How to Love an American Man (15 page)

In one story, when my parents first got married, they went to visit Grandma Angela in the apartment she kept after my great-grandpa Zaccharia died in the late seventies. In front of my parents her parrot kept singing the phrase in English, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch!” Grandma Angela looked at my parents and said, “I don't know
whosa
teaching that bird to swear,” and my dad told her, “It's you, Grandma! He's speaking with your accent!” They say she threw her head back and laughed till she had to wipe the tears from her eyes.

I find the other story to be just as adorable, but much more telling about the strength of Grandma Angela's character. After she and Grandpa Zachary (as we refer to him now) had gotten their near-dozen kids settled on their farm in Pennsylvania, Grandpa Zach got involved in some entrepreneurial endeavors. He did considerably well for an immigrant but was away from home a lot (I suppose Grandpa got this trait from his dad), and Grandma Angela was finding structural issues around their house that needed tending-to. The water pump in the yard was terribly slow and needed to be replaced, and she had been asking Zachary to buy her a new one so she could do her ten kids' laundry and her other work around the house. Story has it that Zachary wasn't intentionally putting her off but his projects kept getting in the way, until one day while he was out, Grandma Angela was juggling babies and dinner and laundry . . . and the water just stopped running. She went out to the pump with a hatchet and beat the living terror out of it. When it finally lay in ruins across the backyard, she brushed her hands, satisfied. Then when Grandpa Zachary got home, she told him calmly, “The water pump broke today. We need a new one.” The next day he had a team of friends in the yard installing a state-of-theart pump.

It's the only story I've ever heard that paints Grandma Angela as anything but lovable and kind, but she was tough when she needed to be. She made it clear that a woman's needs and requests are just as important as a man's . . . but I wonder if Grandma Glo's unwillingness to speak up in her marriage got on her mother-in-law's nerves.

I imagine Grandma Angela looking down now and laughing, both at my poor relationship judgment and my poor Italian.
Sempre fai la cosa furba nel momento importante. La piu bene via al paradiso è vivere come si sta gia li—senza la paura.
Sei unica. Esista come la persona sei nata essere, e il giusto signore arriverà.
You always do the smart thing at the important moment. The best way to get to your heaven is to live like you're already there—fearlessly. You're unique. Just exist as the person you are, and the right man will arrive in your life.

“
Ah,”
I tell her, my voice quieting,
“forse hai ragione, Nonna.”
She's right. I realize that thanks to the women who came before me, I'm not alone in this conversation after all.

Chapter 7
Be Prepared to Forgive

M
Y PARENTS RARELY FIGHT
. Sure, I remember a few unpleasant exchanges between them when I was a kid—Mom would spend too much shopping, or Dad would stay out with his buddies too late. But really, for pretty much my whole life I've seen them demonstrate a mutual regard and a fondness that they both know they'd miss terribly if they didn't have each other.

This is why to this day I find it strange that they've never come up with a solution for their annual holiday fallout, which kicks off every holiday season with a less than joyous sputter. The Christmas conflict tends to start with the tree. Dad goes to a farm to chop his own stock, and upon his return in the company truck, Mom stands in the doorway resting her elbow on her wrist in assessment. Hm. What made you go taller this year, Bill? Was the blue spruce all they had? What the heck, did a bear attack this? We don't have ornaments big enough to disguise all these bald spots.

From there it generally escalates, with holiday decorating malfunctions foiling all the fun. The tinsel seems to have shrunk from last year and won't wrap the whole way up the banister, then it looks like someone's misplaced the dogs' stockings—where will we stuff their Dingo snacks?! To top it off (literally), the motorized Santa Claus that we stick on top of the tree sounds like he's dropped his tranny. He waves out to the living room with his hips wiggling suggestively as if he's on a mechanical bull, but the horse carousel he's riding no longer rises and falls with holiday glee.

I remember outgrowing all the holiday thrill right about when I turned twenty-three. By that time the holidays had come to mean leaving work early after a jam-packed day and rushing to Penn Station for eight hours on the Amtrak. I'd arrive home, throw on my sweats, and somehow manage to gain eight pounds in three days, and then immediately tell the family a tearful but rushed goodbye. Plus, I'd climb back on the train to the city with none of my new presents in tow, because they wouldn't fit in my suitcase . . . or my apartment. That period was when I realized why so many people actually dread the holidays: no matter how much you love your family, getting together with them can present some challenges.

