Nonna Anastasia

It is 1941 and Anastasia doesn’t have time to rest. She has seven mouths to feed and no money. Her husband is dead and the war is raging. There are Nazi soldiers in the streets of her town and fear hangs like a fog in the morning air. She bundles herself in an old knit shawl and leaves the warmth of her home, to walk across the fields to the farms in the distance.

As she reaches the farmhouse she knocks on the door. In each case, she will offer her services; to clean, cook, sew, any work that needs to be done, all in exchange for a meal and perhaps some food to bring home to her children. When there is no work available, she simply begs for a handout of food to get through another day.

A few days ago the edict came from Il Duce. Mussolini commands that all the women of Italy donate their wedding rings to the Fascist cause. The gold is needed for the failing war effort. Anastasia thinks long and hard, her wedding band is one of the few reminders she has of her beloved husband, Antonio. She hides her wedding ring and replaces it on her finger with another band. To defy the Fascists can mean death, but Anastasia will not be moved.

When she dies at age 101, my nonna Anastasia will be wearing her wedding ring.

Five Pairs of Shoes and a Bag of Bananas

My dad is almost 84 years old and bent from degenerative disc disease in his back, the legacy of years working as a bricklayer. He suffers from renal failure and must undergo dialysis three times a week in order to continue living. Added to that, the patches of skin cancer on his head and back and his prostrate cancer, I’m sometimes amazed that he is still with us.

My dad is a quiet, introspective man, which is where I get those qualities from. He is also an extremely stubborn man, a trait I hope I have not inherited.

My dad immigrated to Canada in the early 50’s in search of a better life for his small family. Sometimes, out of the blue, he will regale us with stories of the war and of his life.

Before my parents married, dad worked in France in a steel foundry for almost two years. The work was hard but the pay was very good and so dad stayed. Dad tells the story of how, up until that point, he had only ever owned one pair of shoes. The shoes had been bought new but were too tight on his feet from the very beginning. After the soles wore out, he had them resoled, a process that made them even tighter. He wondered whether shoes were just supposed to be this uncomfortable. After all, these were the only pair of shoes he had ever owned. So when he was in France, and earning more money than he had ever seen before, he decided to buy some new shoes. Maybe, he thought, one could actually have shoes that didn’t hurt your feet. So he bought some shoes and they felt divine, so he kept buying, until he had bought five pairs of shoes. Each pair was a different style and colour.

In Italy, there were many fruits that he had seen in store windows but could not afford to buy. In France dad ate his first banana and by all accounts was quite impressed with the taste. After he broke his wrist on the job, he decided to spend some of his disability time back home. He took the train back to Italy to visit his family and of course his fiancée. He must have looked like quite the sight at the train station with his five pairs of shoes and a large bag of bananas. Dad would bring my mother gifts of chocolate and fragrant French soap. She claims to still have a bar of the soap, some 60 years later.

I treasure these stories that dad tells us because they are part of our legacy, to be passed on to newer generations. Some stories, like the ones of the shoes and the bananas, are funny. Others of the war and the resistance movement are frightening and heart breaking.

Dad still loves bananas, but unfortunately now that he can afford as many as he likes, he’s not allowed to eat them because of their high potassium content. In case you were wondering, he still has more shoes that the rest of us and they fit just fine.


Happy Father’s Day Papa

My Aunt Dorothy

My Aunt Akiko Dorothy Nakamachi passed away a few weeks ago. She wasn’t really my aunt, but 40 years ago my best friend Koji generously shared his aunt with me.

Over the years I grew to love and admire this woman. She was intelligent, witty and in the words of my younger brother, “really cool”. Paolo considered her cool because as a single woman she had travelled all over the world, twice going to Africa. That alone made her cool in Paolo’s eyes.

Aunt Dorothy’s life was one worthy of an epic novel. Born and raised in Vancouver, she fought Japanese racism to graduate as a registered nurse from St. Paul’s Hospital, after the Bishop interceded to get her admitted. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour, she was interned in the B.C. interior at Greenwood internment camp, where she was the only nurse treating over 4,000 Japanese detainees. Many of the detainees had contracted T.B. and eventually so did Aunt Dorothy. She was transferred to a hospital and had a lung removed.

After the war the Japanese were not allowed to return to B.C. so she moved to Toronto. She entered the University of Toronto, where she earned an additional nursing degree and then worked as a Public Health nurse until her retirement.

Years later when the conservative government formally apologized to the Japanese who were interned, each of them was awarded $21,000 as a redress settlement. My Aunt Dorothy took that money and promptly bought herself a full length mink coat and hat.

Aunt Dorothy never married but I learned that she remained ever the romantic. I discovered that she and I shared a love for Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It gave me joy to be able to gift her with BBC videos of both, which I know she treasured.

In her last year she sent me a gift via Koji. It was a lovely damascene brooch she bought on one of her many trips to Japan. The brooch, made of iron or steel with interlacings of silver and gold, depicts a pagoda and the ever present Mount Fuji. I wore it over my heart at her funeral.

