- The light cotton skirts with the crazy prints that she would wear in the summer.
- "Oi Oi Oi"
- Her gold teardrop earrings and necklace she always wore.
- She would sometimes cut up meat with kitchen scissors. This always used to horrify me.
- There was a time I used to colour her hair for her, and she would make me wear her green housecoat so I wouldn't stain my clothes.
- The way that she would chew, almost like chewing with her front teeth. I used to imagine she was really enjoying and tasting her food. She always ate with bread, and finished a meal with salad.
- Her gambling passion: scratch tickets, lotto, casinos, and bingo.
- She was always working hard in the vegetable garden and harvesting beans, tomatoes, lettuce, radicchio, leeks, onions, apples, plums, pears, figs, cherries, peppers.
- The summer night last year that she decided to sleep on a lawn chair in the vegetable garden with a big stick, blanket, and a bottle of wine... to protect the beans from deer that had been eating them at night. She was so angry that they were eating her hard work!
- She insisted on going to the cemetario to see Nonno every Sunday. She told me once that she did this because her and Nonno used to visit her grandparents at their cemetery every Sunday before they got married.
- Always wore heels.
- "Manine belle, fatte a penello........ gatte gatte gatte!"
- "Oh brother!"
- When I was little I'd always look for candy, gum or tic-tacs in her big purses.
- We used to explore her walk-in closet, and try on all the clothes. Crazy colours, weird prints, and old old fabrics.
- The time we were finally able to get her to wear jeans.
- When we drove through Germany she slept in the rental van, snoring, with her arms crossed.
- After dinner at her house we would always raid her cupboards for fruit candy or cookies.
- Her salads always had the perfect combination of vinegar and oil.
- Her green beans.
- Her risotto.
- Her tortellini soup.
- She always played solitaire on the couch with an old deck of cards.
- She used to hide her smoking habits, as if we didn't know.
- Purple polyester pants.
- The stuffed animals on her bed.
- Her old metal phonebook.
- The scribbles and doodles she would draw while talking on the phone.
- The stories she told us about the value and origin of every item in her house when she moved and we helped clear it out.
- The story she told us about when she was a kid during the war her father got shot in the town, she ran to him and he died in her arms.
- I remember seeing the house where she was born, in Italy.
- The pots and pans she used forever.
- Her nailpolish.
- Her gameshows: Price is right, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune.
- Her love of hockey.
- Grocery shopping with her, and searching the city for a specific brand of polenta and Barilla pasta.
- Walking around the reservoir with her, and Nonno trailing behind us.
- Her quietness.
- Her laugh.
- She loved the dogs, and brought them cookies every day.
- I remember when she used to work at the care home.
- She would stand at the door and wave at us till we had driven around the cul-de-sac and left to head home.
- Her christmas slippers. In 2008 she knitted at least 25 pairs!
- She always always always made sure to write down the right amount of x's on our birthday cards. I loved counting them to make sure she hadn't missed any.
- Always had a potted plant on the table, usually Cyclamen, sometimes African violets, sometimes lilies.
- One of my earliest, foggiest memories was when her and I went downtown on the bus! I must have been only 4 or 5 years old.
- Easter egg hunts at the house! There were hundreds and they were always hid in the same spots every year. And then she would also buy each of us a giant chocolate egg with a toy inside.
- Her arthritis in her wrist which made it so that she couldn't stir the risotto as well, or grate parmesan cheese.
- She wore only black for a year after Nonno died, she would always talk to him at his grave, and caress his picture.
- M used to buy her sexy underwear for christmas every year, and she would laugh.
- Talking to her in Italian, and listening to her talk in dialect.
- When I lived with her and she made me drive her to Mass every Sunday morning. The wooden pews, the incense, the holy water, the stained glass, gold trim and the palm leaves.
- When she used to come into my store downtown and in the mall every once in a while too, we went to Tim Horton's to get coffee.
- The time I got mad at her because she ran away to a store to buy a scratch ticket, and we almost missed a connecting bus to get home from the airport because of it.
- When we used to pull out their small fake Christmas tree every year from the closet, and cover it in tinsel and tacky decorations.
- The cards and letters she always kept from family and stashed everywhere in the house.
- When she would stand in the pool with us even though she didn't know how to swim properly.
- She always was the last one to sit down and eat during dinner.
- The traumatic story she told about how she had such long hair as a kid, she got in trouble for spending too much time brushing it and her mom made her cut it short.
- The yellow mini marigolds (tagents?) she grew every spring. I tried to grow them this year, but they died mysteriously.
- The last time she was fully conscious and saw me. She couldn't talk, but we took turns squeezing each other's hand and she waved to me as I was leaving her hospital room.
- The various friends that would come to play cards and drink coffee with grappa.
- Standing at her front door and pressing the doorbell over and over, while hearing her yell from inside "I come, I come!".
- Searching every Wal-Mart and Zellers in town to find a particular kind of wool for her knitting.
- Taking her to Thrifty's after visiting the cemetery. I remember her buying french bread, a cooked whole chicken, some figs, some chocolates, and a lottery ticket.
jul 26 2009 ∞
jul 27 2009 +
jul 27 2009 +