But last year at least Grandpa was still here. I'd been miserable in Milan for Thanksgiving, and my friends and I tried to celebrate by improvising a pumpkin pie recipe. The Italians only use fresh pumpkin, so we had to boil it down and puree it, and when we couldn't find brown sugar, we used maple syrup instead. When the pies were finished, they were in fact beautiful, and all night we sat indulging in individual mini-pumpkin pies with a buttery biscotti crust instead of dough. However, I remember feeling that eating a pumpkin pie after a dinner of pasta and salad didn't exactly scream “patriotic,” and no matter how grateful I was for the friends surrounding me . . . they still weren't my family. Mom had called me Thanksgiving morning, her time, as she was pulling the turkey out of the oven and bustling for the family to arrive, just as I was picking up the kids I nannied during the usual school run. On my bike, carting little Alfonso to swim class, I dodged the angry afternoon rush of Vespas (no wonder the word translates to “wasp”) and vowed never to spend another Thanksgiving away from America again.

Then for Christmas, I flew home. It took me a while to get ready for my aunt's house because I wanted to look really lovely to see everyone for the first time in the six months since I'd moved to Europe. I wore a curvy black wraparound dress that I'd bought in Venice, with jeweled satin heels on my feet. I did my hair big and curly and then could
not
find the right necklace to go with it . . . until I invaded Mom's jewelry box and found a large rhinestone ornament hanging from five layers of clear, intricate beads. When I arrived at dinner, I made great fanfare of gathering all the cousins for a photo op in front of Aunt Lori's jumbo tree, and between camera flashes I kept glancing across the room at Grandpa, who was smiling at his grown-up grand-kids' commotion. But, there was no missing it: he was seated in a wheelchair.

I carried on more festively than ever, engaging in toasts and laughter and Guitar Hero as though it wasn't difficult to see Grandpa that way. I would catch his eye and wink, pretending for his sake—and for mine—that the holiday gathering was like any one before it, even though we all silently understood that this would be the last one we'd have with him. A month later when Grandpa died and I pulled on the same black dress to give his eulogy, I realized why I'd gone to all the trouble trying to look so lovely at Christmas: I knew it was the last time he'd ever see me dressed up.

This year I'm feeling an aching pulse in my stomach, wondering how in the world the family's expected to celebrate when the person we love the most won't be here. Aunt Anna, the wife of Grandpa's youngest brother (and my great-aunt who taught me to make gnocchi when I was eight), sends me an e-mail the week before Thanksgiving:

As part of their bereavement aftercare program, the hospice nurses have advised Grandma that some families choose to acknowledge a deceased loved one's absence by placing an empty seat at the dinner table for them. Grandma says no,
no way
could she stand that. I, on the other hand, wonder if it would be worth a try, but I can't criticize or push her. If I'm having a hard time preparing for the holidays minus Grandpa, I can't even imagine what Grandma's experiencing right now. She's been going out of her way to avoid department stores, with their decorations and Christmas music, saying that the holiday spirit is affecting her in exactly the opposite manner it's supposed to.

Two Sundays before Thanksgiving she and I attend a grief lecture together at the hospital. It's called “Holiday Hope,” a talk on coping with the season's festivities in the first year after a family member has passed away. From the information Grandma told me, it sounds as though it should be geared toward widows. But I can tell that she's not feeling totally brave about the thought of going alone, and anyway, I'm interested in the psychological aspect of what they have to say.

When we arrive, the dozen folks around the table are actually all different ages. Grandma's getting herself a miniature bottle of water when I hear the woman who's seated across from us tell her husband she doesn't think she's going to handle this very well. I gather they've lost a child. As people solemnly file in they fill out a ticket to win the door prize, then at a long table against the wall they can collect colorful little pamphlets on the normal stages of grieving and how to brace oneself for the holidays. Grandma takes a few, whispering that most of them are probably too grave for her. I collect one of everything.

The speaker is a tall woman who looks to be in her early sixties but whose skin somehow appears weathered beyond her years. She has her doctorate in education and usually speaks on how to help children grieve, but when she sits down in the middle of the U-shaped table, she reveals why her eyes appear so benevolently exhausted. When she was twenty-eight with two little kids, she lost her husband suddenly to cancer, and then when her son was twenty-seven, he was killed in a hunting accident. She says she can relate to the grieving process because she's experienced it firsthand, twice. Three decades after her husband's death, she tears up telling us that just before Thanksgiving on his deathbed, he had arranged for the hospital Santa Claus to visit his children at their home after he passed.

