NUMBER 500! Nana

Yes, ragazzi, we are here. Number 500 is upon us. Overdue, but here. And I have agonized (well, maybe not agonized), about what to write, and I believe the suggestion from the always reliable Sue was the best one. She wanted to hear more about Nana. Well, ok. But I warn you now. This is long, and it's tough. You may want a hankie or too. I mean that.
"Grandmother" in Italian, is "Nonna," but any Italian American of a certain generation will know that we always called grandma "Nana." I didn't even know my Nana's name, until I was about 8 years old. Giovanna Angelina, and her married name, Walters. So, she became Jean Walters. That's how she went. Never liked the Italian name, and wouldn't use it. An American to the core, was Nana. Born here, on Cornelia Street, grew up there, and never left NY ever. This was not only her home. When one speaks of "roots," one has no idea. Nana was so rooted here that the thought of travelling just unnerved her. "Why leave? The sky is the same everywhere, the trees are the same everywhere, and God is the same everywhere."

Well, you can agree or disagree with her sentiments, but you cannot disagree with the strength of her views. You see the "God," in there? Nana was VERY religious. But a very practical religious. "I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I don't believe in priests or churches. I go to church because I feel closer to God. I wish the priests weren't there."

I'm already tearing up, because I remember, after I had come out to her, the tantrum she threw in church at the priest who denounced homosexuality from the pulpit. One of her comments, loud and pointed, was 'HOW MANY ALTAR BOYS MADE YOU SIN, FATHER? HUH????"

Yup, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I could tell many stories about Nana, but let me stick to kitchen and foodstuff. I spent some time, going over memories. The earliest one I can think of, was when I was about 4, maybe 5 years old. Our kitchen was the biggest room in the apartment, and I used to sit there, and do my homework or read. I guess if I was 4 or 5, I was maybe coloring, or reading a book. Nana was cooking, and as she cooked, she'd give me tastes. Not to ask my opinion, she wasn't interested in that. And it was always good. Tomato sauce on a piece of Italian bread. A spoonful of buttered macaroni. A piece of fried veal with peppers, or a chunk of provolone. And I ate it all. Then, I didn't understand why that piece always tasted better than it did when we sat down as a family and ate dinner.

Somewhere along the line, I began to ask questions. "Nana, why do you always rub the ends of the cucumbers before you slice them for salad," before she made the cucumber salad which, to this day I have not been able to copy. "Nana, do you always put the garlic in AFTER you put the tomatoes in?" "Nana, when you make meatballs for soup they're smaller than the ones in pasta sauce. Why?" Sometimes she'd answer me, sometimes she wouldn't. And sometimes I would laugh at her answers, and then eventually find out, she was right. The cucumbers, for example? She was doing it to get the bitter juices out of the vegetable. I laughed at that. Well, years later, I found out that for hundreds of years, bitter juice collected at the ends of cucumbers and you could get rid of it by rubbing it with the cut end of the vegetable or a potato.

Nana is looking down, smiling and shaking her head yes.

We had always done shopping together. She was in charge of the house while Mother worked, so we'd go for food supplies with her. At some point, she began explaining how she picked things, and why. I believe I have written about how the merchants were terrified when she'd come in, because she would pick through a whole display before she'd find 8 tomatoes she wanted. She was worse with fruit. If you are an Italian, or know Italy, you will know that the tradition there is to point, tell the keeper how much you want, and he or she packs it for you. Not Nana. She would go through each and every cherry before she would collect a pound. Yes, food shopping took a long time, but we ate well, we ate VERY well. And without knowing it, I was collecting a "memory" of what food should taste like. If Nana never taught me how to cook a thing, that was invaluable.

But eventually, she did teach me how to cook. She would never actually allow me to COOK, but I could watch. "Now, you never know how much olive oil the peppers is gonna take, so you see. This is what you want," and she'd pour oil in, until she got just the sheen or density she wanted. Now, when I cook and show things to people and try to explain "I can't give you quantities, you have to watch," this is why. Praise her, or blame her, this is how we learned how to cook , no apologies.

