Chapter 8: A Sturdy Stalk (Part 2)

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 2

Even though her maternal grandparents lived in the same town as her paternal grandparents, Elizabeth did not have the same history with them. She had spent much less time with them, but she was aware that they, too, had many difficulties in their lives. Elizabeth knew they had come from Minnesota—their story before that she didn't know. They settled in the same town as her Italian grandparents. They had five children, two girls and three boys, two of whom were twins. According to Elizabeth's mother, the twins died when they were young, maybe toddlers. (In fact, Elizabeth had come across a photo of her mother holding a little boy in her lap who must have been one of the twins.)

Augustin, Elizabeth's grandfather, worked at the lumber mill for many years. He was a rather austere man illustrated by a story Elizabeth's mother had once recounted to her. The situation happened when Elizabeth's mother Aimée was about 10 or 12 years old. Even though she was the youngest member of the family since the twins had died, she had decided that she was old enough to prepare dinner for the family and she did just that. Aimée was quite proud of her accomplishment. After being told that Aimée had prepared the whole meal, her father said, "Now, that you've shown you can do it, you should do it more often." There were no words of praise for her initiative and efforts.

Family life at her maternal grandparents' home was not easy for the children. Elizabeth had heard whisperings that Augustin had a drinking problem and may have abandoned the family at some point. Perhaps he had even had a breakdown. By the age of twelve, Elizabeth understood that her grandfather was an agoraphobic who never left the apartment, often standing by the window peeking out through the curtain. He seemed to live in his own world of silence. During one visit, Elizabeth had stayed at the apartment with him for a couple of hours while she waited for grandmother Essie to return from work. Her grandfather said maybe two sentences to her the whole time. The whole experience had been scary and uncomfortable for her. She was so relieved when her grandmother arrived home. 

As she reflected on her mother's family, Elizabeth felt that each member had suffered as a result of the challenges the family faced. Grandfather Augustin became a recluse and died at sixty-five from a rupture in his intestines. Grandmother Essie dealt with her husband's psychological and physical problems all his life. Because at some point her husband could not work, she became the breadwinner of the family. In her final years, she acquired a dowager hump, reflecting the burden and stress she had carried for so long, and ended up in rest home because she had been diagnosed with some type of senility or Alzheimer’s disease. She lost total awareness of her family and eventually died in the home.

Elizabeth's mother Aimée was plagued by insecurities and self-worth issues all her life, struggling herself with agoraphobia at different times. Aimée never felt like she belonged, which may have been the result of believing the person who had called her the black sheep of her family, the reason being that she acted and looked different than the other children. 

Elizabeth's Uncle Augustin was the oldest child, named for his father and his father's favorite, grew up to be an austere man like his father. Although he didn't seem to have the same outward psychological problems as his father, Elizabeth had always felt uncomfortable around him, feeling that he was untrustworthy and maybe even a bit slimy. He had married a woman named Rue, who looked unusual to Elizabeth with her very large eyes, extremely thin physique, and plain features. Rue also seemed strange to Elizabeth. The distrust she around Uncle Augustin extended to Aunt Rue as well.

Aunt Anne, her mother's older sister, was the child that was always in trouble. She grew up to be a stunning woman, with her red hair, husky voice, and obvious sex appeal. As a teenager, Anne had been described as wild—violating her parents' rules, smoking, going to bars, and seeking lots of male attention. In fact, Anne had tried to get Elizabeth's father to date her, but he had no interest in her even though they were the same age and in the same high school class. 

Anne got pregnant at 16 and married the father. She had two daughters with that husband, divorced, and got married again. She had a boy and a girl with her second husband. The girl, Kay, who was born just a month after Elizabeth, had celiac disease and other health problems, which resulted in multiple surgeries, many hospital stays, and life in a wheel chair. 

Anne eventually divorced her second husband and went on to husband number three, a man named Laurent. When her youngest daughter Kay was in her sixteenth year, Anne decided to leave her with Laurent so she could follow a dream that she had always had—to go on the road, playing piano and organ with a band. During the time she was gone, only her daughter knew where she was, which none of the family had known until Anne returned. 

