Please click here to listen to my 3 minute essay which just aired on NPR-member station WVTF:Noona

Or, read a slightly longer version which appeared in The Daily Progress:

When you hear the words, Italian grandmother, what image comes to mind?  A cute little old lady, wearing a crisp, white apron, hair tied back neatly in a bun?  Maybe she’s smiling beatifically as she carries a plate of pasta and meatballs.  She gently urges you to, “Eat, eat.”

Noona, my Italian grandmother, did not fit any of the stereotypes.  For example, she was a terrible cook and not just terrible, but also dangerous. When you sat at my grandmother’s kitchen table, you took your life in your hands.  Hepatitis didn’t concern  her.  She routinely prepared snails and mussels pulled out of an iffy part of Long Island Sound.           Trichinosis didn’t worry her either.  She handled pork in a cavalier manner even though our Aunt Chubby from Newark almost died from eating a bit of raw sausage.

But it was Noona’s chicken soup that scarred me for life.  She bought fresh chickens—very fresh—often I’d discover them tied up and still clucking in a burlap bag in her bathroom.  You can imagine how scary it was to see your dinner in the bathtub, tied up and screaming for mercy.

I don’t remember who killed and plucked the chicken but I do remember that Noona would throw the whole bird, bloody neck first, into a pot of boiling water on the gas stove in the kitchen.  Those little chicken feet sticking straight up over the edge of the pot is an image that haunts me to this day.

Even though she spent over fifty years in this country, Noona could barely speak English and could not read it.  Certainly, she was smart enough to do either.  She just didn’t think it was necessary.  She’d guess the meaning on various bottles and packages.  One morning I found her soaking her feet in a basin of Milk of Magnesia which, of course, is a laxative.  Another time, on a summer night, I noticed zillions of goopy bug bodies plastered on the walls of her apartment. Turns out, Noona had used a furniture polish as a bug spray.

Noona’s inability to read did not stop her from playing the stock market.  She worked with a Cuban broker.  He spoke to her in Spanish, which she didn’t speak.  She answered him in Italian, which he didn’t speak.  At least one morning a week, I’d hear Noona shouting to this guy on the telephone.  She yelled because she didn’t believe that a skinny wire alone could carry her voice across town.  As time went on, the two of them managed to make a killing on the stock market–which is more than I can say for my husband and me.

After many years in this country, Noona became a U.S. citizen.  She took full advantage of her right to freedom of speech, always expressing her political beliefs firmly and clearly.  Growing up, I thought Nixon’s last name was Bruta Bastia (phonetic spelling).  As you can imagine, those are naughty words in Italian.  On the other hand, Noona loved Hubert Humphrey whom she called Mr. Hongry.  One night, my parents and I were at our home in Connecticut, watching the national news on our living room television.  By this time, Noona had started spending her winters in Florida.  On the TV screen, we saw Noona standing on the Million Dollar Pier in St. Petersburg, Florida.  She trudged up to Hubert Humphrey, started pumping his hand and said, “You Mr. Hongry.  You good man.”

Growing up, I called my grandmother Noona, but everyone else called her Santa Mazzotta.  Santa, of course, means saint.  We think the name Mazzotta may come from the word matzada (phonetic spelling), which in Sicilian slang means to beat or kill.  In its own oxymoronic way, the name seemed quite appropriate for Noona.  Let me tell you a story to prove my point.

When I was in elementary school, my immediate family, an aunt and uncle, and a set of grandparents lived in a tenement building that we owned.  One day, I watched from the driveway as my distant cousin Tony (not his real name) climbed the steps to my grandmother’s second floor apartment.  The guy could have passed for Fonzie: slicked back black hair, sleeveless tee shirt, blue jeans, pointy shoes—the works.

Through the family grapevine, I knew Tony planned to ask Noona for a sizable loan so he could buy a car.  I also knew that there was no chance that my grandmother was about to fork over any money.

Standing in the driveway, I looked up at Noona’s porch, wondering if I should call the police. At the time, my corrupt uncle served on the force and could be over in a jiffy.  But then, I thought, no, I should call an ambulance, and the ambulance would be for Tony, my judgment-impaired cousin.

Sure enough, five minutes later I heard lots of shouting, Tony in English and Noona in Italian.  Next thing, I saw Tony scooting out of the apartment backwards and Noona waddling close behind. Tony stumbled.  Noona nabbed him.  I’m not sure what happened next except that Tony literally took flight down those stairs, never to return.

By the time I was twenty-eight years old, my grandmother had given up hope that I’d ever get married.  In her eyes, I was the oldest of old maids.  One afternoon, I made the mistake of dropping by her apartment with a friend named Bruce, a guy I was getting to know, but not actually dating yet.  Noona beamed.  She insisted on serving coffee.  By that time, her failing eyesight was more interpretive than perceptive.  So, she wound up handing Bruce a cup half-filled with grounds. Then, she snuggled up right next to him on the couch.  I held my breath.

