A Meme Not to Be Forgotten

She was our grandma, stout, silver haired with soft eyes and flawless skin. I remember her black hat with a veil and hat pin to keep it on her head. She also wore a head net to keep the sliver locks from slipping onto her face. To our young eyes she was old, she was strong, and she was stern. We did not see her human attributes, we only saw her as Meme our fathers mother.

Every time a baby was born she would appear at our house, her sleeves rolled up, her apron on, and her stern countenance ready to take on the responsibilities of helping mom. She would wash diapers, make formula, and apply her folk remedies to all what ailed us. As the family grew, so did her responsibilities. She would see to us older siblings, make us wash behind our ears and our necks which we were always inclined to skip. She would whip up meals out of scanty cupboards and she would keep us in line so latest baby could be attended to. Meme was stern but loving. She was of few words but her looks spoke volumes. She was born of time when sacrifice was expected, actions were for the good of the family unit, and waste was not tolerated. She made us clean up our plates and told us about the starving children in India. We dare not misbehave.

It wasn’t until years later that I learned the story behind the woman who was my French speaking grandmother. I had left my home and traveled the world and did not have the pleasure of her company as an adult. It was after she was long buried that I learned about the real essence of my indomitable grandmother.

She grew up poor, the step child of a French speaking family in Canada. They migrated to Massachusetts and as a young woman she married another Frenchman named George. They were hard working and upright people who raised five children during the depression. Work was hard to come by; ingenuity was a skill that was born out of the circumstances of little money and little opportunity. My grandparents together developed a formula for making picture frames. They were made with flour, hardened and painted as beautifully as the roses on a wedding cake. The frames were primarily made for wedding pictures. They peddled those frames in town after town. That is how they put food on the table and money in the Sunday mass collection. Meme not only fed her family but those of the extended family that would drop in. She was an excellent cook and seemed to make grand meals out of almost nothing. She could make a soup bone into an epicurean feast. She made her own bread and the house would fill with the aroma of freshly baked bread. Her talents did not stop there. She had a wealth of knowledge of homeopathic remedies. She nursed her own family and many neighbors back to health with her home brewed concoctions. In addition to that she was an “unofficial mid wife” and brought babies into the world in the spirit of helping out. It was a time when neighbor helped neighbor and my grandmother brought all her gifts and knowledge to bear. She is also attributed with saving a life of a neighbor when the doctors pronounced the situation helpless. She was widely respected.

Life was not easy, rewards were few. My grandfather who was coming home from work one day saw two men fighting. He tried to break up the fight and was bitten by one of the men. The bite eventually was infected and the bacteria got into his blood stream. He became weak and very sick. He could no longer work and Meme took care of him, worked in a factory and raised her children with never a word of complaint. She was made of strong stock. Eventually my grandfather died.

After some years went by Meme married again. It was a short marriage because her new companion suffered wounds from the war and died after a couple of years. She was alone again, but remained busy helping her five grown children wherever she could and showing us all what real character is all about. God Bless my Meme.

“The most sublime courage I have ever witnessed has been among that class too poor to know they possessed it, ad too humble for the world to discover it.”

 George Bernard Shaw

The British and their Hats

I was as glued to the TV as any Englishman who couldn’t make the Wedding Ceremony of Kate and William. Her dress was perfect; elegant, regal but not overstated, and accentuated her happiness wrapped in beauty. I enjoyed the bands, the choirs, the sermon, and the pomp. However, what captivated me most was the parade of hats. Having loved hats for as long as I can remember it was a tour de force. Having never had the verve to display my spunky side I watched with stark admiration as the women exhibited their head gear with assurance, strutting about like peacocks in full regalia.  It seems the custom of hats has never left the Brits. Queen Elizabeth is never seen without one, but it is not confined to royalty. The commoner will display their Fascinators’ with the same confidence and poise.

Covering your head goes beyond staying warm or keeping the sun out, it is a statement that you are a lady. Furthermore as fashion history explains, it draws attention to the face, or sometimes interest in what lies beneath the wide rim.

