Vladimir Nabokov's words of wisdom from his
book, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography
Revisited, validated my decision to
continue writing about the links between events and
experiences from my childhood that showed up, barely
disguised, to influence me in my later years. Some
of my events played hide-and-seek in my Eternal
Present and insisted on a trip down memory lane to
discover them in all their glory.
A year or so before my husband Gordon
retired, we talked about what he could start getting
involved in for pure fun, something he could
continue to do in his retirement years. I had my
writing, but after thirty-three years as a
University of Florida professor who wrote textbooks
and many articles, Gordon knew with great certainty
that he didn't want to write anymore. He said the
bloom had gone off that rose.
He suggested we do a survey of people over
sixty-five and ask them questions about what they
discovered about the topic that might be useful. It
ended up being a self-published spiral-bound book, Golden
Age Wisdom. We
sent out questionnaires and promised a free
copy to
everyone who responded and that's how we decided how
many books to print.This was
before we had a computer so Gordon wrote the
questions and I wrote the introduction, typed up the
answers, and made the cover. Then we let the copy
center take over to xerox and spiral-bind as many as
we needed and considered it done. Fastest.book.ever!
There were many commonalities in the answers.
Many people listed their church fellowship as the
most important connection they had because it
continued into their retirement and after the
children were grown and started moving away to find
their own bliss. That answer restarted our search
for a spiritual home which ended up at The Seraphim
Center, a totally accepting, interdenominational
fellowship of people from all belief systems. It was
just what we were looking for. Gordon enjoyed giving
thought-provoking presentations there from time to
time. I studied for the ministry under the founder,
Rev. Dr. Bob Estling and became an ordained minister
a year later. Six months after Gordon passed away, I
knew it was time to get out of the house and live
again, so I started going back to Seraphim Center
and became a Board member for the next year and a
half. It was a saving grace for me and I still enjoy
attending.
Vladimir's words kept coming back to me about
those missing events from my childhood so I decided
to get some help from Google, which is like having
the Library of Alexandria in your home. I started by
googling "five most influential experiences in your
life" to spur on my thinking mind and prime the
pump, so to speak. Wow! 3,770,000 results came up in
0.65 seconds! Clearly I wasn't the only person
interested in this subject. After reading thirty
interesting pages of other people's experiences, I
realized I was doing it again, getting off topic and
distracting myself from finishing this page.
I have no doubt about the first event from my
childhood that influenced my passion for writing. It
was a no-brainer embedded with happy memories of a
Christmas when I was ten. It's very easy to get to
the roots of my passion for writing. If I had to
choose, most of the time I'd choose to write instead
of eat. I can stay up half the night, fully
charged, when
I'm in the middle of a writing project. It's my one
guilty pleasure and I'm obsessive about it because
it feels so good. When I am writing, I am in bliss
and unaware of my surroundings. I have been
meditating for over forty years, and when I am
writing, it almost, but not quite, feels like
meditation to me. I'm happily alone in
PriscillaWorld, living in the present moment, doing
what I feel I was born to do. The words sometimes
write themselves, not unlike the automatic writing I
do when I attempt to connect with someone who has
"crossed over."
And speaking of someone who has crossed over,
Gordon was the same way when he was writing. He
could focus better than anyone I had ever known. I
loved that about him! I could be standing behind him
for minutes and he wouldn't even know I was there. I
didn't want to break his concentration because I
didn't want anyone to interrupt mine when I was
writing either and he honored that. He liked to say
we were joined at the hip, born only 20 hours apart,
and our idiosyncrasies played well together.
Back to the book and a flashback to the year
I was ten and still living on Conselyea Street in
Brooklyn, New York. My mother confided that we had
bought Grandma Normandia a big surprise for
Christmas. It was an expensive set of dishes. I
didn't know expensive was relative then, and now
know it was a big deal for our family to spend that
much money on anything frivolous, especially after
the ordeal of rationing during World War II. Gram
still saved everything, like string and the foil
wrappings of chewing gum, just in case.
When I was a little younger, she once wanted
to share a secret with me about something hiding in
the attic. It turned out to be a 3-shelf bookcase
completely filled with 5-pound bags of sugar. She
warned me not to tell anyone or she could go to jail
and I wouldn't see her for a long, long time. I was
scared. I had no idea that having a lot of sugar
could get you sent to jail. She showed me the
outdated coupons in her World War II War Ration Book
#One. The first stamps in that ration book were to
be used for the purchase of sugar. When the book was
issued, the registrar actually asked you how much
sugar you owned on that date. If you had sugar at
home you could keep it, but you had to turn in the
proper number of stamps for the amount you had at
home. My sainted grandmother who could do no
wrong in my eyes was hoarding sugar and I knew
better than to ask how she got it or why she needed
so much!
Mom asked if I would pick out some pretty
Christmas paper and wrap Gram's present on the floor
because the sealed carton was too heavy to lift up.
For the first time, I felt like one of the grownups
because I was asked to help, even though I was sworn
to secrecy to within an inch of my life if I told
anyone what was in the box. I may have been only
ten, but I knew better than to cross my mother.
