The Season of Wistful Thinking II
Remembering my maternal grandmother and a childhood spent in the small house of an Italian immigrant in a working-class Montreal neighbourhood.
When the 2002 film My Big Big Fat Greek Wedding was initially released, I went to see it in theatres in a largely Greek and Italian neighbourhood. The audience roared with the laughter of shared experience when the camera first cut to the plastic-covered sofa.
The memory of that two hour interlude led to this somewhat amorphous piece on my maternal grandmother, whose house my big sister and I spent a lot of time at when we were very young.
Mamama was what we called her.
The plastic-covered armchair in her living room squeaked with every fidget, and held doggedly to our bare thighs in summer. On a side-table wedged between the chair and the sofa in her small rectangular living room, stood a ludicrously large orange tree. Her thumb was a greener shade of green - things grew improbably in her midst.
Her house was always blisteringly hot, even in a raging snowstorm. She spent most of her days hovering over a hot stove, or planning everyone’s meals in one way or another. By the time I started collecting memories, her nine children had moved out. Seven, in truth, survived to adulthood. Even when they were elsewhere feeding themselves, she made quantities of food to supply a regiment, which she stored in a large chest freezer.
Her kitchen was both literally and figuratively the nucleus of her home. As centrepiece, it was more functional than decorative. The walls were lined with various appliances, and other tools. In one corner stood her sewing machine. In the opposite corner, a wall-mounted can opener hovered beside the kitchen sink. Whether by frugality or stoicism, or simply lack of space, there was no dishwasher.
In the middle sat the table, on which there seemed to forever be a mound of flour and a glass bowl on a hand-crocheted doily in which various plastic fruits were displayed. The flour would be built up to resemble a volcano, with steep sides and a well at its centre. Water would be poured down its throat and then mixed in deftly. Eventually the flour would form a dough, which would be separated and stretched proficiently into small ear shapes. Orecchiette, or in my grandmother's Google-defying dialect, strescienat’ from strascinati, which essentially means ‘pulled’ or ‘dragged’ pasta. The shapes would be formed with the flick of a thumb, and the speed and dexterity that comes with infinite repetition. The economical gestures were hypnotic.
In order to make a respectable quantity of sauce, my grandmother would chop and then soften onions on a gentle heat for what felt like hours. I would lie face down and eyes burning on the single bed that was wedged beside the door that led to the small balcony, trying to relieve the pain by pressing my cornea into a pillow. When I would eventually dislodge my head from its down-filled compress, I would stare at bucolic scenes rendered in needlework, warped by the continuous stream of onion-induced tears.
Visits revolved around meals. Eating at the right speed required the training of an Olympic aspirant. If you ate too fast, you obviously enjoyed the meal and clearly wanted more, and your plate would get swiftly filled with another enormous mound of pasta, meatballs, stuffed eggplant and peppers before you could raise so much as a finger in protest. Each mouthful would feel about as light as a small cannonball by this point, but you would just have to grit your teeth and work your way through, like a soldier negotiating the trenches.
If you didn’t eat fast enough, my grandmother’s fists would fly to her hips and you’d be met with burgeoning outrage and a barrage of questions that all demanded to know what it was, exactly, that you didn’t like about the delicious home-cooked meal that was made especially for you, you ungrateful lout. For fear of causing an irreparable blood feud, you’d start shovelling in the pasta, waving your hands around in protestation and vigorously attesting, mouth full, that everything was simply scrumptious.
I would cower behind my mother at every visit, but would always be pleased when it was time to leave and my grandmother’s upper body would disappear into the freezer, and come back up with a sackful of pasta and sauce in each hand. Here was the promise of a meal I could eat at my own pace without worrying about initiating the collapse of western civilization.
Mamama was something of a battle axe. Her’s was the love of a lioness, fierce and protective. If you had a loose tooth, she would chase you around the kitchen table, eventually cornering you, and yank it out before you accidentally choked on it.
Her forearms were powerful, her hair iron grey, her earlobes stretched with the weight of solid gold earrings.
Above her bed hung a crucifix with the usual uninvitingly graphic depiction of Christ. Described by my mother as an atheist, she kept the crucifix firmly in place “just in case.”
If we spent the night at our grandmother’s, my big sister and I would have coffee and cookies for breakfast, or caffé e beeskeet (from the French, biscuits) as it was more commonly referred to. The cookies were something like LU Petit Beurre, and we would nibble around the ‘teeth’ that decorated the edge until only two were left side by side. Then we would laugh because we thought it looked like a little butt. When we dipped the cookies into our coffee, they would virtually dissolve.
Afternoon snacks consisted of thick slices of dense homemade, freshly-baked bread smeared with half a tomato, and drizzled with olive oil and salt. Day-old bread was grilled on a makeshift toaster, which consisted of a wire hanger bent in half and perched over a burner.1
When Mamama made her own torrone2, she would take a hammer to it to break it up.
Entertainment mostly consisted of watching TV. The screen sat at the far end of the living room, above a couple of ceramic dog sentinels. When our grandmother wasn’t tuning into Da Nyoose (the news), we watched The Littlest Hobo. The theme song, Maybe Tomorrow, still sucker punches me in the gut every time I hear it.
Out the back door and down a breakneck set of stairs was a garden that felt wild and lush, and I loved picking the bright red tomatoes off the vine. Beyond the tall garden gate was a small municipal park where I mostly sat on the swings. Beyond the municipal park was the expressway. It was tucked away behind a hill and you couldn’t see it, but its white noise would come wafting in and settle among the compact houses of the close-knit community.
Even as a child, my grandmother’s house felt small. She lived on the top floor of a duplex at the very end of Knox street, in Pointe-Saint-Charles, a historically working-class neighbourhood, with an initially largely Irish-Catholic contingent. If I’m not mistaken, the whole building sold for something like 60,000$ when my grandmother’s health declined and she was left with no option but to sell. Today these same properties have been renovated, the area gentrified, and a quick search through realtor.ca throws up sales prices that range from 750,000 to over 1 million dollars. I suppose this is a form of progress, but it leaves me feeling oddly empty, as though the suppression of the past were a form of personal assault.
Memory, though, resists change and mine is a stalwart supporter of our collective moments spent in The Pointe,3the central figure of which is forever, in my mind, my Mamama.
I found images of contraptions such as my grandmother’s on Pinterest, where it is referred to as a “ghetto toaster.”
Nougat.
Local name for Pointe-Saint-Charles.
Wow!!! Did you ever take me back❤️ Memories.
Love this tribute to your Mamama! She sounds like a strong woman, just like my paternal grandmother who, in my family, is regarded as one of the founding mothers of Canada (or so the legends goes).