Noona began, “Boots, you look like good American boy.”

Ever the gentleman, “Boots” nodded and smiled.

Then, Noona leaned toward him and whispered loudly enough for the neighbors to hear. “You marry my Debby and I give you twenty-thousand dollars.”

This proposal came as a shock to Bruce, but he recovered quickly and said, “That sounds like a great deal.”  We were married a year and a half later.  Unfortunately, Bruce never did get to see any of those twenty big ones, but he hasn’t complained yet.

My grandmother did not leave me fancy china or silver.  I didn’t inherit the tenement—urban renewal took care of that. And, most assuredly, I’m never tempted to use any recipes handed down from her. However, she did leave a unique legacy—a set of funny memories, one more improbable than the other.  And, like it or not, I’m likely on the way of doing the same for my grandchildren.

I wouldn’t mind the snoring so much if it were a steady, gentle sound, like a whispering wind or lapping waves at the ocean.  But, what I listen to each night is more like a chain saw gone awry or Darth Vader in the death throes of bronchitis.  What’s worse, though, is the quiet, “Pfft…pfft…pfft…gasp, gasp” followed by a long silence, during which I feel obliged to check if Bruce is still alive.

Remedies?  Well, it’s hard to work with someone who is in Snoring Denial.  You have to be sneaky.  I’ve run a humidifier in our room, bought him a snore-proof (not!) wedge pillow and on several occasions, hovered over him with one of those breathe-right plastic strips, trying to slip it across his nose without waking him.  On one grim night, I hovered over his head with a large pillow.  But then, I considered how much I’d hate prison food and with my luck, how I’d be stuck in a jail block with hundreds of thunderous snorers.

Why not send him to an ENT, you might ask? Well, the problem with a snorer in denial is that he simply does not believe there is a problem.            Therefore, I needed to prove to him the existence of a problem.  So, one night, Android in hand, I used the audio application to record not one, not two, but four varieties of Bruce snoring. Surely, if he heard himself, he’d be motivated to rectify the situation.

The next day when I played the recording for Bruce, he ignored the obvious sonorous evidence.  Instead, he focused on the fact that I’d invaded his privacy. My “desperate times require desperate measures” speech did not move him.  In retrospect, I had to admit, he had a point. I shouldn’t have done it.  Ultimately, he forgave me and I continued slogging through my sleep-deprived life.

One morning, several weeks later, as I worked on my computer in my study at the front of our house, I heard strange noises coming from our kitchen at the back of our house.  Who could it be?  No one was home but my sedentary Golden Retriever, Cassie, who lay languishing at my feet.

Was it an intruder?  Maybe I could scare him.  I whispered, “Bark, Cassie, bark.”  She rolled over on her back, hoping to be scratched.

Should I just run out the front door?  Curiosity got the best of me.  I eased down the hallway.  As I crept closer to the kitchen, I heard a halting, gasping sound.  An asthmatic burglar?

I poked my head around the door.  Nobody in the kitchen, dining room or, as far as I could see, in the family room.  But the sound continued.  Should I hightail back down the hall and out the front door?

But then, I noticed my smart phone on the kitchen counter, my smart phone which from now on I will refer to as my “smart ass” phone.  Was the breathing sound coming from the phone?  Oh yes, it was.  Apparently, on its own, with nobody selecting anything, the phone began to play all the recordings in its archive which included the four varieties of Bruce snoring.

A couple of days later, the phone repeated its performance, only this time from a less scary place: the inside of my purse.  When I called the Android provider, they said, “Oh yes, that recording application has a few bugs.”

So, what’s the moral of this story?  Maybe that the ends do not justify the means, especially when the ends are not achieved.            Or, maybe it’s that the Universe does have a sense of humor, after all.

Living Wide

Please listen to my 3 minute essay which just aired on NPR member station WVTF.     Rear View Window

During the next few years of married life, we lived in an apartment so small, you could vacuum the whole place without ever having to shift to a second outlet.  Our living room had space for a couch, a coffee table and standing room for one person, one skinny person.  So, there wasn’t a single spot to squeeze in a Christmas tree.  Instead, we hung three shiny red orbs on a ficus plant we named Spike.