On that New York Christmas morning in 1945,
the heavy secret carton was under the tree next to
the love seat where Grandma and my Dad were sitting.
Gram was not a complainer, but she said that her
hands hurt and she needed help opening the present.
I thought that was odd because she didn't say
anything about her hands hurting the night before.
We had a Saturday night ritual that felt like a play
with a set that included a porcelain-topped kitchen
table near a wood stove where she cooked hundreds of
traditional Italian meals. The script never changed.
Her first line was, "Will you put my hair up in pin
curls tonight and then polish my nails?"
I would respond, "Sure, what color do you want
tonight, Gram?" She always chose the same bright red
nail polish she saved for special occasions, like
Christmas, or Sunday Mass at 5:30 in the morning at
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church. She
walked alone in the pitch black morning down our
long street to Union Avenue, then turned right to
reach the church across the street. No one had a car
then, and even if we did, where would we park it?
The few garages next to Rosalie Greco's house where
we played stoop ball every day, rented for
astronomical prices for working class families, and
Mom said only people with money, like the
owners of Orlando's Funeral Home, could afford them.
It never occurred to us to be fearful of
walking in the dark as long as we stayed in our own
neighborhood. Not only was it 95% Italian-American,
but most of the immigrants came from the same small
comune in Italy and were friends and neighbors
there. Even now, in 2016, the population of Palma
Campania is only around 15,500 so it must have been
even smaller around the end of the 1800s when the
largest number of Italian immigrants arrived at
Ellis Island and were welcomed by our awesome gift
from France, Lady Liberty.
When I tell people in Florida that I grew up
in Brooklyn, some say it sounds like a dangerous
place to raise a child. Maybe
it is now, I really don't know, but in the 1940s it
was crime-free in my neighborhood. I was
over fifty when I asked my dear brother-in-law, Pete
Lomuto, why I felt so safe playing outside after
dark when I was little. His answer caught me off
guard. Let's just say we were "protected" but no one
talked about it. He said if any man or boy dared to
hurt a female of any age in the six square blocks
around Conselyea Street, that person would either
suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth
forever, or be relieved of a useful body part that
guaranteed he would not hurt any female again. Ever.
Yikes!
I never wanted to check that story out and
have no way of knowing if it's true or not, or if it
will continue to take up residence in the
overflowing file of my mind labeled Family Folklore.
Grandma was a tiny Italian immigrant who
arrived in the United States in the early 1890s. She
left the small comune of Palma Campania, which is in
the province of Napoli (Naples). Naples is the third
largest municipality in Italy, after Rome and Milan,
and is also the capital of the southern Italian
region of Campania. Unlike Grandma Simonetti who
never learned English, Gram Normandia spoke perfect
English. However, even after she became a
naturalized American citizen, she still preferred
the familiarity of the 5:30 am Mass because it was
spoken in Italian back then.
I haven't been Roman Catholic since I was
twenty-eight, but sometimes I find myself singing
the few words I remember from Tantum Ergo,
which is part of a Medieval Latin hymn written by
Saint Thomas Aquinas around 1264. It is one of the
most famous chants in existence.
Gregorian Chant Lyrics - Tantum Ergo -
traditional Catholic benediction hymn adoration Holy
Eucharist Pange LinguaGregorian Chant Lyrics - Tantum Ergo -
traditional Catholic benediction hymn adoration Holy
Eucharist Pange Lingua
Tantum
ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:eneremur cernui: Gregorian Chant Lyrics - Tantum Ergo -
traditional Catholic benediction hymn adoration Holy
Eucharist Pange LinguaPraestet fides supplementum Sensuum defectui.
Gram wanted her nails done the night before
church, so she wouldn't have to worry about finding
time to do them the next day. She always hurried
home from church, put on her apron, and started the
sauce (which my family still calls the "gravy") for
the homemade lasagna. Sometimes she rolled out the
dough to make ravioli from scratch. She was
determined to have Sunday dinner ready to put on the
table the moment her sons arrived. Their presence
was not optional. It was a command performance and
Gram was in charge. George (Biagio), Albert
(Humberto), and Henry (Aniello) always arrived on
time with wives and children in tow for their
mother's big Sunday dinner, topped off with the red
wine that Grandpa made in his wooden wine press that
was locked in the cellar that you entered from the
back yard, right under the window of my bedroom.
The smallest children, like me, were given a
glass of soda with a small splash of red wine in it
to give it color. As we got older, the portion of
wine to soda increased in small increments. We had
to be much older before we got to taste an undiluted
glass of wine. My older male cousins enjoyed teasing
us younger kids who were drinking our barely-pink
soda out of wine glasses. They sure did enjoy
flaunting their full glasses of red wine to show off
their advanced age of 16 or so. It was a rite of
passage in our Italian-American home. I never have
liked red wine. Maybe that's why.
