes me in the velvety lushness of springtime with its fertile grass that Uncle Pippi mows by cranks of the hand-mower as my laughter fills the air, races up to the spring leaves, and past the white clouds in an Easter blue sky.  The red hill is in the giving gardens of summertime, and I am a seedling planted in the dirt under the sun.  The red hill is in the overflowing piles of red leaves from Great-Uncle Mike’s maple tree in autumn time, and in the wintertime snow mounds alongside the road and driveway.  The snow falls as whispers of the sunlight go through the frost where Grandpa sits at the kitchen window and waves hello, as I look up from below where my sisters and I make snow angels and snowballs, stick tongues out to catch snowflakes, our red, woolen hats match cherry red cheeks.

The Virgin’s head in Dürer’s painting is like a golden crown upon the red robe and this becomes the crown of the home on my red hill, with the united front of Grandpa, Nanny, Uncle Pippi, and Aunt LaLa.  They smile serenely at me, Grandpa with greetings in broken-English and Nanny, who likes to tell jokes with a twinkle in her eye.  Serene smiles from Uncle Pippi, a side glance at me, with a jaw that ceaselessly chews gum, and Aunt LaLa, who brims with great joy, no matter what.

The stone wall behind the Virgin in the painting is the old foundation of Grandpa and Nanny’s first house on the same red hill.  A remnant of the foundation remains in the backyard.  Aunt LaLa gives me a broom, puts me to work, because that’s what you do when girls get bored, and I sweep the old, cement floor as its edges crumble in the grass.  Except, it’s not work here.  It’s a time to think about the people that I’m tied to, that stood where I sweep, the golden locks of the broom’s bristles swipe the dirt like a painter’s brush, and it bends to the past.  Near the foundation wall is Aunt LaLa at a clothesline, drying flannel, gray pants, faded, ocean-blue plaid workshirts, and pink, bedsheets that bow and curtsey in the breeze.

The Virgin’s vine becomes Grandpa’s red wine turned green by my brush, as he fills jugs of the strong homemade liquid that only he will drink.  The Virgin’s iris becomes the tall zinnias in his garden, their quills in mixes of bright colors, canary yellow, orange, crimson, scarlet, coral, lilac, rose, pink, and white.  I cut the flowers in bunches, and present them one-by-one as swords to the wind, to fight parents’ evils cursed on their daughters.  The butterfly will take flight from the Virgin’s cloak and join others that orbit the zinnias, where I try to catch them as they close orange, black-dotted wings.

Dürer’s painting is my childhood.  Dear, sweet, baby Jesus becomes my baby sister on the first day she comes home after she’s born.  At four years old, I sit on the green sofa in the livingroom in our apartment on Jefferson Street, patiently wait for Daddy, Mom, and Maria, to come through the door.  I don’t know which I’m more excited about, a baby, or to see Mom, who I haven’t seen in two weeks because that’s what new mothers do, stay in the hospital that long.  They recover from the battle of childbirth, chat with others, as their cigarette smoke lingers in St. Joseph Hospital’s new mothers’ ward.  Then, here they come!  Voices in the hallway, Daddy’s hand on the door knob, his outstretched arm opens the door for Mom, who stands next to him, smiling, lovely, holds our sweet baby.  Beautiful Mom, with an iris sword of sorrows behind her.

My reproduction painting is rough, rough, rough. No inkling of a chance that I would be considered as even an assistant’s assistant in Dürer’s workshop, if I lived back then.  Maybe, if I begged, I could have cleaned his paintbrushes or helped mix pigments, as I’ve mastered at least color theory in college.

Nonetheless, I’m satisfied with my reproduction effort, as I believe I’ve captured the Virgin’s serene smile.  I frame the painting and present it to Mom.  She doesn’t have Dürer’s eye, so she hangs it in her bedroom, over the bed.  Perhaps The Virgin With The Iris painting reminds her of her birthname as she strives for Marie to mean Mary.  I hope that Mom prays to the Holy Mother for calm composure, a serene smile, and for a focus on a child who is finally content.

Daddy’s office in the attic is two flights up from our apartment.  I walk up the dark, narrow, wooden staircases to bring him a lunch that Mom made, peppers and eggs, on Italian bread.  The eaves of the roof press into the room at a harsh slant.  He hunches over a drafting table, covered by white paper with curled edges, and a metal, hand-crank pencil sharpener that sits at a corner.  The table faces the street side of the house where sunlight struggles through a keyhole window, and sounds carry up to us, delivery trucks chug by, cars blare horns at a traffic light, a train shrieks its horn in the train yard.  He hands me pencils that I put into the sharpener, turn the handle slowly, listen to the grind of wood, lay the pencils orderly in a row, like soldiers waiting their turn to be held so he can draw mathematical lines and numbers.  His protractor flips circular cartwheels as he figures out technical drawings of weights and devices, how to make things turn, how to make things work.

             “Smartie, go help your Mother.  I need to work and make a lot of money for you,” smiles Daddy.

            In 1967, he makes a drawing, a twelve-year wedding anniversary gift, for Mom, at the drafting table.  With an artful skill, using colored pencils, he draws portraits of my sisters and me.  Above each, he tapes a black and white photo, taken in a booth at Woolworth’s Five-and-Ten store.  We wear matching, floral print dresses with Peter Pan collars, of soft, rounded corners, and string bow ties.  With promising smiles, sunny eyes, and sleek, just-brushed, side-parted hair, our images are arranged by our ages of ten, eight, six, and four.  Gentle blue, yellow, pink, and green shading tones the background.  He adds our nicknames, Happy-Go-Lucky, Smartie, Hot Stuff, and Mona Lisa, and item numbers in technical block hand-lettering.  Compass arrows with a question mark hint at what item number might be next.  He writes, “Mix four items together and bake well:  Wow!  Happy Anniversary.  Love, Joe.”

Two years later, when Daddy can’t make things work, my parents’ divorce, Mom moves us out of our house in a hurry, and many things get thrown out.  She saves the drawing and her wedding album.  Sometimes, I need to be reminded of my nickname because no one calls me that anymore.  I sneak into Mom’s bedroom dresser, where the drawing’s protected, to look at Smartie recorded on paper.

Over the years, I ask Mom if I can have the drawing, her marriage memento, but she says no.  I guess she needs to be reminded of different times, too.  I want to remember the sweet side of Daddy, especially when no one says that he had a sweet side.  When I’m in my thirties, Mom finally gives me the drawing.  It is in fragile condition.

“I know you appreciate old things, Jeanne, and that you’ll take care of it,” said Mom.

That’s true.  It’s been many years since I needed to be reminded of my nickname.  I keep the forty-nine year-old drawing to remind me of my parents’ love.  It is the sweetest wedding anniversary gift that I’ve ever seen, one that money can’t buy.