Elizabeth never cared much for her Aunt Anne and even less so when Anne had said that Elizabeth was most like her. That's not to say that Aunt Anne didn't have redeeming qualities. If any credit could be given for her cousin Kay's self-reliance, that had to go to Anne. She insisted that everyone treat Kay like a "regular" child and not treat her special or baby her because of her health problems and the surgeries that were necessary. When she was younger, Elizabeth thought that Anne's treatment of Kay almost seemed cruel. But now she understood that Anne was helping Kay to overcome the adversity she would experience and have to bravely face throughout her life.

Aunt Anne also was strong enough to follow her dream to perform despite the disdain and recriminations she would face. At the time, Elizabeth was shocked that her aunt could leave her 16-year-old daughter like that; but now, given Elizabeth's own history with Vincent, she had more empathy and understanding. But that didn't mean she saw herself as cut from the same cloth as her aunt!

Elizabeth had spent her whole life being "the good girl." She had had moments where she had skirted the line between good and “evil,” but rarely. If anything, she and her aunt were exact opposites with the two, no three, notable exceptions—they both craved attention and they both took a risk to follow a dream. And they were both astrological fire signs. Perhaps that explained why they shared the other two similarities.

Comparing the two branches of her family tree, Elizabeth contemplated the different responses and results each family had experienced. Her father had achieved a favored status because he was the surviving son, the one who would carry on the family line. Her mother felt an outcast and seemed to inherit some of the weaker traits from her family tree. Elizabeth wondered if her parents ever felt loved for themselves. Each had pressure and expectations placed on them and perhaps neither had ever been recognized as the individual personality each was. She had never considered this idea before and she wondered why it had surfaced today. These stories were her history, and they had been repeated more than once while her parents were alive.

Elizabeth contemplated what each branch of the family tree had brought to her. She knew that she was loved and the favored one with her Italian grandparents. She had never had that experience with her maternal grandparents. Elizabeth realized that Grandfather Augustin was ill psychologically. She didn't expect to have a close relationship with him. But she loved Grandmother Essie and wished that she could spend more time with her. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, Grandmother Essie had always had a soft spot and an affinity for Kay, Elizabeth's cousin, which was evident every year during the holidays when Elizabeth's family would make the six-hour drive to visit the town where all her grandparents lived. Without exception, Grandmother Essie would eat the holiday meal with Kay and Aunt Anne. It was not that Grandmother Essie didn't have dinner with Elizabeth's parents, sister, Nonno, and Nonna. She did. But never on the actual holiday.

One year when Elizabeth was 15 years old, she decided she had had enough of this situation. She spoke to her mother, expressing her anger because she did not understand why her grandmother made that choice every year. Elizabeth remembered saying, "Mom, Grandma can see Kay every other day of the year. Why can't she spend the holiday with us just once? Doesn't she care about us?" As Elizabeth thought back, she couldn't remember her mother's response. She felt that her mother had understood what she was feeling, though. Perhaps her mother had had the same questions and felt the same rejection. After all, Grandmother Essie was her mother's mother, and she couldn't be bothered to share a holiday meal with her daughter and her daughter's family who only came to town once a year.

How did these emotional family holiday situations compare to what both sets of her grandparents had gone through in their lives? Elizabeth was chagrined thinking about her reactions. She knew that of all her grandparents had done the best they could to love her and her sister. She knew that these four people had worked hard, sacrificed, faced difficult times in their home lives and in the world during the time in which they lived. Because of them, her parents had come together to form a new family. While it was true that not everything that had been passed onto Elizabeth and her sister was ideal, she did believe—most of the time anyway—that what she had inherited from them and experienced because of them was exactly what she needed to become the person she came here to be. They were the sturdy stalk that supported the new branch that was her on the family tree.

Elizabeth's attention turned again to outside her window. The snow was slowing and trees, bushes, streets, cars, and walkways were covered with a thick layer of white. Even the wind had died down. The blizzard had blown itself out. Now, she could venture outside. 

As she dressed, she silently thanked her grandparents and her parents for how they had loved her, even if at times the love seemed lacking or flawed. She wondered how much other snow—misunderstandings and false perceptions—hid the truth of experiences she had lived. How could she learn to see more clearly? "Just another question to add to my list," Elizabeth thought. And she opened the door to experience the winter-white afternoon. 

Copyright © 2011-2012 by Vicky Lynn Macchione.
All Rights Reserved.
No reproduction of this text is allowed without the written permission of the author.

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.)

Copyright © 2011-2012 by Vicky Lynn Macchione.
All Rights Reserved.
No reproduction of this text is allowed without the written permission of the author.