Nonna Vecchia

In Italian, "nonna vecchia" means "old grandmother." What sounds like an insult in English is actually a term of endearment. In Italy, where 13th century homes and ancient roads line the countryside as casually as American strip malls, old is good. Old is experience. Old is wisdom and respect. "Nonna Vecchia" is what my sisters and I called my mother's mother from the very first time we were conscious of her existence. I asked her once "Do you really want us to call you 'old grandmother,' isn't that insulting to you? Why don't we call you 'Nonna Mimma' and use your nickname? "Ma no," she'd say, "Tu puoi chiamarmi come vuoi, ma a me piace essere chiamata 'Nonna Vecchia'. Per me va bene cosi - non e un offeso." You can call me whatever you like, but for me, "Nonna Vecchia" is totally fine - it's not an offense.

When I was born, Nonna Vecchia was 43 years old, two years older than I am now. Back then she had dark black hair and hazel eyes and her skin was smooth and white. She had a penchant for black and navy blue clothes -- a habit that became more pronounced with the death of my grandfather 36 years ago -- with an occasional flowery print that she'd trot out once in awhile to break the monotony. To my childhood mind, Nonna Vecchia was the spitting image of Patricia Neal, the actress from the 70s show "The Waltons." I remember trying to convince my mother one time that Nonna Vecchia had learned English and was pretending to be the Waltons' grandmother once a week on CBS. "No, honey. That's an actress, not Nonna Vecchia," my mother would explain, laughing at my exuberant imagination. "Nonna Vecchia is still in Italy and she doesn't speak a word of English. You'll see that the next time you visit her."

For most children, going to grandma's house involves a car ride of some duration, or a short plane ride if she lives farther away. For me, going to Nonna Vecchia's house required a passport, a packed suitcase, and an 8-hour plane ride to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language. It meant being a fish out of water for weeks or months at a time. Until I learned to speak Italian, calls to Nonna had to be dictated and translated by my mother. I learned how to say "Ti voglio bene, Nonna" and "Ti amo Nonna." I came to understand my grandmother more by the loving way she spoke to me than the actual words she said. Even through my adulthood, Nonna would end every phone call with five loud kisses into the telephone.

Unlike many Italian-Americans, who speak no Italian and have never bothered to set foot in Italy, it was important to my mother, who immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1960s, that we have a close relationship with the members of my family in Italy, especially my grandmother. My mother wanted us to know where she came from. We called Nonna often, whenever my mother could hide the telephone bill from my father. Every four or five years, we'd visit Italy, sometimes for an entire summer. One might think that I was lucky to have this opportunity, but that's not how I viewed things as a kid. My friends were going to Disney World! They were going on Space Mountain, taking water rides, and visiting haunted houses! That's what I wanted to do with my summers. I had no interest in transplanting myself in a foreign country for three goddamn months with people I didn't understand and who didn't understand me. I also wasn't interested in depending on my mother, and her attendant moods, to translate my every word and those of the people around me.

My mother didn't give a shit about how I felt. She took the long view. Today I have to thank her. I have relatives who have never been on a plane because they're too afraid to fly. I took my first plane trip to Italy at 6 months old, then again at two, then again at six, then again at eleven, fifteen, and so on. I have friends in the U.S. who have never left the country, much less visited Europe. And most of those who have traveled to Europe have never seen it the way I have, from the perspective of people who actually live there. I've done it countless times and feel like I understand Italy in a way many Italian-Americans don't.

My first memories of visiting Italy are from when I was six years old. I remember being faced with the prospect of being a mute for 90 days or learning some Italian. It was not a difficult choice. I have many Italian cousins my age and it didn't take me long to learn how to speak their language, albeit imperfectly. (They sure as fuck weren't going to learn English, the lazy bastards!) Even a few words went a long way. Now I have connections with members of my family who, even though they live thousands of miles away and I don't see them that often, are like brothers and sisters to me. At a very young age, my visits to Italy gave me another perspective on the world, allowed me to see how vast, different, and complex it is. To a large extent, these visits and my connections to family in Italy have influenced my life, my opinions, and made me the person I am today, for better and worse.

