Blue Heron Visions: Chapter 8: A Sturdy Stalk (Part 1)

This manuscript is both a memoir of sorts and a work of fiction. The stories and events included are based on my life experiences and memories but I have changed names, details, event sequences, and outcomes throughout the work.

Read Chapter 1 Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Chapter 8: A Sturdy Stalk, Part 1

December blustered its way into Elizabeth's consciousness. She awoke to a full blown blizzard, rare in December. The wind moaned through the large pine trees outside their apartment building and powered the furious snow in every direction at once. She could feel the cold as she drew close to the computer room window to peer outside into abundantly white vista. All the bushes had been reduced to sticks with only a few brown and brittle reminders of greener and warmer days clinging to them. Elizabeth knew that despite their dead appearance, life was sleeping just inside—the ancient energies preparing the seeds of the new generation that would emerge in the spring.

Thinking of the passing of generations caused Elizabeth to consider her own ancient ones—her grandparents and parents. Her paternal grandparents had been particularly influential in her life. Their story was one of hardship, faced and overcome. The legacy began back in 1921 when her grandfather immigrated to from Italy at the age of 16. His father had already come to a small town in the northern part of the state. He wanted his son to join him and Nonno boarded a ship bound for the United States. Elizabeth actually had a copy of the ship's manifest discovered online during a search of the Ellis Island site. The manifest recorded her grandfather's name, his age, where he was from, where he was going, and his nationality. She could only imagine what an exciting and frightening trip that must have been for him. Then, there was the arrival at Ellis Island and subsequently the trip across the country, a country where the language was not his mother tongue. Elizabeth understood the challenge of not knowing the language of a place. She had experienced that in Vincent's province where the official language was French, although she was fortunate that the country's second official language was English.

Elizabeth had never asked her grandfather how he made the trip from New York to the state where she had been born. She assumed it was by train. When she had visited New York two years before, she and Vincent had walked through Battery Park. She wondered if her grandfather had passed through that same park before he boarded the train to take him to his new life. She felt a kinship with him during that trip because she, too, was an immigrant even if her journey had been shorter and less strenuous.

Her grandfather eventually arrived in a very small town just north of his original destination. His father (her great grandfather) had decided to return to Italy, so Nonno (her grandfather) was on his own. The small town had a lumber mill and that's where he found a place to work. In 1920, there were no forklifts to lift the logs on the train cars. The workers performed that function and that was her grandfather's job. (When Vincent and Elizabeth had visited her grandmother several years ago, they had gone into the town museum, and along one wall, there was an enlarged photo of the lumber mill employees back in the days when her grandfather was a young man. She had pointed Nonno out to Vincent.)

Elizabeth's grandparents met in the same town where her grandfather was working. She did not know how long her grandfather had lived in the town before they met, but she believed that he had already purchased the house where they eventually lived together for more than 50 years. The story of their "engagement" (if you could call it that) was very unusual. At the time, her grandmother was 13 years old, the oldest of a large Italian family. Elizabeth's grandfather was 21 years old. One day, her grandmother's father sat her down at the kitchen table. Nonno was already sitting there. Elizabeth's grandmother's father asked her, "Do you like this man?" Nonna answered, "Yes, I like him," not realizing that her answer would result in her marriage. And that's exactly what happened. In 1926, at the age of 13, she married the 21-year-old man she liked. (Of course, she was too young to marry, so she and her family lied on the marriage license application and said she was 16.) Elizabeth still treasured their black and white wedding photo. Both her grandparents look stiff and uncomfortable, her grandmother's face subtly reflecting her anxiety and disbelief at what had come her way.

The two set up housekeeping across the street and four doors down from her grandmother's family. Her marriage had ended her school career, so Nonna would have to be content with her eighth-grade education. Every day Nonno would walk to the lumber mill, which was situated next to the railroad tracks just down the road from their home. He would return home at the end of a hard-working day, only to find his new bride playing baseball with the neighborhood children. Nonno had told Elizabeth that he would spank Nonna because she hadn't made his supper!