Later, we moved to a rental house North Carolina.  Our sons (five and three) danced with glee when we told them we’d planned to buy a real Christmas tree.  Bruce brought home a Scotch pine.  About two minutes after hanging the ornaments, Bruce experienced an overwhelming asthma attack.  We wound up giving the tree, decorations and all, to a neighbor.  In exchange, she sent over her two-foot high, PINK, aluminum tree that my little boys greeted with great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

From then on, we Prums wisely purchased Douglas Firs; trees our sensitive lungs could handle. However, all those years of no trees and meager decorations took its toll on my husband’s psyche.  Now, the day after Thanksgiving, he goes into a festooning frenzy, draping every square inch of our house with holiday doodads. Our home looks like the set from Sanford and Son—the TV show that took place in a junkyard.

My sentimental husband has saved every last Christmas craft our non-artistically gifted children have produced, the most memorable of which is a crèche.  When the boys were in elementary school, they went through a short-lived carpentry phase.  They constructed a crèche composed of sawed off tops of two by fours, each standing about six inches high.  With magic markers, the boys drew figures on the boards:  wise men, wise sheep, a donkey, shepherds, an possible space alien, Joseph, the baby Jesus.  Unfortunately, the ink bled into the grain of the wood producing a creepy visual effect, notably on the Virgin Mary’s face, which, suffice it to say, does not look beatific.

For sure, all of our decorations are aesthetically underwhelming. But, some are also dangerous, namely an ornament I’ve dubbed The Killer Angel.  Designed by a maniacal kindergarten teacher, it’s constructed entirely from tin can parts. The sharp angel wings could easily slice off a finger. I’m not exaggerating.  Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little.

Now that the kids are adults, when Christmas rolls around, they don’t always make it back for the holidays.  Although I’ve been cranky about our tasteless decorations, I’ll have to admit, I’m grateful for little reminders of the children displayed throughout the house.  And now—don’t tell Bruce this–with a grandchild on the way, I’m looking forward to new craft projects that will hang from the limbs of our very full tree.

Among my family and friends, I’ve earned the dubious distinction of Most Likely to Get Lost.  I started on this wayward path early on, most notably on my first job out of college—counseling juvenile delinquents (many violent) at a state mental institution.  My boss asked me to attend a mini-wilderness survival course with a few of these kids.  I say “mini” because we were in southeastern Connecticut, an area remarkably devoid of actual wilderness.

So, as participants, I chose the four patients who I thought might be least likely to kill me while on a field trip.  Then, I sat in on the weekly class, but didn’t pay close attention, figuring nobody would be crazy enough to leave me alone in the woods with these kids. But no, on orienteering day, the teens and I were dropped off in the woods, our task being to find a spot less than a mile away.  The van driver handed me a map, a compass, then zoomed off.

Within about ten seconds, we were hopelessly lost.  I looked for moss.  Moss grows on the north side of trees.  Or, was it the south side?  Then, I got the little compass thing-y to line up with “N” but that didn’t help me much because I couldn’t determine if our destination was “N” of us.  Today, of course, I would whip out my G.P.S. or at least my cell phone.  Back then, we used smoke signals to communicate.  But starting a fire was not an option, since a couple of my compatriots possessed arsonist tendencies.

A while later, as the sun sank to the horizon, stomachs started growling and mouths started grumbling.  Moreover, the grumbling took on a life-threatening tone (my life being the one threatened).  This was Connecticut, however, a very tiny state, so eventually we heard traffic sounds and climbed onto a major road where we attempted to hitchhike.  No one stopped for our ragtag group, but someone did phone the police.  Did I mention that I kept that job less than a year?

Flash forward, to a couple of summers ago, when Carol and I planned to pick up our friend Jenny at the Norfolk airport, then head to the beach.  As we approached the city, we realized neither of us knew the location of the airport.

Yes, most people would just follow those airport icons, but I had a better idea.  I suggested looking skyward for a plane and then steering toward its path.  Of course, this technique is rife with flaws; one being that the plane might actually be heading out to another airport, like one in Bolivia or Belarus.  Eventually, we did find the airport but by a more conventional method, by asking directions.

However, unconventional methods of finding your way can work.  This fall, my husband and I visited our son, Eric, in New York City.  After touring the Met, I decided I needed a little nap.  I didn’t want Eric’s girlfriend to know about my directional dopey-ness, so I faked full knowledge of how to get back to the hotel on my own.  In fact, I did remember the name of the hotel, La Quinta, that it was on 32^nd or 34^th street, and also that the words Korean Way were on a banner near the hotel.  Well, when I popped up from the subway station, nothing looked familiar.  Asking directions to La Quinta netted no helpful results.  I’d rather have been lost forever than call a contemptuous family member, so when I saw some Korean tourists, I decided to follow them.  How did I know they were Korean?  A lucky guess.  And sure enough, I trailed them to Korean Way, straight back to La Quinta.