Domodossola, where my grandmother lived, is my second home and the source of a lifetime of memories. One year, my dad brought a whiffle ball and bat and taught my cousins and their friends to play American baseball in a huge field near my Nonna's house. (Sadly, that field was split in half by a major road ten years ago and is now littered by houses.) In turn, I learned to play soccer on via Giuseppe Chiovenda, in front of Nonna's apartment building. In 1974, the neighborhood was chock-full of kids my age, whom I befriended in my own right. I was "Il Americano," which garnered me instant respect. The neighborhood kids in Domodossola hadn't seen a foreigner before. To them I was an alien from a faraway land. I was a novelty. Or maybe I managed to fit in because my cousins Davide and Massimo already knew everyone in the neighborhood. Whatever the reason, I had instant street cred. I befriended Danilo, Lorenzo, and Gianni. Together we played with model cars on the concrete divider that separated the street from the courtyard to my Nonna's apartment building. We played hide and go seek. We played Risk. I taught them about life in the United States. They taught me about life in Italy.

I remember getting my first kiss from Rosanna behind an apartment building across the street from my grandmother's house when I was eleven. She was thirteen. I remember nearly getting my ass kicked from Rosanna's boyfriend four years later, when I returned to reclaim her for the summer. I remember committing my first infidelity when Rosanna left for a two-week vacation in Sicily and I became infatuated by Daniela, a beautiful girl with piercing blue eyes who lived in another building across the street from my Nonna. The way my grandmother's building was situated, I could see where they both lived from the comfort of Nonna's balcony. I'd sit there listening to music or staring at the mountains and wait for Rosanna or Daniela to appear on their respective balconies. My reward would be a wave and a smile. (This may have been how my voyeuristic tendencies originated.)

Not all of my youthful memories are good ones, of course. One time, when I was six, my cousin Massimo, who was a year older than me, convinced me to participate in one of his many delinquent activities. A monsoon rain the night before had left a large brown pool of dirty water in the field behind Nonna's apartment building. Massimo and I salivated as we viewed the huge puddle from my grandmother's back balcony and contemplated the possibilities. It was extremely hot outside, so we decided that a refreshing dip would be the best use of our new pool. We scurried from Nonna's apartment, skipped down the five flights of stairs, and soon found ourselves at the edge of the shit-brown lake of water. Other kids were standing there looking at the water. None of them were stupid enough to go in. With considerable bravado, Massimo proclaimed that we were going in, forthwith, their cowardice be damned! They just laughed and looked at us like we were nuts.

Then, a thunderbolt behind us, the owl screech of my great-grandmother (Nonna Vecchia's mother) beckoned from Nonna's back balcony twenty yards away and five stories up. With an upraised bony arm waving menancingly, she screamed "Non entrare in quell'acqua! E sporrrrrcha!!!" Don't go in that water, it's dirrrrrty!

Yeah, yeah, whatever. We laughed at the old crone. What was she, 75 years old? What was she going to do about it? Massimo jumped in first. Then me. I wasn't much of a swimmer and hated having my head under water, so I did a quick doggy paddle. The water wasn't deep. We came out on the other side, our white shirts soaked with mud and gunk and god knows what else. We were laughing our asses off, the careless joie de vivre of youth.

Then, without warning, the fun ended. Incredibly, within two minutes of us crawling out of the water like two prehistoric turtles, my great grandmother was on us like a banshee, cackling nonsensically in a Calabrese dialect I couldn't begin to understand. With a strength I could never have imagined in someone so old, she grabbed us both by the wrists and dragged us off the wet field and up the five flights of stairs to my grandmother's tiny bathroom. We were laughing at her the entire time. We thought it was a joke. We figured we'd just change our clothes and be on our way. Nonnina had other plans. She dragged us into Nonna's bathroom, stripped us naked, plopped us in the tub and proceeded to spank us silly while continuing to howl at us incomprehensibly. In between ass-slaps, she hosed us down with the extend-a-faucet, paying no attention to whether the water was hot or cold. To this day I remember Massimo's face, his eyes in a squint, his cheeks red, a face full of shock and tears. We were utterly terrified. How had she done it? How had she gotten there so fast? Was she a vampire who could appear from nowhere? How was she so motherfucking strong that her vigorous spanks could sting that much??? Was it a lack of bone density that gave her fingers such flexibility? There were no answers. Only pain and humiliation. From Nonna Vecchia, who hated conflict to a fault, we received a stern warning that we had gotten what we deserved from Nonnina, as could have given ourselves dysentery or worse from that disgusting water. Nonna Vecchia was the good cop. Nonnina was the bad cop.