I vote to revive the crowning of ladies in America with these creations of art. I want to see some mystique back into the mainstream of women. I am tired of our carefree, who cares dress code. Women with bellies hanging out, shirts with some political statement, flip flops; they have destroyed the feminine mystique. It is not going to hurt women’s liberation one bit to keep a bit of you under wraps. In fact the joy of the past was discovering who that woman was underneath the crown. I vote for restraint and vote against letting it all hang out.  Bring on the Facinators.

Step on a Crack, Break Your Back

The games we played. The fun we had; dodge ball, hop scotch, jacks, hide and seek, Cowboy and Indians (one of my favorites) Old Mother Witch Are You Ready, and of course pillow fights. At school we played Hang Man and Hide the Eraser at which I was suspected of cheating, but I never did. I was just intuitive.

When cousins would arrive, added to our baseball team size family, we had the makings of war hoop fun. I usually led the games, general that I was. Some of us were very competitive; some of us just had fun. I won’t mention names. When we played Cowboys and Indians, those of us who were Indians would hide in the adjoining woods, and the Cowboys would look for us. Boy was I a good Indian, probably because I believed I was an Indian. In the 50’s TV was loaded with Westerns and our grandmother Meme loved watching Gunsmoke. I watched westerns with her and for the longest time I thought when people died they had a few last choice words and then went ohhhhh. Pretty straight forward and that’s how I play acted it out in my escapades. I would hide in the woods, up a tree, or crouched down behind a rock. The cowboys would go stalking by, but I was as silent as a doe waiting for its mom. Many times we Indians painted our face with mom’s lip stick and made a band to go around our foreheads. We took our play very seriously. The games would go on until the last slip of light threw shadows on the trees. Then we would reluctantly go back home were we filed into the house with dirty faces, dirty hands and barefoot that we were, very dirty feet. The bathwater handled that.

Games were only one of the ways where we learned competitiveness, good sportsmanship, and strategy. There were also the other kinds of games. Those games would be made up, fed by our imagination. We would improvise as we went along. We invented pretend characters, gave human qualities to inanimate objects, and felt no limitations in the scope or measure of our thoughts. Unlike adulthood we did not create barriers to our success.

I remember that we never walked around puddles, we walked through them. We never worried about germs or hand sanitizers. We laughed at scratches and bumps and the days lasted a life time. We lived in the present with no thoughts to the “what ifs’” and tomorrow. A blessed time and blessed in the adult who can recapture those unbridled moments of spontaneous actions.

How Far Back Can I Remember

We lived on the second floor of a tenement. We were only a family of four, mom, dad, me and brother Ronnie. I was very young but impressions of that time are still vivid in my mind. I remember there was a lady that lived upstairs and who stayed in a wheel chair. She had suffered from Polio. She never left her apartment. Her name was Nellie and she had hair as white as the sand dunes in Massachusetts. She wore glasses and was very kind. She liked to look out her picture window facing the street and watch the world skate by.

Every couple of days the milk man would deliver milk in glass bottles with rich, thick cream on top. When the milkman would pull up to the corner my brother and I would rush down and with other neighborhood kids beg for ice. We loved the way it tingled on our tongues. He would scoop into his silver colored bins and give us a handful. That felt like a wondrous treat. He wore a striped uniform and a cap that looked like he was a train conductor. He was our milkman.

There was a black man who would drive a cart pulled by an old, tired out horse. Clop, clop on the pavement and we knew the ‘Ragman” was coming. “Rags, rags,” he would bellow. I wondered why anyone would want rags but later learned he collected them and sold them. I am told he put a family through college on his income from those treks throughout the streets of Providence.

We were not attending school yet and our time was spent making up games, playing hop scotch, all within the confines of our little yard, which was mostly cement. My biggest pleasure came from exploring the basement; musty smelling, but neat as a pin, I would peruse all the books that had been stored away on shelves. I was always looking at books. They fascinated me and it was the beginning of a life long love of books. I would pull them off the shelves and look for pictures. I was not yet reading. There was a coal bin at the corner of the basement and sometimes when I was down there the coal delivery man would come. I would hear the tumbling of the black, shinny spheres of earth fill up the bin. I could smell the unique smell of coal, mixed in with the damp musty smell of the basement and the unique fragrance of old books. I was always one to use all my senses whenever possible.

