Family

Sometimes when I am in a nostalgic mood…I think a lot about the old days and my family. I remember how much fun I had when I would visit my relatives in Utica, New York. I recall how my brother and I would go to the corner store and buy candy and read the comic books on the shelves, or follow the railroad tracks and walk from one grandparents house to the other. Or how we would go to the corner store at my Grandma Preston’s house and be able to buy a slice of Tomato Pie. Or, during the summer, we would sit on the upstairs porch, flip the big rattan chairs over and make a big fort out of them, and hang inside and play.

I remember spending summers at my Grandma Preston’s house and playing rummy or gin rummy with my grandmother and Uncle Carl, all day long. Or playing cards with my Uncle Bugsy (that was his real name and he was also a card shark). I actually cheated in cards with him and when he caught me, besides laughing, he called me a little snot. I learned how to cheat from my Dad in cards; or rather he taught me how to deal from the seconds and thirds of the deck of cards. He was a gambler, worked in Vegas and actually gambled away the family house.

There are a million and one memories that come to mind. I usually share these with my kids and wonder if they will ever remember them or if they will ever be a part of their life, as it was a big part of my life. Then I realized that if you never have met those people, those memories are not theirs but mine. So I share my life and stories with them and try to make them come alive.

Four incidents recently occurred that made me know that some of my kids and grandchildren really are interested in what I say or share with them. They actually have heard me, which surprised me. First, my oldest grandson, Matthew, has a blog called Hot Dog Comics and Other Cool Things. He and his father (my oldest son) are sports nuts. I had seen a really good sports documentary on HBO about Joe Namath and I told my grandson about him. Matthew had never heard about Joe Namath…not surprising, since my grandson is only 11-years-old. But since Broadway Joe was from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, I thought that it was important to know who he was and what he accomplished. I told Matthew a lot of interesting things and before I knew it…he wrote a blog about Joe Namath. It made me smile when I read it.

The second thing was that I had told my granddaughter, Brooke, about when I was pregnant with my last daughter that I craved and ate a Twix candy bar and drank a can of Orange Crush every day. At Christmas, Brooke handed me her present and when I opened it, there were two Twix candy bars and a six pack of Orange Crush. Wow!!!!

Then my oldest granddaughter, Hannah, asked me about my grandparents and presented their story for her class assignment. She used photos, my grandfather’s naturalization paper and a few other items.

Then there are the other stories about my father that I have shared with my son Brian, and he in turn shared those with his three little girls. They honor my father’s memory at Christmas when they put up one of their trees in their dining room. They decorate the tree with his ornaments and call it Grandpa Aiello’s tree!

All these memories and sharing them and having seen the results makes me feel good and puts a smile inside and one on my face.