By 1933, the couple had had 4 children, all boys. The first boy was stillborn in 1928. The second boy, Elizabeth's father, was born in 1929 and resembled his mother with olive skin, dark curly hair, and brown eyes. The third son was born in 1931 and resembled his father with fair curly hair and blue eyes. The fourth son arrived in 1933 and died 3 months later. Suffering the death of two children had been difficult but the family did the best they could to move on and make the best of the family that remained.

In 1934, the unforeseeable and unthinkable occurred. Elizabeth's grandmother had told her the story because her grandfather would never talk much about what happened. Nonna told Elizabeth that one night the younger boy, Nonno's favorite, woke up screaming. Nonna knew that something was terribly wrong with the little boy. Forty-five days later he was dead, succumbing to meningitis. The heartbreak remained with Nonno for the rest of his life.

Elizabeth often thought about what effect these deaths must have had on her father. She wondered if that was the reason that he had wanted a girl both times her mother was pregnant. She realized, too, how much pressure her father must have had growing up, being the only surviving son. Her father never talked about his younger brother or what the deaths of three brothers meant to him. Her father wasn't much of a sharer-of-feelings. She wondered, too, if he had questions about why he was the only one to reach adulthood and if he knew that he wasn't his father's favorite son.

One would think that having gone through the death of three children would have been enough hardship for the couple. But life would deal another difficult hand. One winter day in her twenty-fourth year, Nonna slipped and fell down the back steps, damaging her knee. Nonno had to load her in the truck and take her to a city quite a distance away to have the surgery necessary to repair the knee. During the surgery, the doctor found a tuberculin tumor in her knee, which he was able to remove but not without permanent damage to her leg. Nonna would never be able to bend her knee and so she walked with a stiff leg for the rest of her life.

Elizabeth was always amazed when she thought of what her paternal grandparents had gone through in such a short period of time. And while their lives stabilized, they still had to suffer through the death of their only son, Elizabeth's father when he was only 52. At that point, Elizabeth felt that her grandfather gave up on life. He had been diagnosed with an enlarged heart, but after her father's death, he was diagnosed with cancer. She saw him one more time before he died. He didn't look sick but he did talk with Elizabeth about his disappointment and despair about her father dying. Nonno had the idea that her parents would be moving closer to where they lived, and her dad would be able to take care of Nonno in his old age. But that wouldn't happen now that her dad had died. Elizabeth remembered feeling like Nonno was blaming her dad for dying. She had mixed feelings since she knew how hard her dad's death must have been on her grandfather, but his death was affecting her at that time, too.

Her last visit with her grandfather took place in October and in March of the next year he died. Shortly after she, her ex-husband, and the kidlets had waved goodbye to Nonno and Nonna, Elizabeth began crying. She knew it would be the last time she would see her Nonno and her heart ached. Then, one of those pieces of magic arrived. As they rounded a huge curve on the mountain highway, Elizabeth looked to her left at the panorama of the mountains and the reservoir. There was snow everywhere and somehow it was shining and the scene was so breathtaking that she never would be able to find words to describe the beauty she was seeing. In that moment, she felt that she was looking into heaven and being offered comfort. Her ex-husband commented on the scene that lay out before them. On a later visit to her grandmother's that Elizabeth took with her kidlets and her sister and her kidlets, she tried to find the same place where this amazing vista had appeared. But she never could find the exact location. For her, that simply punctuated the fact that she had been gifted a piece of magic when she needed it most.

Whenever Elizabeth considered the life her Italian grandparents had lived, she thought how lucky she was to have them as her family. Somehow they had persevered in their life and had overcome diversities that could have paralyzed them. While it is true her grandfather did finally give up on life, he still had experienced and triumphed over difficult life situations that would have destroyed a weaker man. For Elizabeth, her grandparents were like the sturdy stalk or trunk, supporting her family tree, standing through the adversity of life's seasons to pass on their love and strength to her.

(Read Chapter 8, “A Sturdy Stalk, Part 2,” on Thursday.)