Then I got thinking of the lunch I went to yesterday. I signed my kids out of high school early so they didn't have to sit through the pep rally and we went to get sushi.
One of my kids brought up their grandfather and spoke rather fondly of him. Now let me explain that this kid isn't really mine, I am just borrowing him for the hockey season. But it made me think of my grandfather.
My father's father, Americo Tavernese, and I had a relationship that I wished my girls could have had with their grandfathers. I have tried to write this line about him so many times, trying to describe how I felt about him but how do you write something that there is no way to truly express?
Let me start by saying I am one of four grandchildren to him, and as stuck up as it sounds I was his favorite. He and my grandmother had three children. My Uncle Joe, the oldest, my dad was next and my Aunt Tina. My Aunt Tina and her husband were killed in a car accident about a year before I was born. My grandmother never got over it, I can remember her sitting up well into the wee hours of the night watching TV and saying prayers whenever my cousin Tina (my Uncle Joe's daughter, we were born two months apart) and I would sleep over there, which was every Friday night for the most part. I remember my mother saying we weren't allowed to talk about it to her ever. But whenever my grandmother wasn't paying attention my Grandpop would take me to his desk, pull out my Aunt's wedding album and show me her pictures. Me Oooooing and ahhhing over her pretty dress, or her bridesmaids dresses, all stunningly retro and positively 50's, or laughing because he still had hair in the pictures, or amazed that my father was ever that young, but I am guessing it was his chance to talk about his daughter that he obviously missed so much, and have someone like me ask questions about what was supposed to be this taboo subject.
My Grandfather and I were a kindred spirit. He loved music, could play banjo, guitar, mandolin or his harmonica so well. I was learning to play the guitar and the flute. I would beg him to play his harmonica, it was the only instrument he had until we bought him his mandolin for his birthday one year, and he would and tell me how he and his friends used to earn money playing their instruments in bars as kids. He would have me play my flute for him, and loved when ever I would play a new piece, whether it was the theme from M*A*S*H or something more classical, he didn't care. He would teach me Italian, because no one, not even my father and his siblings, wanted to learn it and be Greenhorns, even though he never learned how to read it or spell, he eagerly taught me. He loved how I would sit and learn, and I loved his stories about when he was a boy, that always got thrown in as the Italian flowed.
And there was his love of nature. He had this reverence and respect for it that was before his time. I cannot begin to remember how many hours I spent in his garden with him. I learned how to protect tomatoes from cut worms, and aphids, zucchini and yellow squash from slugs, things like that from when I was just a little bit of a thing. I can remember picking his tomatoes straight from the vine and eating them like apples...
He loved to fish so he would take me and my cousin Tina when she was around. When I knew snapper season was coming, I'd start calling him asking if the season started and when could he take me. He'd get the little silver siders, teach me how to bait my hook so the fish wouldn't "make a monkey" out of me by stealing my bait and getting away, and how to take the fish off the hook once I caught it. I would come home, hands covered in scales, bucket full of fish to be cleaned and happy I spent the day with my Grandpop. He took me to Snapper derby fishing competitions. He was so proud every year I won the girls division. I feel I should mention he did have two grandsons, my brother and Tina's brother, but I was still the one he did this stuff with.
I am a doodler by nature and he had a knack for it too. He would draw me pictures, just using his pencil. I would draw pictures of Charlie Brown or Snoopy for him, his favorite cartoons. Speaking of cartoons he would come over some Saturday mornings to watch Bug Bunny with me. He never missed coming to my house to watch a Peanuts Holiday special. How I can remember him laughing when Snoopy would dress up like the World War I flying ace and he'd fight with the Red Baron.
I think his favorite was when Snoopy would fight with the stupid cat next door and his dog house would get attacked, how he'd howl at that, I haven't heard that laugh in so long!
I will fast forward a little bit to college. If I put down every happy time with Mates from when I was little, this blog would be pages long!! How proud he was of me, I was going away. My brother and Joey didn't go to college, my cousin Tina didn't go away but I did. He never could understand how I could leave the safety of my family, and spread my wings. I would get these care packages from him. Sometimes it was food, which always contained a sopresatta and pepperoni lol, sometimes it was just a cassette. He'd tape playing his harmonica and tell his stories to me. Me sitting there on my bed with my eyes closed imagining I was in his kitchen cooking pizzas with him and missing him oh so much. Did I say how I minored in Italian in college and how proud that made my Matesy (his nickname was Mates). Four years came and went, I graduated and he came up to see it. He was so proud, he had to see me cross the stage and get my dipoloma.
Jump ahead again to me getting married. He loved my husband right away, anyone who treated his "Cookie (his nickname for me)" well was good in his book. My husband played golf with him, ate his pizzas and drank his beer. Brad loved him. I remember how Matesy cried when he saw me in my wedding dress, dancing with him at my wedding, me head taller than him, but him leading me around the dance floor and him saying on my wedding video when they handed him the mic, "Cookie, I'm gonna miss you...."
Brad and I moved away after we got married. The packages came still and I have so many of his letters. The day I found out I was pregnant one of the first people I wanted to tell was my Matesy. He counted down the nine months and we had our first daughter. My oldest Bailey was blessed with having a close relationship with her great "Padrino" as he called himself. She loved him and how he fawned over her.
He was loud, due in part from making aircraft for Grumman Corp. These were the days before OSHA regulations and the noise took it's toll after all of those years, and he was gruff but how Bailey would run to him as soon as she saw him. He would play his mandolin for her and she would dance making his day.
Next granddaughter came from us, Katie, or Caterina to him, and she adored him too. But our visits to NY were getting fewer and fewer as businesses were bought and established, and school started to be more than pre-school. She didn't get the benefit of seeing him as much as she should have, but the letters still came. Addressed to Bailey and her sorella (sister).
I'd call, but it was impossible to talk to him on the phone in those later years. He really couldn't hear and he refused to get a hearing aid because he was a "handsome devil" as he'd referred to himself, and didn't want to wear one out of pride.
Add daughter number three, a new business and well the trips up north came even more infrequently. I'd send pictures, he sent his letters. I missed him, but what could I do? Life was what it was. I would hear in my ears, "Cookie someday you're gonna be too big for your grandparents. You're gonna move away and have your life". I was in that moment wasn't I? The moment I swore as a little girl that was never going to come, there I was....
I was pregnant with daughter number four when the phone call from mom came, she said my Matesy had a heart attack. He was in the hospital and in bad shape. Insert that tire screeching sound here.I believe my own heart stopped when those words were spoken to me. The tears welled up in my eyes, I tried to find my voice to answer my mom back, I couldn't get past the lump in my throat. I got off the phone managing to say I wanted to go to NY.
In the process of trying to juggle school calendars and business so I could get up to NY before it was too late, he left me. I was too late...
My grandmother made the decision to take the tube out of his throat that was breathing for him because he wouldn't want to live that way, and in a matter of seconds that beautiful spirit of his was riding the wind and finding it's way home.
I like to believe he went to this massive garden in the sky. The Lord probably needed someone to tend his personal garden, and he is there. Maybe eating a tomato and watching me and my girls as we grow older. Maybe playing his harmonica, strumming a beautiful melody on his mandolin, tapping his foot with his eyes closed, the way he used to look when he was here with me....it's kind of like he is with me though when I think of him.
Mi manchi nonno...ogni giorni....sempre
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