I don’t remember how long we lived there but it is the smells, and impressions and routines of days gone by that are with me until today.

Tricks and Pranks and That Which Earned Spanks

We were not the Walton’s’ nor the Brady Bunch, we were the Gabriel’s; loud, rambunctious and naughty. I was the boss, at least until my brothers became stronger. In spite of our unruly behavior we were all good at the core and cared for each other dearly. We proved that time and time again.

One day in early Spring I was in my upstairs bedroom and looked out the window. What seemed like far below was my father sitting in a lawn chair. All of a sudden the idea popped into my head about how funny it would be to pour a bucket of water over him. Perhaps it was the after effects of watching The Three Stooges or perhaps it came from the real desire to stump the teacher. Nevertheless I found a children’s bucket, filled it with water and slowly opened the screen window. The torrent landed on the top of his head and he jumped up from his chair yelling “Who did that?” He looked to the left; he looked to the right, not a child in sight. The tone of his voice gave me pause, but the delight of my clever maneuver thrilled me; after all he never looked up.

Ours were a life of constant action and mishaps. The pranks we played on each other were followed by concentrated attention to the cover ups. One cover up my brother reminded me of was made of Marshmallow Fluff. It was used to cover up a hole that mistakenly got punched into the wall. Did I do that? Sometimes a child was discovered under the couch having bunked school. Sometimes sweets were mysteriously missing from the cupboard. Now who could have done that? Sometimes our prized possessions would suddenly be missing and found in the hiding spots of the siblings. The best thing was we had free reign of our imagination and that provided for hours of entertainment. I recall lining up kitchen chairs in the basement and making the children sit like they were on a train. I continued to direct them in a full stage play of, The Little Caboose That Could.

I would often make caves with the blankets and each child had a role to play. I didn’t say they wanted to, but I was the director.

There was always a baby in the house and I can honestly say that the unconditional love of a child in your arms is the closest I have ever been to heaven. I changed a diaper and when I balked at the odor of a smelly mess I remembered my mom saying ‘When it’s your own baby you will think its perfume.” I did not find that to be quite true, but it’s a noble thought.

There was a laundry room in the basement. I remember the dirty clothes pile was twice the height of me. Ronnie used to hide in it. We had an old wringer type washer and I would help with the washing. One day my fingers got caught in the ringer. My fingers were very white and flat. There was an emergency button you could push to stop the machine. I was Lady MacBeth made as much out of it as I could.  After all a childhood tragedy should never go to waste. I think I got an ice cream out of that. My siblings have surly more to tell. I hope they add to this post in comments and reminisce with me at the precious times gone by.

Over the River and Through the Woods

It would always come out of the blue, maybe when we were out shopping, or just hanging around the house on a Saturday afternoon. The question was “Who wants to go see Uncle George?”  The undulating chorus of yes would fill the silent spaces as we children anticipated the adventure of the country drive.

Dad at the wheel, mom beside him, proud of her rambunctious litter of offspring fiddling in the back seat was the backdrop of the impetuous decision.

I would sometimes squeeze in the back window ledge and watch the roads go from track housing and little strip malls to tree lined back roads with only a car here and there passing by. We all waited for a billboard of a large Turkey which announced the proximity of Wrights Turkey Farm. That was the turn off. Our little hearts were pitter pattering as the fun was being pulled closer to our restless feet.

Once there we bounded out of the car, like a deer running from a hunter. The first thing our eyes rested on was the old Apple tree. Proud it stood, green apples, dripping from its twisted boughs, like treasured offerings to the masses and we were certainly the masses.  The old apple tree gave us a helping hand with branches that swooped close to the ground.  We got a leg up and swarmed the tree like bees on a flower bush.  I do remember the thrill of free fruit for the taking, and worm holes that didn’t faze us in the least. I also remember the belly aches that would accompany our repast.