Since her passing, Koji has been going through Aunt Dorothy’s things and distributing them to family members. He gave me 16 English bone china tea cups and saucers that speak to me of my Aunt Dorothy’s grace and elegance, and of course of her love of tea. He also asked if I would like a statue of the Virgin Mary that St Paul’s hospital gave her at her graduation in 1940. I told him I would be honoured to receive it and to find a suitable place for it in my home office.

My Aunt Dorothy passed away in her sleep, just short of her 92nd birthday. I hope when I grow up that I’ll be just like her; intelligent, witty, strong, romantic and of course “really cool”.

Do we ever get too old to need our mothers?

I was doubled over the toilet recently being sick for the third time in twenty minutes, when I realized something … I wanted my mother. It wasn’t like I’d never been sick before, but something felt just a little scary this time. So what if I was 54 years old, does the statute of limitations run out on being mothered?

My parents live with me, which makes it easier for me to take care of them as they have multiple health issues. Over time, it seems, I have become the parent in this relationship. I take them to medical appointments, I control medication, and I worry about changes in their condition.

But now it was about me. As I recovered from my third visit to the toilet bowl, I grabbed my trusty Blackberry and dialled the home line downstairs. My mother picked up the phone and I suddenly started to cry and blurted out “I’m being sick, come upstairs please”. I didn’t even hear her hang up the phone and she was upstairs beside me. She got a cold wet facecloth and pressed it against my fevered forehead and immediately took charge. She asked pointed questions trying to determine the onset of my illness and possible cause.

Over the next two hours I made multiple trips to the toilet bowl and by the end I was as weak as a kitten and could hardly make it back to my bed. As I lay spent and sore, she tried to entice me with Ginger Ale and Camomile tea, having success with neither. I tried to sleep but was unable to. She lay down next to me on my bed and began regaling me with an account of the baseball game she had been watching when I phoned her. As she spoke, I remembered back to November 2002 when I had surgery and she helped me get in the shower one day. When I thanked her for being there to help, she prophetically said “Maybe someday I will be sick and you will have to take care of me”. Less than two months later she was diagnosed with cancer. Our roles reversed that day and I cared for her through radiation, chemotherapy, surgery and a blood clot. My once invincible mother had become mortal.

Seven years later, she still has more energy than anyone else in our family. Despite ongoing medical issues with an ulcer that simply will not heal there is no stopping her. In her spare time she knits and crochets beautiful baby items which she sells to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society and come June 11 she will be the centre of our Relay team when we participate in our sixth Relay for Life.

I’m a grown woman, financially independent, mature, confident, but when I’m doubled over a toilet bowl being sick, I am still my mother’s little girl and I’m not afraid to need her touch.

                                                    Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Hug me like you mean it ...

I always wanted to meet Dr Leo Buscaglia but he died before I could. It wasn’t just his extraordinary lectures that I wanted to experience firsthand; I wanted to line up after the lecture with thousands of others to experience a Buscaglia hug. He was a master and an advocate of the hug. He had this to say about hugging:

“Nine times out of ten, when you extend your arms to someone, they will step in, because basically they need precisely what you need.”

I don’t know if it grew out of his doctorial studies or the fact that he was Italian but he surely elevated the hug to an art form.

I love being hugged. Not the air hugs from those who lean in to hug you without actually touching you. No, I’m talking about the hugs that leave you breathless and just a little bit sore. Those are the hugs that cry out “Hey I want you to know that I’m here”. My nieces and nephew hug that way. Their hugs are exuberant and uninhibited and usually accompanied by a kiss and an “I love you Zia Nadia”. My gay friends hug that way. Their hugs say “Thank you for your acceptance and your love”. My relatives in Italy hug that way. Their hugs say “Why do have to live so far away… Oh my God you look just like your aunt Flora… why didn’t you phone, I would have made gnocchi… I didn’t think I’d live to see you come back and visit again”. There are Italian co-workers at the office that will stop me in the hall to give a hug when they haven’t seen me in a few months. Italians certainly don’t have the market on hugging. I recently discovered in our Costa Rican Service Centre that Costa Ricans will hug anybody and everybody. I felt right at home there.

The hugs give me comfort, they sustain me and they feel so good. Hugs don’t cost a cent and they are healing. Dr Harold Voth, psychiatrist has said: “Hugging can lift depression – enabling the body’s immune system to become tuned up. Hugging breathes fresh life into a tired body and makes you feel younger and more vibrant.”

HOW TO HUG

Hugging may sound like the simplest thing on earth, but it will help to keep a few things in mind. Non-hugs are no good. In his book Caring, Feeling, Touching, Dr Sidney Simon describes five non-hugs:

I. The A-frame hug, in which nothing but the huggers' heads touch.

2. The half-hug, where the huggers' upper bodies touch—while the other half twists away.

3. The chest-to-chest burp, in which the huggers pat each other on the back, defusing the physical contact by treating each other like infants being burped.

4. The wallet-rub, in which two people stand side-by-side and touch hips.

5. The jock-twirl, in which the hugger, who is stronger or bigger, lifts the other person off the ground and twirls him.

The real thing, the full body hug, touches all the bases. Dr Simon describes it like this: "The two people coming together take time to really look at each other. There is no evasion or ignoring that they are about to hug... You try as hard as you can to personalize and customize each hug you give... With a full body hug there is a sense of complete giving and fearless communication, one uncomplicated by words.”

