Love and Marriage

The world is full of great love stories – history has recorded them, plays have been written about them, movies have won awards for them and if we are all lucky, we get to experience that one great true love of our lives.  My grandmother taught me how to love – or perhaps it wasn’t even being taught. It was more instant and she showed me every day what the word meant – she was my world and I could not wait to head downstairs every day after school. I would sit for hours as she baked and cooked.

     

            I remember Ma making homemade ravioli, putting cream cheese between two layers of dough and cutting them out with a glass. She made cannoli shells, deep frying the dough pressed around a hard wooden stick. She soaked dried cod fish for three days to soften it for cooking and made sauce for hours with pork and veal meatballs. Her pasta and eggs were so good that I still make it to this day.

1.      Bring water to a boil

2.      Pinch of salt

3.      Half cup of pasta

4.      Cook ten minutes

5.      Drain water, leave enough for soup

6.      Add one or two eggs, stir and break up with a spoon. Cook two minutes

7.      Pour into a bowl and add a spoonful of butter and/or grated cheese.

     

Once, I came into the kitchen and she was peeling shrimp. The stench of the fish filled the entire room and I took an instant dislike to shellfish. My grandfather was never home when his wife prepared dinners. He thought she was home all day, cooking his evening meal fresh for his arrival from work. Little did he know that my grandmother would make some of his dinners in the early mornings, go out with my mother and then come home an hour before him and simply reheat it. Sometimes, late at night I often found them sitting at the kitchen table together. If they were speaking Italian, it would cease and they spoke only English until I left. And then there was always ice cream.

        



     
   

            Every Saturday, it was Lawrence Welk, and the TV was plugged in on the enclosed front porch. Champagne music filled the air and there sat Ma and Pa, eating their favorite ice cream from large bowls as they listened to the sounds of the likes of the Lennon Sisters.  I don’t know how they met, but Pa was ten years older and Ma thought, incorrectly, that he was married in Italy.

My grandparents on their wedding day. July 4, 1925

                            



     
  Did Ma own two wedding rings? She insisted that she lost her ring and I looked everywhere for it. Years later, when I renovated the first floor, I even searched again. She had purchased a new ring and had a diamond put in a plain gold ring for Pa. Where did this diamond come from, I do not know.

          There was very little I knew about how the couples in our family got together, but my parents' meeting is one of legend. My grandmother’s youngest sister claims responsibility for the introduction and thereby for my very existence.

 



     

My Uncle Tony, Aunt Lil, her brother Tony and Aunt Angie at my parent's wedding. It's because of Lil that I exist today.

     

            Lil wanted to deliver Christmas presents to her husband’s friend Tony and his wife, Julia. We walked into the kitchen and there was a pretty curly haired blue-eyed blond woman seated on the right side of the kitchen table with Julia on the other end. I’m sure I was introduced, although I don’t remember, but I do recall thinking that she must be a married woman. A few days later, Lil called and said she had a name and phone number for me and since I only had weekends free, I called her about a week later. 

           On our first date, I took her to North Andover to a church they lit up with a thousand shimmering bulbs, and on another, we went to Revere Beach when concession stands still lined the boulevard. We stopped at a booth were you could throw a ball to knock down dolls that stood about an inch apart and I paid to throw three times. I took off my jacket and standing sideways like a pitcher; I knocked them down 1-2-3 and won her a large white bear. To this day, she doesn’t know what happened to it.

            After about eight months, although she will deny it, she asked, “When are you going to ask me to marry you?” I said, “Fine, pick a day.” And a week later, I took her to the jewelry building at 333 Washington Street in Boston and bought her the rings. The rest is history.

     

            I never failed to notice just how many diamonds are encrusted on those rings. I tell my mom that she did well – rocks like that, even by today’s standards, are few and far between.

There's no mistaking she's a married lady now  - my parents on May 12, 1962