The house was unpretentious with tar shingles and a wide front porch. We approached the back door in tandem because our Uncle George lived upstairs with his family and his mother in law resided on the first floor.  My father would open the door and we would follow in tight procession. I particularly remember that my dad had heavy footsteps and each step he took on the unpolished wooden stair was matched in time and unison with our footsteps on the stair below. It must have sounded like a giant or an army was entering the humble abode of my fathers’ oldest brother.  When dad knocked a loud, white knuckled bang on the somewhat flimsy door, we all stopped, poised in mid air, at the stair we were landed on. Then came the warm greeting, the warm ‘come in, come in’, and we piled in like logs in a wood pile.

The house was very tiny and we entered right into the kitchen with a black top stove directly in front. There was a white Formica table top with a black strip around the edge. The was a small chip broken off the black line which I always noted. It had a drawer at one end for the silverware. I was very impressed by a built in drawer. The chairs were spindle with colorful chair pads. The young ones would go into the small parlor and sit around on the floor. Couches and chairs were reserved for the adults.  Cousin Bobby would almost always be sitting in the corner strumming on a guitar. He was a tall, shy fellow who had a timid smile, and spoke more with his guitar than his lips. Cousin Joey would come bounding in sometimes but most of the time he was out gallivanting. 

Jeannette was the only daughter and just plain beautiful with long dark wavy hair and a smile that could light up a room. 

Aunt Katherine would always light up the stove and start toasting white bread to pass around to everyone. It was to our eyes and our hearts a treat. We were welcomed, we were loved and we had “family”.

After the bread was eaten and maybe even some soda pop we left the confines of the little house to venture out into the faux farm. There was a hen house and some hens strutting about like they owned the place. There was a small garden, meticulously attended to, and there were cats and dogs of various breeds and ages. For us they were our country cousins and this was the country farm. We played hard, chased the chickens, checked out the eggs, pulled the dogs tails, and found fun where we could find it. The air was always so fresh and clung to your skin like the peel on an apple.  We played tag and when nature called there were always the woods and field right there.

When the adults had finished their jabbering we were rounded up and packed into the car. We were tired and pretty dirty and the ride home was always quieter than the ride there.  There would sometimes be moans about a belly ache which Miss Know it All, me, would attribute to the act of eating wormy apples.  All and all we were a content lot and looked forward to when we could again visit our Uncle George.

Sunday"s After Church

Sundays were a special time of the week. We all got dressed for church, faces washed, hair combed, and every female wore a hat to church. This was a mark of respect for the Holy Institution. It was hard to sit through a whole mass. We fidgeted, we poked each other behind the back, and we grimaced at each other when the parents weren’t watching. However when dad caught our antics his look could freeze us on the spot. He was the Patriarch and not to be taken lightly.

When Mass was over we filed out into our famous Woody station wagon and headed for the Jewish Deli on Ralph Street. It was an incredibly small store with goods piled up literally to the ceiling. I can remember watching with wonder as the son of the proprietor would use a step ladder and than this long handle to grasp the object of his customers desire. It was a routine I witnessed every time I went into that little deli. I also remember the great big wooden barrel loaded with big, fat, plump dill pickles. It’s deli fragrance permeated the store, along with the sliced meats, and variety of pickled goods. I did not pay much attention to the meat and dry goods because my eyes were always on the great big tray filled with apple turnovers, Danish, doughnuts, elephant ears and a assembly of pastries. Dad usually settled on Apple turnovers and that was our after Sunday Dinner treat.

Mom usually put on a pot roast, and within a couple of hour the whole house smelled of seasoned beef with potatoes and carrots simmering within the broth. I was so in love with the smell of the pot roast cooking that I would lift the cover just to inhale the fragrance. One time I actually sustained a burn in a semi circle across the bridge of my nose. My freckles turned pink and I was marked for a whole week as a interloper of the kitchen business. The meals were prepared with so much love and my contribution was usually peeling the potatoes. Mounds and mounds of potatoes until it felt like my hands would fall off. Ten people equal a lot of potatoes. Till this day I always peel too many potatoes for my family. After the Sunday dinner the pastry box was broken into. It was always a brown square box with a string tied unceremoniously around it. Inside were the best apple turnovers I can remember tasting. We demolished the contents of that box in less time than turning on the stove. Then came dishes and clean up and out to the yard to our home made adventures. Sundays were special, a ritual that gave us all a sense of family and predictability. What a treasure for the minds eye.