UNDER THE BROOKLYN SUN

If you were to enter the patio, at first glance you would be amazed at the number of vines that covered you. The mid-summer day would let the sunlight seep through in random spots momentarily blinding your eyes and the many clusters of green unripe grapes would be ganging up awaiting their final destination and fate, the sterilized bottles Grandpa had waiting in his basement.

You could look beyond the patio to see the lush garden filled with such beautiful things like tomatoes red and succulent, basil with a smell that to this day reminds me of those days, (I call it green gold), parsley, and even garlic among the many things so selectively planted and nurtured from seedlings.

Some trees gave shelter in the wind and fed you also as the figs seemed to be almost magical in their presence, enticing you to pluck one and savor the taste that its flavor was so rare to many without gardens.

Grandpa Ralph left Italy because of the poverty and difficulties of a pre-war Italia, his Italia, land that he loved and cultivate and came to America, his newfound mistress. The soil was not Italia but Brooklyn the sun was not Napolitano but backyard Fulton Street. He took the spirit of Italy and transplanted it into the soil he now owned. It was a proud soil, tilled by rough crippled hands that could cuddle a baby lovingly or swing a peen and ball hammer with certainty, its loud violent retorts echoing in your ears.

He worked silently except for the softly whispered canzone d’amore that filtered through his lips as he pruned, cut and dug or picked. If you were his grandchild, he treated you like you came from his garden, soft-spoken and kind, a little humor and a twinkle in his eyes told you everything was as he liked it, beautiful. If Hollywood wished to portray the Garden of Eden, they might consider Grandpa’s garden of love as it sat under the Brooklyn sun.