Three decades later, after Nonnina was long gone, I remember laughing at that story with Nonna as we sat in her dining/living room, she with her Marlboro, me with my espresso. "Ma lei era in-ca-zz-ata!" Indeed. During my visits as an adult, we'd talk long into the night about everything: my mother as a child, my grandfather, who died of lung cancer at 56, the hell of World War II, through which she, like many Italians, endured famine, the Germans, and the fear of imminent death. We'd talk about life in general. Among other things, she'd give me all kinds of advice about women, some of it old-fashioned, some of it distinctly not. I remember she told me once: "Even if you get married, if you see a woman you're attracted to, don't you be afraid to go for it and have some fun. Just don't tell your wife or it will cause problems. If you don't, you might resent her later." What the fuck?? Of course, this advice didn't pertain to her own relationship with my Nonno, much less those of her daughters, but the men in the family always enjoyed a double-standard with her. And we talked about the members in our family, every single one of them. There's enough comedy and tragedy there that I could write a book.

Though I didn't see Nonna as often as many people get to see their grandmothers, we shared deep experiences that I will ponder and cherish for the rest of my life. I spent two weeks with her in Argentina in January 1995, when she was there visiting her sister, my aunt Marianina, who immigrated to Argentina after World War II. Nonna and I went to the beach together, shared meals, and bunked in the same room where we spent hours talking. In the summer of 1997, she came to the U.S. for Sister J.'s wedding, which was to be in September. I picked her up at JFK in New York and she spent a few days with me alone before I took her up to my mother's house in New Hampshire. At the time, she was 72 years old and had severe scoliosis (a minor form of which she has bequeathed to me), which made her back as crooked as a Utah canyon. She stayed with me in my tiny apartment on the Upper West Side and never once complained about the three flights of narrow stairs she had to climb to get there. I proudly showed her my city from the top of one of those Red Apple double-decker buses, where you get on and off at different sightseeing spots throughout the day. We went to the South Street Seaport; I showed her the Twin Towers ("Mamma mia, come son' alti!"); and my office on Broad Street, where I used to work. We ate spaghetti con vongole at Ernie's, near my apartment. She couldn't believe how big the portions were. ("Non posso mangiare tutto di questo!") I took her to Central Park where we spent the day talking and relaxing in the shade. She walked the entire way to and from my apartment on Amsterdam Ave., again without complaint.

That trip to New York was the last time I remember her being truly happy. A few weeks later, the day after my mother's birthday in July, I received a frantic phone call from my uncle Saverio's wife in Chile. Saverio was my Nonna's son and it's fair to say, her favorite of all her children. His wife was crying. She told me in broken English that my favorite zio had died of a heart attack the night before. He was 48 years old. When I took the call, Nonna Vecchia was dusting my mother's bedroom behind me. Even though I was speaking English, she knew something was wrong because I was unable to contain my shock at the news. "What happened?" she asked me when I hung up the phone. I told her that a friend of mine had been in a car accident and was in the hospital. If I had I told her the truth, I'm sure she would have dropped dead right in front of me. "Oh.... mi dispiace," she said. "Si sta bene adesso?" "Yes, he's fine. It wasn't serious." I snuck downstairs and called my mother at work. Arrangements had to be made. They had to fly my uncle's body back to Italy. We would somehow have to break the news to Nonna so she could attend her son's funeral. She would not make my sister's wedding.

Do you know what it's like to carry around the kind of terrible news that you know is going to permanently change, for the worse, the life of a person you love very much? I do. My mother, sisters, and I held everything in that morning while my mother made phone calls to her family in Italy. We tried to keep Nonna busy upstairs, but she wasn't stupid and knew something was up. My sister was a pharmaceutical sales rep at the time. She called one of her doctor contacts who told us to bring her to his office where he'd give her a tranquilizer and we'd break the news to her. Under the auspices of showing her where my sister worked (another lie), and after discussing the pros and cons, we drugged Nonna's espresso with a mild sedative that Sister J. had on hand. It made her drowsy and eventually knocked her out. A black comedy is all I can call it now. With Nonna sleeping most of the way, Sister J. and I jokingly contemplated the lifetime of guilt and potential liability that we'd suffer if she didn't wake up. Fortunately, Nonna did wake up when we were almost at the doctor's office. Upon arrival, the doctor took us to an examination room where he gave her a simple examination, checking her pupils, heart rate, and blood pressure (since we were there anyway). Then he slowly broke the news to her in English and my mother translated it into Italian. Out of respect for Nonna, I won't share her reaction to this devastating news, other than to say that it was Biblical in proportion. Right out of the Old Testament.