Being lost also, in my case, also includes losing items, mainly my car in parking lots.  One time, I bought a fake, six-foot potted palm at an arts and crafts store.  A large, somewhat grumpy (who could blame him) clerk was told he had to carry it to my car.  Of course, I had no idea where I’d left the car.  We looked like our own personal parade, me, marching up and down the parking aisles with feigned confidence and him, stumbling behind, trying to see past the dang palm leaves.  Eventually, I spotted the car all the way over at the Harris Teeter end of the lot where I’d been shopping.

Tolkien once said, “All who wander are not lost.” That might be true, except for me.  If you see me wandering, I am lost.

Or, read below:

This is a story about discovering human goodness on a winter day when I felt knee-deep in human crankiness….

“Don’t eat the snow as you wait for the bus!”  I shouted early one cold morning, as I pushed two sons out the front door, one to middle and the other to elementary school.  No pre-school that day for my two year old, so I dragged him downstairs hoping to entertain him while I prepared to send out four manuscripts.

I write for a living.  Or, at least I used to earn a living by writing.  My medical articles kept rice and beans on the table for over five years as my husband went to school.  However, once he found a job, I switched to writing fiction.   Over the past tenth months, my efforts had netted slightly less than $24.45.  That morning, a keen urgency overcame me:  justify my existence by bringing in hard cold cash or change professions.

Yet, how could I accomplish anything with two year old Ian under foot?  I decided to use the age-old technique of bribery.

First, I let Ian play with his big brother’s intricately constructed Lego rocket ship while I wrote four different query letters.  Then, I allowed him to watch his Babysong video for the 1,257th time as I picked sample chapters to go with each letter.  At the end of the tape, I handed him a black felt tip pen and yellow legal pad.  I warned him to stay away from the dining room wallpaper and hoped for the best.

Two hours after I started, my slower-than-the-speed-of-banana-slugs printer churned out four query letters and manuscript samples.   I tore Ian away from his latest artistic pursuit: scribbling all over the business section of The Washington Post. Next, I stuffed thirty-five pounds of the child into his rapidly shrinking winter jacket.

My bank is at the same shopping plaza as the post office, so first I stopped by there in order to cash a Christmas check I had been carrying around for the past month.  I planned to use the money to mail off the manuscripts. To my logic-impaired brain, spending the cash from this check meant I wasn’t actually wasting postage if the pieces were rejected.

When we arrived at the bank,   I pried Ian from his narrow car seat and hoisted him down out of the van.  All the while, a woman who was parked next to me in blue Taurus, watched and smiled sympathetically.

By now, it was close to lunch and I enticed a grumpy Ian into walking up the hill by promising, “You’ll get a lollipop from the teller.”

When we were half-way to the entrance, a young man walking the other way cheerfully informed me, “It’s closed.  Bank holiday.”

My face dropped–no money and no manuscripts in the mail.  I turned back to the car and tried to persuade my son to change directions.  Visions of lollipops still danced in his head.  We got as far as the sidewalk in front of our van where he threw himself on the concrete and howled.

Ms. Blue Taurus popped out of her car, ATM card in hand.  I glanced up at her:  straight black hair (combed), make-up on face(in all the right places), nice blue wool coat (no lint or yucky stains).

She smiled down at me and said, “Washington’s birthday.”

Ian was now screaming and rolling around on the muddy grass.  “Custer’s Last Stand.” I growled back at her.

The woman tried to comfort me.  ”The ATM is open.”

I groaned and did my best to ignore Ian for a moment.  “Can’t use my ATM card.  I don’t remember my password.  It’s the name of some insect.”

I must have looked especially pathetic, because then the woman said. “Look, I’ll get some money for you with my card.  It’s no problem.  You can mail me a check later.”

At first, I assumed I must be dizzy from lifting thirty-five pounds of toddler.  But no, she repeated, “Really.  I don’t mind.  How much would you like?”

I thought “With an offer like this, why bother writing?”

Nice as her gesture seemed, I didn’t plan to take her up on it.  If the bank wasn’t open, it was likely the post office wasn’t open either.  The errand would have to wait until tomorrow.

However, I was dying to know who she was and how she came to be so trusting and generous.  I was sorely tempted to take her money just to get a name and address.

Then, Ian started to wail louder.  I said a quick “good bye” to the woman and crammed my child back into his car seat.   All the while, my mind was racing.

Was she a wandering billionaire philanthropist?  Not likely, not in a blue Taurus.

Maybe she was a crack-addicted criminal.  When I pulled out my wallet to accept her money, she’d steal it.  Steal my empty wallet?  Less likely.

Or, maybe she was an exceptionally nice person who wanted to help a flustered and exhausted mother on a frustrating day.  What a concept!  If you are out there, Ms. Taurus, please send me your name. I forgot to thank you.

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