January 25
This is Angelo, probably 65 years ago. When I came across the photograph, I honestly didn't know who it was, and he was standing over me (I was looking at a photo album) like "Whaddya mean who is it, that's ME!!"
I adore looking at photos of my family. I love seeing who my grandparents were before they became grandparents. I saw photos of them with me, as a little kid-the math of which weirds me out, I'd say in my head "Twenty five years ago, when this was taken, my grandmother was younger than my mom is now." Which doesn't sound all that menacing when I type it, but to myself it got all flourishy and echo-y and dramatic. Say it to yourselves : Younger than my mom is today. That seems so wrong. So long ago. In my mind, my grandmother has always been as she is now. Or as I've known her, well, for the past 10 years or so, but when I looked at these photographs of her as a 50 year old and Angelo as a 55 year old, I remember her as being extremely glittery and glamorous, always doing exciting stuff, always traveling and going to casinos and hanging out with their friends who also seemed pretty cool to me (they drank! they smoked!) but never as sparkly. My grandmother transcended her friends because she was beautiful.
So, looking through these photos, with Angelo hanging over me, it was interesting and fun because in my mind, my family is tiny. My mom, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and my cousins. I always leave out the fact that I have a great aunt and uncle living (see note) in Staten Island. I forget that my grandmother had a brother who died at the Veteran's Hospital in West Haven. I forget she spent what she considers the happiest years of her life up in Willimantic. I forget how ironic and fitting it must be, for her, to end up back in Connecticut after not being here for 60 years. I forget that my grandfather has (or had) uncles and aunts and cousins all over Pennsylvania. I forget that somewhere, in Willimantic, are probably distant relatives of mine, our ties so shaky and tenuous that it would take pages of "do you know.." to make them clear.
(Note: My great aunt and uncle are ranting nutbags. My great grandfather, Joseph, who died when I was 8, was what you'd call shrieking lunatic. He was bossy and alienating and freaked if things didn't go his way. He managed to boss Great Aunt and Uncle into NEVER MARRYING. Not only dod they never marry, but they never moved out of the family house. So, every time Joseph would get it into his head to move (which he did: in the late 50's, he decided to leave Brooklyn, much to the upsetment {a real word? I know not!} of my Great Grandmother Mary, who loved Brooklyn, loved being close to my grandmother and her own grandchildren (my mom and aunt. This shit is confusing even to me.) and moved them all off to Staten Island, where she had no family and no friends) they'd dutifully pack up their shit, and move along, too! At 20, at 30 at 40, at 50. They never, ever left. Ever.
Fast forward to the year 2001. The phone rings in a basement in a house in Staten Island. Two figures clamor around it:
Man: Who do you think it is??
Woman: I don't know!! Don't answer it!!!
Man: But...what do you think they want???
Woman: DON'T GET IT!!! It's TROUBLE!!!
Man: It keeps ringing.
Woman: (covering ears) Make is stop!! Don't get it!!!
Man: Okay. Okay. okay. I'm going to get it.
Woman: DON'T!!!
Man: No, I'm going to. It won't stop ringing. Okay. (lunging for phone) HELLO?? HELLO???? HELLOOOOO??
Woman: (loud whisper) WHO IS IT??
Man: (whispering to her) I DON'T KNOW, THEY'RE NOT TALKING!!!! HELLO?????? HELOOO?? (dial tone) They. Hung. Up.
Woman: OH, GOD!!! WHO DO YOU THINK IT WAS????
Man: I don't know. I just don't know. I hope they're happy, whoever they were!!That's them, in a nutshell. At last report, my uncle (who was an architect before he retired) was making furniture out of plastic bottles, had just painted his bedroom lilac, began composing poetry, and, the kicker, got into a fight with a next door neighbor, who apparently grabbed his balls and shook them, [His own balls, not my uncle's, that is] yelling "I'm more of a man than you'll ever be!!" )
My grandfather, shown in one picture, standing on newspaper in the living room of a house. He is older by about 15 years than in the picture shown above. He is wearing rubber waders and holding up a fish, by the mouth. "El!! Remember that fish? Dane..that was 8 pounds! A Blackmouth (actual fish moniker invented. It was black SOMETHING, I don' t know what). That was a great fish!" It's amazing to me: he remembers the size and species of a fish he caught in 1950, but can not remember how to find the highway.
I love hearing about my family. Everyone I know seems to have these long, convoluted and interesting family stories. The lore. The legend of how they got to be as they are. I love seeing the pictures because I can't yet figure out who I most closely resemble. Granted, half of it is missing, everything from my father's side. I don't really know much about them, what they look like, where they wound up, what they were all about and sometimes I'll wonder if something I'm doing, some way I am is guided by that other side of me. I wonder if, when I'm talking to my mom she'll see something in me that recalls a moment of my father, if somewhere in there she will recognize a laugh or a gesture from him, but not tell me. I wonder if my sense of humor or my personality or anything, anything is built in, from my zygote stage. If I, at that time, already was set, you know? If I was me from way back when, or, if because I spent my life with Angelo & Eleanor and Mom, if anything I may have been born with was gone over, like gessoing a canvas.
I noticed, last night, driving back from Stew Leonards ("Please," cried my grandmother "Please take him out for a while...") that the only time I have any kind of a Brooklyn accent is when I'm talking to Angelo. I don't know where it comes from, but I find myself enunciating hard, the way everyone I grew up with did ("Whattduz THAT mean?" "Izznthat Gowanus [note: pronounced Go-won-us, not the way you're reading it] yer talking about?"). I can't explain why it makes me as happy as it does. I hear myself, and I think about being a kid. It's stupidly cool to me.
Family Talk:
Angelo: Dane, you know what I really like about Connecticut??
Dana: What's that, Grampa?
Angelo: There's always something on sale here.
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Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
My, my, my, my, my sweet thing
And I will raise my hand up
Into the night time sky
And count the stars
That's shining in your eye
Just to dig it all an' not to wonder
That's just fine
And I'll be satisfied
Not to read in between the lines
And I will walk and talk
In gardens all wet with rain
And I will never, ever, ever, ever
Grow so old again.
Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
Sugar-baby with your champagne eyes
And your saint-like smile