So if you should meet me some day and open your arms, know that I will step right in for a hug. Dr Buscaglia and Dr Simon would approve.

Our Bedroom

I awake on Christmas morning and look up at the branches of our Christmas tree. It is my 6th birthday and I feel like a Christmas present as the tinsel catches the sunlight coming through the chintz curtains of our bedroom. My whole family sleeps in this room. It is one of only two rooms which we rent in this house, the other room being our kitchen. It is 1961 in Toronto’s Little Italy and the semi detached two story house is on a street where English is rarely spoken.

Our bedroom is at the front of the house on the second floor. It is a square room crammed with all of our worldly possessions. Entering the room there is a dresser on your right and then my single bed against the wall. Beside my bed and directly in front of the window is my Mama’s Singer pedal sewing machine. My Mama sews magic with that machine, transforming used clothes into dresses for me. At Christmas time we always buy a small real tree and place it on top of the sewing machine which is how I always end up sleeping under the branches and picking out pine needles from my bed.

On the other side of the room is my parent’s double bed. Hanging over their headboard is a plaster relief of the Holy Family which they brought from Italy in the steamer trunk as a memento of their wedding. Beside their bed is another dresser and then on the far wall, the crib where my sister Anna sleeps.

The room smells of a strangely comforting mixture of mothballs, camphor oil and Mama’s perfume “Evening in Paris”. Every evening my Papa winds up his alarm clock and sets the alarm. The ticking sound measures the night time, along with Papa’s snoring. The 5:00am alarm heralds the start of another work day for Papa. Mama will get up and make him breakfast, pack his lunch pail and he will head out on foot, to be picked up by the construction company truck.

On top of the dresser is a framed picture of a beautiful blond boy holding a ball. This is my older brother Renato, who died early the year I was born. This room knew sorrow again; when three years after I was born, Mama lost twin boys she had carried full term. After that loss she was bedridden for months, overcome with grief and rheumatic fever. I would play at the foot of her bed all day with my doll, oblivious to her grief, until Papa would return from work to make us supper.

The house is rarely quiet. The owner drinks heavily and often beats his wife and children. As a child I remember feeling like our small family was living under constant siege and that bedroom certainly felt like a refuge. Yet I have such fond memories of that room, that house and that time in my life.

Repatriation

Housebound and sick with the flu, I find myself sitting in front of the TV watching the most recent repatriation ceremony. I had previously seen short sound bites on the evening news but had never watched the entire ceremony. It’s not that I was indifferent to their sacrifice, but I struggled with a military force that had switched from historical peacekeeping to active fighting.

I’m a pacifist by nature. I’ve heard the Second World War stories my entire life. My parents, who endured life in occupied Italy, were quick to remind us children about making do without. I’ve heard the stories of the bombings, the near run ins with Nazi patrols, the partisan underground night time sabotage campaigns.

I’m thinking of all of this as the Canadian Forces plane gives up its heart breaking cargo of five coffins, each draped in a flag of the country these young people had given their lives for. It is unbearably cold at the airfield in Trenton, the snow is blowing and family members are huddled under tents.

You and I have debated the military mission many times. We don’t agree on the combat role. You were a full time soldier for two years before you entered the seminary. Even then you remained a reservist until they sent you to Rome to study Canon Law. You were a Captain in the Canadian Airborne Regiment of the Queen’s Own Rifles. Years after you left the military, the regiment was disbanded, after a difficult time in Somalia. In disgust, you packed your uniform and medals and mailed them to Ottawa. I listened to your account of the Somalia mission and I realized that the reporting we heard back home was not balanced.

Now as Parliament debates the torture issue, you’ve opened my eyes to the sad reality of war. Now as I watch the repatriation, in my fevered state, I am transported to that frigid tarmac and I am standing holding a blood red rose. The hearse stands before me and I am walking towards the coffin to place my flower. I turn to those beside me and I see your mother and your father. Your small boys take my hand and I realize it is your body in that coffin and I want to continue the debate.

Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori (..."It is sweet and honourable to die for one's country.")

Christmas Eve

It’s the anticipation of the first snowfall that will blanket the city and dress it up for the holiday season.

It’s the anticipation of the gifts under the tree, each one full of possibilities until it’s opened.

It’s the anticipation of a phone call from the man who makes my heart sing. The man who can talk about hockey until the cows come home, but can’t bring himself to tell you what’s in his heart.

It’s the anticipation of the birthday that Christmas Day will bring. Another year, another shock of grey hair, another crop of wrinkles.

It’s the anticipation of the traditional food of Christmas; roasted chestnuts, panettone and torrone.

It’s the anticipation of a day of Peace for the world, a respite from the fighting and the dying, at least for this one day.

It’s the anticipation in the cold night, of a young mother-to-be huddled in a cave, waiting to give birth to the Saviour of the world.

It’s the anticipation of another Christmas Eve……