Memories of my Grandmother
These are random, I know, and there likely won't be a point, but... here goes:
When I was a kid, maybe 3 or 4 years old, my brother -- who was a year older than me -- and I decided we'd hide on my grandmother who looked after us while both my parents worked. So picture this: 1964 Franklin Avenue, Niagara Falls, Canada. 2-story war-time house with pink siding. The second story has half walls; the top halves follow the angles of the roof lines.
Concetta Cavallara Maiolo, a 50-yr-old woman, and her husband, Rocco, just three years in Canada living with their daughter and son-in-law loses her 4- and 3-yr-old grandsons. She's looking after the grand-kids while everyone else is working multiple jobs to help make ends meet.
Anyhow, so my brother and I decide to do a disappearing act. From our hiding place we can hear our nonna becoming frantic, but do we show ourselves? No, we stay concealed between a wall and an ajar door. Finally she goes outside to get help. We decide to play this out and stay hidden. She returns with a neighbour. The language barrier is difficult but she manages to communicate to him that her grandchildren have disappeared.
Side note: I remember this kindly older gentleman whom she has in tow. He fixed our tricycles once. Why didn't our father fix them? There were two likely reasons: (1) he didn't own the tools (he was certainly capable; he later became a maintenance man) and (2) he was working 3 jobs.
Long story short: the kindly Anglo gentleman spied our feet from behind the door and pointed this out to our frantic grandmother. We had many laughs over this incident in the decades that followed.
What strikes me all these years later is that I only remember my grandmother becoming angry with me once; it's an incident that occurred several years later (1966?) in Montreal, Quebec for which I still feel twinges of guilt all these years later. That'll be one of my next post.
When I was a kid, maybe 3 or 4 years old, my brother -- who was a year older than me -- and I decided we'd hide on my grandmother who looked after us while both my parents worked. So picture this: 1964 Franklin Avenue, Niagara Falls, Canada. 2-story war-time house with pink siding. The second story has half walls; the top halves follow the angles of the roof lines.
Concetta Cavallara Maiolo, a 50-yr-old woman, and her husband, Rocco, just three years in Canada living with their daughter and son-in-law loses her 4- and 3-yr-old grandsons. She's looking after the grand-kids while everyone else is working multiple jobs to help make ends meet.
Anyhow, so my brother and I decide to do a disappearing act. From our hiding place we can hear our nonna becoming frantic, but do we show ourselves? No, we stay concealed between a wall and an ajar door. Finally she goes outside to get help. We decide to play this out and stay hidden. She returns with a neighbour. The language barrier is difficult but she manages to communicate to him that her grandchildren have disappeared.
Side note: I remember this kindly older gentleman whom she has in tow. He fixed our tricycles once. Why didn't our father fix them? There were two likely reasons: (1) he didn't own the tools (he was certainly capable; he later became a maintenance man) and (2) he was working 3 jobs.
Long story short: the kindly Anglo gentleman spied our feet from behind the door and pointed this out to our frantic grandmother. We had many laughs over this incident in the decades that followed.
What strikes me all these years later is that I only remember my grandmother becoming angry with me once; it's an incident that occurred several years later (1966?) in Montreal, Quebec for which I still feel twinges of guilt all these years later. That'll be one of my next post.
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