Her specialites? Red sauce. Every week. It showed up in some way or form. Eggplant parmagiana. London broil. Breadcrumb stuffed artichokes. That cucumber salad. Pasta with olive oil and garlic. Fried fish. Pork chops. Roasted loin of pork. Pasta with breadcrumbs, which would make her cry whenever we had it. Minestrone, and also a beef soup that I despised, but which we ate regularly.

You'll notice there was no baking up there. Nope. Once in a great while, Nana would make a loaf of bread, or a cake, but it was a really big deal and she just didn't do it. We ate a lot of bakery cakes, store bought breads, rolls on Sunday from the Italian baker we'd stop in on the way home from church. And there really wasn't much movement outside of her repertoire. One of the funny family stories we share, is the time that someone decided it was a good idea to give Nana a wok for Christmas. She filled it with water and boiled pasta in it, and rusted it. So they gave her another one. The second time, she used it to cook vegetables, Italian style. She said it didn't work as well as her big pot. And she never used it again.
Nor did she used the food processor someone gave her, or the microwave. All stayed in the box. She was a "hands on" cook.

And the lady had her prejudices. OI. We ate corn on the cob, because it was American. We did NOT eat polenta, because we were southerners, and polenta was from the North. Pesto? "That's what those stupid Genovese do with perfectly good basil." Parmagiano reggiano never came into the house: another Northern apostasy. Our grating cheeses were pecorino romano, and aged provolone. When we brought lunches to school, other kids had tuna salad, or peanut butter and jelly, things like that. We had hero rolls with left over peppers and eggs, or veal cutlets, or messy eggplant sandwiches. Embarrassing to a kid, but so, SO good. And I remember it all. I remember how much better an orange tasted when she peeled it, or cut it for me, instead of doing it myself. You know that feeling, don't you?

It was actually food that gave us, or should have given us, the signal that something was wrong, when Nana's health began to fail. Nana ADORED her two daughters, more than anything, and if they asked for something , or NOT to have something, it was a done deal. Another one of the stories that the family shares, and laughs about, is the one that really was the "signal." My mother was a difficult woman. A VERY difficult woman. One night, she said to my Nana, in a loud, angry voice. "I could give a shit what we eat this week, but I don't wanna see another piece of zucchini on the plate for a month. "

Next day, Nana went out, and bought 3 pounds of zucchini and fried it up. Then she realized what she had done. She was TERRIFIED because my stepfather, who was a coward, was coming home soon. He would of course report to my mother, that she had made zucchini. My mother, angry, was a harridan, mean and spiteful. Frantic phone calls ensued, with my aunt doing everything short of getting on a flying horse to get to our house, to pick up the offending zucchini and get it out before "Colonel Klink" got home. No one ever knew. Well, mother and stepfather never did. But we all did.

A week later, Nana said she didn't know what we were talking about. We had string beans that night. We thought she was teasing us.

I would like to be able to say that the end was fast and painless, but it was not. Nana lost her mental facilities, one at a time. She forgot how to cook, and my stepfather took over. She forgot people (although she ALWAYS remembered me, and my phone number, and I'd get these calls from her, in her squeaky high voice that made me feel SO sad because I was not welcome home and I could not visit her). She remembered Guy, but not his name and always said "Make sure you tell the tall one I said hello. I like him." And she did.

I should tell you that these calls always happened in dialectical Italian, because at the end, she forgot English too, and spoke only Italian. That infuriated my mother, because she insisted that my grandmother was doing it to poke fun of her lack of knowledge of Italian. Then she began forgetting to groom herself and would go days without bathing.

Then it got really bad. She forgot how to eat, and how to drink. And at the end... she forgot how to breathe. That's how it ended. She laid down at my sister's house one day (my mother had thrown her out because she stank so badly and if she wasn't going to wash herself, she couldn't stay in the house), went to sleep, and didn't wake up.

She lived a full, 86 years. Many people would look at her life and call it simple, unfulfilled and lacking potential. Well, screw them. This short, round lady, who gave up smoking at 60 because "she was tired of it," gave more to her grandkids and to the world than most "fulfilled " people ever will. To this day, I talk to her in the kitchen, and I think of our time together with such fondness and such love. For better or worse, she is the real reason this blog is here. I'll remember her through 600 , 700, or however far it goes. When I see her again, we'll cook together.

Thank you for reading this far. I miss my Nana badly.