Tuesday, July 4, 2023
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This weekend I am looking back on times spent with a very special women. My grandmother influenced my life is large and small ways. Her life was filled with many ups and downs as most of us experience, some harder than others. When I think of my grandmother I think of a person who never gave up,
who survived and then thrived. As I remember her this weekend I can’t help but think of all the memories I made while visiting my grandparents.
When I was growing up this holiday weekend was often spent at my grandparents house. Out on the back patio in Valley Stream NY. It was the kind of family home where you came to the back door when you visited. If you arrived early, the window jalousies would be open and you could holler through the screen that you arrived. Now I remember my Grandmother busy in the kitchen preparing food and sides to what would be a big family BBQ. Her hair in a braided bun that if uncoiled could hang long down her back. She would be stirring and simmering at the stove while coordinating the chain of items to head out the back door.
My grandfather, in the garage pulling some party supply or seating from the rafters, checking the pool, going up and down from the cellar with supplies.
All my aunts and uncles and family piling onto the redwood benches around the table with umbrella. Some on lawn chairs, some choosing to gently rock on a metal sofa glider. Attempts made by members to bend and angle the umbrella best as the afternoon sun shone down on us.
My cousins and I in the pool, with the occasional hot adult who needed a dip, splashing around while a Lufthansa flight out of JFK airport flys overhead so low you thought you could just reach out and touch it. The roar of the flight didn’t disturb the rhythm of the gathering beyond a brief pause in conversation and then a return to chatter. We kids were too busy and young to remember what they all spoke about all I know is when I look back I remember a good feeling. My parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents loved each other and truly seemed to enjoy each others company. I remember there was lots of laughs and lots of stories about their youth.
The kids would be tasked with shucking fresh corn in a yard pail or helping set up the croquet course on the long lawn. A competitive team competition of Bacci ball would eventually follow with a roar of laughter whenever someone got knocked off course or away from target.
We took rides in my Aunt’s 1960’d surry with the fringe on top down Beech Street towards Hook Creek Blvd. an adult trying to keep up with us as we roared down the sidewalk.
Working up an appetite we would pick my grandmothers raspberries bushes clean as we waited for hot dogs and hamburgers to be cooked, Macaroni and potato salads to be uncovered.
Home made beverages like sun tea, that had been brewed in the days previous or “bug juice” as my grandmother called it, some type of concoction of juices and sugars into a punch with little bits of lemon in it. For desert
My grandmothers red, white, and blue jello, beautifully molded layer by layer in a Bundt pan shape would appear well chilled and jiggling.
Running around with all my cousins, especially the girls who were the closest thing to sisters I could ever have had.
The antics of my older brother and my boy cousins , razzing each other and laughing.
Remembering to dip our feet in the foot tub before we jumped back in the pool in an effort to wash off all the fresh cut lawn clippings and dirt from our bare feet.
One memorable visit we celebrated my cousin’s birthday a few days early, singing to her and cutting the cake in the shade of the garage.
An antique claw foot tub left outside, some relic from the past, would sometimes become a catch all for bottles that would be returned eventually for 5 cents a piece.
To say these moments in my childhood were idyllic is an understatement, though I didn’t realize at the time, that it would not always be this way and that not everyone has this. That family gets scattered and months turn into years and before long you are working, married, having children, spending time with old and new friends, work friends, making your way through your life and having new traditions.
But those early ones, those early times and memories with those people, my family, have influenced and effected every event since. Every time I tried to replicate one of my grandmothers recipes, and played a round of croquet with my friends as an adult I was paying homage and carrying my family and all those wonderful memories with me. Trying to share them with the people around me so they too can experience the sights, sounds, tastes, and feelings that make up the components of those memories.
There are many more moments to try and capture, in her long life of 101 years, but today I want to thank her for all she did to bring me a life and memories that I hold close when I am in doubt. All I have to do is close my eyes and I am transported to that house that brought us all together for many years and to how she created a home her family could always come back to even in our minds.
