Well, mom died. The little pistol, as my father referred to her when he was warning me about some impending crisis I had or had not precipitated. She died at 9:15 PM on 12/9/10. A few days short of what would have been her fourth Christmas in captivity.
If I could, I would have a monument in the shape of an ironing board made for her. It would be frivolous and thus an insult to her memory, but she did love to iron. Or maybe nurture is a better word. Though petit, only four foot eight, woe to the person who mistook her for a cute little old lady.
She was not cuddly. I only remember giving her a kiss that she returned in these last few years. What I do remember is that she was fiercely loyal to her family, in a Sicilian way. Nothing else mattered.
Though she loathed animals, I thought that her and dad would have made great dairy farmers. They had never ending energy. Dad wore out first, but up until the last six weeks of his life he was not allowed to rest. After he died she did not allow herself to either.
I think activity was her way of keeping the demons at bay. She had a tough life growing up, as I learned when she could only remember the past. The baby of the family, she protected her mother from our grandpa. There were never any specifics, just cold facts filtered through worsening dementia.
The above, the depression, the war and poverty made her who she was, take-no-prisoners serious. That said she loved to dance with my father. Something they did until a month before he died. She reveled in their newfound friends from the Moose club where they danced every Saturday night.
She could cook. I grew up blessed: pizza, pasta, bread and cookies, and baked Alaska for heavens sake. And when I betrayed her by becoming a vegetarian, she invented a new cuisine just for me. I admit to being a momma’s boy. I am not at all ashamed.
She insisted on doing the laundry and the ironing. She did not allow any weeds in the garden or the lawn. She did not tolerate clutter and hassled me about my room (too many books), my basement (too many boats) and my house (too much stuff). She threw out my clothes just when they were perfectly worn out. She did not understand how I could have gone to school for 27 years. I mean just how many diplomas did I need.
She and my dad loved the boys. It was great fun to see them interact. I never experienced the relationship between grandparents and grandkids. Theirs was textbook. To watch them after a day at Great America, I will never forget the sight of my dad and the boys soaking wet even after driving home from Gurnee.
Of course she managed, not participated. For all her spunk she had a fearful streak. It might be why dad and her got along so well. He was fearless in the natural world and she was fearless in the civilized one. They were a matched set. He adored her and would do anything for her. Granted he occasionally got frustrated, but at once a decade it hardly counts.
So what do we do now that the matriarch has died? We can’t kid her any more. We can’t piss her off just to try to calm her down. There will be no more aglio e olio with egg noodles, no more cannoli, no more breaded eggplant, no more …
I know this is the natural order of things. I know we are all chopped liver in the end, but I do not have to like it. Maybe it is that I am now on my own, totally responsible for myself. Maybe it is that I finally have to grow up. It is hard to be a momma’s boy with no momma.
Theresa’s gone. Look out God!