The woman tells us that when tragedy struck her, she realized she had to take care of her own needs and shut out the “shoulds” that people were throwing in her face: you
should
celebrate the holidays the same way you always have, you
should
put on a smile in front of your family, you
should
work on getting over this loss by this time next year. But exactly thirty-three years have passed since her husband died, she says, and while the pain lessens, you never “get over” death. She says we're never the same person after we lose a close loved one.

“The holidays mean family,” she says, “but this year, for you, someone who's supposed to be there isn't.” For a person who's lost someone close to them, the holidays present a period of what she calls “regrieving,” or experiencing the sharpness and sadness of the immediate loss all over again. “Those people are still part of the family after they die,” she says, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Grandma wiping under her glasses with a tissue.

But, our speaker explains, hope is the one thing that gets us through the tough times in our lives. We can have hope that the holidays will bring joy again one day instead of such desperate sadness. Also, she says, we can keep a special candle on the table or an object on the tree to express that “this is what that person meant to me, and this is what I have left of them.” We may not be able to see them physically, but we can remember them with an ornament, a bursting poinsettia, some visible representation that the person who's passed is still present in our heart and in our home. She adds that this keeps the memory of their physicality close, helping to maintain the hope that, if you're a religious person, you'll see your loved one again in heaven or in whatever afterlife you believe in.

At the end of the talk she holds a small ceremony, lighting four candles and leading us through a verse:

I quietly rub Grandma's shoulder as she sniffles loudly with the rest of the group. The leader walks around to light the votive candles that are placed in front of each of us. I'm seated at the end of the table, so she lights my candle first. “We light this candle in memory of . . .”

Oh, she wants me to answer. “George Gasbarre.”

She proceeds on to Grandma. “We light this candle in memory of . . .”

Grandma takes a deep breath and pauses between the two words for strength: “George . . . Gasbarre.”

Then she allows us each to choose a translucent ornament from a box. She explains that we'll open the bulb, write a tiny note to our loved one, and stick it inside. I say to Grandma, “What color bulb would you like?”

“Green or blue.”

“Me too! How about you take one and I'll take the other.”

Grandma selects the green, I think because it reminds her of Grandpa's logo and because it was his favorite color. I take the blue because it reminds me of Grandpa's eyes.

And, in its sparkly shade of ocean, it reminds me of Chris's eyes too.

I fold my note so my words are hidden and private, but Grandma surprises me when she lets her note face out. I wonder if she's curious to see what I've written; how I've told Grandpa that everything I do is for him, that I know he's taking care of every detail in my life, and that I love him.

When I catch a glimpse of Grandma's note, I can see part of what she's written to Grandpa:
You are the light of my life.

T
HE FOLLOWING
F
RIDAY
—one week before Thanksgiving—we're not even out of the airport parking lot and Chris is dialing his phone. He has six weeks' worth of patient follow-ups this weekend, he says, and I try to sympathize, but I make the appearance of sympathizing, I'm so nervous to be sitting next to him again that I barely hear his words. He's all splashed out in veteran travel gear: cool nylon cargo pants and a sleek black track jacket, meanwhile sporting his old college baseball cap over smooth hair. He just has this one call to make right now, he whispers over his receiver, and then he wants to tell me all about the trip. I nod and reach out to the cup holder for my iced coffee, trying to act casual.

In the first two minutes of his call he fumbles with my navigation system, searching frantically for the Down volume.
Okay,
this
is gonna drive me nuts
, he mouths to me, pointing at the electronic box sitting on my dash.

“I need her,” I whisper. “I don't know Newark.” He crashes defeated into his headrest but then stays calm through the rest of the call, arranging a meeting with a colleague on Monday after a full weekend's sleep to get back on East Coast time. When he hangs up, he's shaken off the attitude and wants to know what's new with me.

“Well, I sold two stories in the last six weeks, which made me pretty happy,” I say. “And then, well, this isn't quite as happy . . . Tucker and I split.”

“I'm really sorry to hear that.” A piece of me is hoping that he's not being sincere. I'm fine with it, I tell him. These things happen, and I actually feel a lot more centered. “If you're more centered, that says a lot,” he replies.

“That's what I figure. I've lost six pounds just from cutting out the pizza and beer.”

“I was gonna say, you look fantastic.”

“Yeah?”