After that, Nonna lost something. She went back to Italy with my mother for the funeral and never left the country again. She kept Saverio's picture across from her dining room table so that it would never out of her sight. She kept another picture of him in her bedroom. Her eyes were perpetually sad. She aged exponentially and her back became ever more crooked. She ate less and less. When I returned to Italy in 1998 and again in 2004, I'd hug her and feel her fragile bones. Each time I left I thought I'd never see her again. "Non aspettare troppo per ritornare, eh Timmy?" she'd say to me. I won't, I promised. In her later years, what little joy she had she got from stories about, and visits with, her great grandchildren.

In March 2007, she became very ill and nearly died. In May, I surprised her with a birthday visit. She had been staying at my aunt's house in Gallarate, which was near the hospital that had attended to her. I walked in and was struck by seeing her tiny body on the sofa, looking so frail. She had an oxygen tube stuck up her nose. "Ah, ciao, Massimo," she said to me when I walked in, thinking that I was my cousin. "Ma, non sono Massimo," I said. "Non mi ricordi?" She looked up again and saw that it was me. Her face suddenly got all red and she started breathing hard and I began to think that I'd made a colossal mistake. A few moments later, we both shed tears of joy, and I hugged her hard. She was so excited to see me. I can't tell you how much fun it was to surprise her like that. The next day, Massimo came down, and we celebrated her 83rd birthday with a cake and champagne that I spilled all over the place trying to open. As she blew out her single red candle, I wondered to myself how many of those candles she had left.

A few weeks ago, Nonna Vecchia slipped in her bathroom and broke her rib. She went to the hospital again, this time in Domodossola. I assumed that she'd be back home soon, just like the last time. I was wrong. Before long, her need for oxygen became greater than an oxygen tank could provide in a 24-hour span. She began to have trouble breathing. Two weeks ago, she told my aunts to take her home from the hospital. She wanted to die in her own house.

On November 17, 2009, Nonna Vecchia died in her bed, just like she wanted. Before she died, my aunt put a telephone to Nonna's ear so that she could hear my mother tell her that she and I were coming to see her, that she should try and hold on just a little longer until we could get there. She couldn't speak then, but breathed hard into the phone. She had heard my mother's words. She knew that we were coming, but she died before we could see her again.

Last Friday, I flew to Italy to attend Nonna's funeral. When I got to her apartment, the same apartment I'd visited so many times, I opened the door to her bedroom and saw her lying in a casket with the top removed. The far window was open and the room was cold. They'd moved her bed against the wall to make room for her. The room was divided by a folding wall emblazoned with the Virgin Mary and other religious symbols. Flowers were everywhere -- their smell was overpowering. Nonna lay underneath a thin white netting embroidered with a cross. Her eyes were closed. She looked asleep. My instant thought at seeing her was the word "husk." Her body was there but it wasn't really her. Whatever separates the living from the dead had long since left; we were just looking at the shed skin that remained. Somehow that thought comforted me. I didn't spend much time in that room.

In Italy, there is a certain worship of the dead, of the tragedy of death and mortality, no matter the age of the deceased. Before she died, I discovered that Nonna Vecchia had spent nearly 50 euros a month (close to $70) on remembrance Masses for the members of my family who had died. If we can be faulted in the United States for worshiping youth and ignoring death completely, in Italy, there is too much of a focus on death, on cemeteries and gravestones and the sadness of absence. My beloved Nonna Vecchia is at peace now. She's with my grandfather, Nonnina, zio Saverio, and all of the members of my family who died before her. While I miss her and always will, I don't feel her absence wholly and completely. As with the friends and family I've lost before, her death feels to me as if she's stepped behind a curtain that I simply can't open. When it's my turn to go, that curtain will slide open and she'll be there to greet me, along with the rest of my family and friends who have gone before me.

The day after Nonna's funeral, I took her clothes down from the clothesline that extends from her balcony. Someone, at some point, had washed her clothes for the last time and clipped them to the line with bright yellow, blue, and red clothespins. Maybe she'd done it herself. Taking her clothes down felt to me like a somber ritual, the kind reserved for soldiers killed in combat. Every move of my arms and hands felt calibrated and choreographed. I carefully removed the clothespins, folded her clothes, and placed them in a little basket. I thought to myself how strange it was that of all the members of my family, I was the one taking them down. Who could have predicted that when they were washed and hung there days or weeks before? As careful as I was trying to be, when I unclipped one of her black socks from the line, it slipped through my hands and dropped over the railing to the ground below. I leaned over the edge and saw the sock draped over the balcony railing of Nonna's neighbor, one floor down. It hung peacefully, as if it had always been destined to be there, no matter how careful I was, and no matter what plans it may have had for itself.