Meanwhile, back at the story, I felt proud
Grandma asked me to help her open her
Christmas present. I sat at her feet on the clean,
cold linoleum and traced the big flower designs on
it. Mom said she was proud that you could eat off
her floors, though truthfully, I don't remember ever
seeing anyone doing that, nor can I imagine why
anyone would want to. I couldn't wait to see
Gram's excited expression when she opened the very
impressive present we got her. I assumed it was
impressive based on the high security rating for
secrecy, though it was sealed so I never personally
saw the dishes. All eyes were on the box and you
could hear a pin drop. The entire family was
watching intently. I figured it was because by then
we were probably all in on the big secret surprise.
Well, it was a big secret all right, and the
secret was that there was no set of dishes in the
box. Instead, the box I so carefully wrapped in
Santa Claus paper held a typewriter, a manual
Underwood typewriter with a note in the roller that
said it was for ME. Holy cow, I couldn't believe
it!!
It was the best present I ever got, because I
dreamed of owning a typewriter some day while my
ten-year-old girlfriends from P.S. 132 were still
dreaming about unwrapping the latest
doll-of-the-year, which that year was a fashion doll
as opposed to a baby doll. We were growing up in our
own way. I had told my Dad that I had written a poem
about trees and he asked me to read it to him. I
added that if only I had a real typewriter, I could
send my latest poem to a magazine and maybe they
would publish it. It was 1945, way before electric
typewriters existed, at least at my house.
I needed help getting that coveted typewriter
out of the carton because it was so heavy. My big
brother Buddy helped. Then I looked down at the keys
and look around the room to see if anyone else
noticed there were no letters or numbers on the
keys. They were all covered with adhesive tape! I
asked how I was supposed to know which letters were
under the tape. Then Buddy, who was 19 at the time
and determined that I learn to type properly, handed
me a perfectly scaled drawing of the typewriter
keys. He had made it for me out of a manila folder
so it would stand up on its side when opened. If I
kept it next to the typewriter I would know where
the keys were and eventually wouldn't need the
picture anymore. It even showed which fingers had to
go on each key.
And that's how I learned to type at ten. I
was told that you could protect your original
writing from theft by putting it in a sealed
envelope and sending it to yourself, but it was
important not to open it when it came back to you in
the mail. The date next to the three-cent stamp on
the envelope showed the date it was mailed and that
would be as good as a real copyright, or so I
believed, because, after all, the person who told me
was a high school freshman. I quickly learned how to
use carbon paper and made two identical copies of my
letter and poem about trees. I sent the copy to me
and the original to a publisher who advertised in
the back of my Mary Marvel comic book. Wanted: New
Writers. Shazam! I was breathlessly on my way to
becoming a published writer, or so I thought.
You probably suspect by now that it's
unavoidable and sooner or later I will have to
include my 10-year-old inner child's all-important
first poem that she hoped would catapult her into a
future writing career.
No matter how old a tree
may be
It still gives shade to you and me
Its leafy branches in the sun
Give their shade to everyone
I could sit for hours and hours
Admiring a tree's lovely flowers
For that is a gift given to me
The Gift of Beauty in a tree
Your house may stand where a tree once stood
Your house may even be made of wood
When you look at your house and examine each plank
God is the one whom you should thank
It was God who made the little seed grow
And God who protected it from the snow
And it's God to thank that the tree's seed
was laid
And it's God to thank that your house was made
The poem was rejected gently, but it didn't
matter. From that day on, I considered myself a
Writer with a capital W because I had a letter from
a publisher to prove it, even if it was a
rejection letter. I never stopped writing after
that, though I slowed down during the years when my
four children were babies and limited myself to
writing poetry when they were all asleep.
I will always credit my darling Dad for
buying me that used, ten-dollar Underwood typewriter
that fed my early love of
writing. He was my first hero, the first person in
my life who loved me unconditionally, and it showed.
Maybe it was because I was the baby of the family,
an unplanned ecstatic surprise for Dad since it had
been nine years since my brother was born. He knew I
would be the last child he would have because Mom
was not that excited about the good news and the
idea of starting all over again raising a baby at
her age was not what she expected. She was
thirty-three when I was born and, in my family, that
was considered embarrassingly old to be getting
pregnant. It ranked higher than married women who
didn't cut their hair short after the wedding. I'm
not sure why that was taboo either. Maybe a married
woman was not supposed to call attention to herself.
Now, thankfully, women don't put restrictions like
that on themselves. When I was in elementary school,
I always had the oldest parents in my class. Why the
teachers always wanted to know how old our parents
were I never did understand.
I want to end this page with a tribute to my
Dad. He never raised his voice to me like my
friends' fathers did, nor did he ever have a
self-improvement plan for me. He made me feel like I
was perfect in every way and could be anything I
wanted to be. He
was the only one who could help me with my
algebra and Latin homework and always
listened to me so patiently as he smoked his White
Owl cigars. I'm pretty sure he must have made a
mental note of what I wanted or thought I needed and
had a knack for finding it for me at just the
perfect time. Until I met Gordon, I didn't think
anyone would ever love me unconditionally like that
again, but I was wrong. Once Gordon and I got to
know each other better and trust each other enough
to open our hearts, we surrendered to unconditional
love. It's funny how that works. Thanks, Dad, for
letting me know what that feels like so I could
recognize it when it came around again.
