EASTER

An Italian American holiday best describes Easter if you lived in Brooklyn during the 50’s. In those golden days, everyone dressed up for every occasion: it was a time to say that the long cold winter was over; I have new clothes, and let’s eat!

We would get sent off to Mass and sat with our respective classes, listening to the sermon as our stomachs growled that they needed attention. We weren’t allowed to eat in those days before you went to communion, and once we were freed from the confines of our religious obligation, we walked two or three blocks home, smelling the sauces that everyone seemed to be cooking that morning.

I remember Easter Sunday as being a very festive morning; the Easter bunny had come and gone, leaving chocolate bunnies, jellybeans and colorful cellophane grass, I was in my new shoes and suit, fresh new tie and white shirt. You only wore white shirts in those days with a tie. My hair was combed and I was warned: “Don’t get dirty!”

If Mom wasn’t cooking, then it meant Grandma Frances was, and that meant cousins I hadn’t seen in a while, the long hallway that became the play area for all the kids while the grownups spoke in Italian in the huge long kitchen which sat adjacent to the hallway that could feed without exaggeration with two tables head to head about 24 to 30 people.

They showed up in droves, the doorbell ringing constantly as friends and relatives arrived, paid their respects to Zia Francesca, with a: “Appy East” and spoke their native tongue. They were able to speak three languages, Broken English, Italian and what I call ‘Mano-Italiano,’ making multi-syllabic statements in two to ten fingers, depending on how poetic they were. These statements were often a collection of Broken English and Italian words to accompany the conversation. Facial expression was key to understanding a conversation. Someone made a point without expression meant that they were not happy.

People think that Italians speak with their hands, they don’t they use the whole extremity of shoulder, arm and hand with accentuated fingers. Sometimes right and left get into the act. If an Italian weren’t talking to you, he would put his hands in his pockets and just use words. Often the women would have issues with each other, and hold separate conferences in other rooms, murmuring low and careful to hold a pocket book or towel to disguise the conversation from a distance.

The dinners were elaborate, the china wasn’t and the conversations multi-subject, in all three languages. Grandma Frances would orchestrate the whole thing; run a travel service for the pilgrimages she organized, by answering the phone, meeting with visitors and cooking. That was with one hand, the other hand tasting, sampling, waving in emphasis and amazing her grandchildren with attention.

We had some real characters visit us in those days of family. There was the ‘smelly lady’ and her husband the communist, (at least that what they called him) there was a cousin from Italy, newly arrived and very handsome and married to an import from the hometown that was a striking beauty. There were distant cousins that all had the same hair color as Grandma Frances and spoke only two languages, (no English,) there was an uncle who complained that no one respected him, so we went out of our way as kids to make fun of him, and aunt who was married to him who had to be on something because she had everyone on the floor holding their sides from laughter, another uncle who felt he was Victor Emanuel the disposed King of Italy, and off course some crazy cousins right off the rack!

Dinner was a religious affair. Grandma was a great cook, having owned a restaurant and making it successful during the great depression, she had no cookbooks, but what an array of recipes she had stored in her head.  You started off and finished hours later. I think by now everyone knows how we ate in those days, so I won’t go into it, but I will say that unlike Chinese food you weren’t hungry an hour later, no, we ate right up to the hour later and took some home with you too!

Grandpa Ralph had a very important job on Easter Sunday. Actually it was two jobs. One was to stay out of the Republican club where they would smoke cigars, drink espresso and whiskey, and play poker or pinochle, and two: “Be a quiet! Rafaello”!

APPY EAST!

When Easter Sunday came to an ending, the kids would all be sleepy or sleeping on kitchen chairs, the parents all talked out, the table clothes stains from the sauce (gravy), the rich black espresso, and the scattering of nut shells and wine stains. Then one by one they would disappear into the darkened hallway and into the Easter night.

“A Appy East” to all!