Twisted Fairy Tale

My Italian grandmother walked around the house in her old age and her old age was the only age that I can remember, whimpering. I've written this before, but I carry her in my cells. Pray that I die, she muttered in her thick accent, pray that I die. She fingered rosary beads. True. She was always of old age but not always old. She also pinched the skin on the top of your hand and played a sing-song game whose words I've forgotten as they were in Italian. I knew the Lord's Prayer in Italian, but I've forgotten it. For a moment I forgot the Lord's Prayer in English, and lord knows her meatballs and spaghetti were hallowed. I twist language to avoid what I avoid. It's unbelievable that I still can't deal with Sophie's bad days in a way that I believe I should be dealing after twenty-one years. I leaned over and wiped a drop of drool off the floor, a trail of drops from her bedroom. I had walked her out and down the hall to put her in her chair. I propped a pillow under her fragile elbow so that she didn't bruise her arm. She has tiny bruises on her arms and legs, the skin so fragile over bone. My grandmother was strong in body but looked soft. She carried bags and bags of groceries through the streets of Harlem and up the stairs to the apartment over the firehouse. She had burns along one arm. We were told they were scars from tomato sauce that had spattered while she stirred it as a child in Calabria. She never went to school. She was illiterate. I look soft but am strong in body. I read all day long for a living and because it keeps me alive. I read an article today about a black firefighter in upstate New York whose home was torched and burnt to the ground along with everything in it, including the two family cats. The man, his wife and two children weren't at home and are alive. The arsonist was a racist, a fellow fireman who had written him an ugly note a few days before. Niggers are not allowed to be firefighters. No one wants you in this city. And so forth. What do we do with this information? Who are these people who live amongst us? I feel a whimper at the back of my throat, and it burns. I felt it earlier when I leaned over to wipe the drool off the floor, the trail of drops like crumbs, my grandmother's rosary. I have scars, but you can't see them. Why do I feel fragile, like skin over bone? Why can't the drops of drool be crumbs that I can use to find my way back?

When the Moment, Much Less the Day is Everything

I watched Sonjay Gupta's third segment of Weed the other night on CNN and was struck in particular by what the wife of a soldier being treated for PTSD said about the possible long-term risks of using medical marijuana. I'm paraphrasing here, but I remember her saying she had her husband back. She said that he had his life back. She mentioned that 22 soldiers commit suicide each day in this country. She stated that even if they were to find something negative about the use in five or ten years, they would have had life NOW. 

This living in the present moment thing is part of our popular culture, expressed in mindfulness meditation and in most conventional religions. We are urged to seize the moment, take each day as it comes, one day at a time and so forth. For those of us with children with special needs, particularly older ones who are and will remain utterly dependent upon us for the rest of their or our lives, this is something piercing and gets to the root of just how we cope. It's also an imperative when your child is at risk of sudden death or even an inevitable early death. Sophie, as you know, had been seizing hundreds of times a day for most of her nineteen years when we began using cannabis oil. She is nonverbal, needs assistance walking, is fed like a baby, wears diapers, has either her father or me sleep with her every night and has to have a padded bedroom so she doesn't hurt herself. When the seizures slowed down and then stopped for the most part, our family's life was so radically changed that we really didn't talk about it for a very long time. We still don't, really. I've thought about "long term effects" of using cannabis oil, and these thoughts are really no different than the ones I've had about the 22 pharmaceuticals she's been on as well. My fallback coping skill is a grim and dogged sense of humor, and there have been moments -- and minutes and hours and days and weeks and now one and a half years -- when I've wondered if Sophie was going to grow a Bob Marley-esque tumor in her brain. Please humor me and don't gasp too loudly. Like the wife of the soldier with PTSD, though, I believe that these largely seizure-free days and weeks and months and maybe even years, when Sophie is alert and sleeping well, when she doesn't do a face plant into her dinner every night or smash her head into the floor or the dresser in her room, are worth it.

That's what living in the moment is for someone like me.

My Italian grandmother, whom I've written of here quite often, was a deeply religious woman and also deeply suspicious. I don't know the expression but think there is one for someone who doesn't like to speak of anything positive because of the chance to jinx it. We're fiddling around with Sophie's cannabis oil, trying something new, and this morning for the first time in a very long time, she didn't have a seizure when she woke up. Rather than perpetuate superstition, I'm going to seize this moment and this day and exult in it.

Communiste

My Uncle Tony (Anthony Romano, on the left) and my father, (Michele Benito on the right) are talking to their Sister Mary in New Jersey. Uncle Tony and my father are fraternal twins, and they like to mess with her. They sound so much alike that she thought she was talking only to my father. Henry and Oliver thought this was hysterical, but my mother and I just rolled our eyes.

Fun fact: My father and Uncle Tony were born the fourth and fifth children in New York City to my grandmother Josephine who was a recent immigrant from southern Italy. She could neither read nor write in Italian or English, was a devout Catholic and retained her thick accent until the day she died at nearly ninety years old. Her surprise twins (she didn't know she was carrying two until she gave birth) were named after Benito Mussolini, a hero, at the time, to southern Italian peasants. Romano was Mussolini's youngest son. Evidently, anything bad in the world was quickly called communiste in my Noni's thick Italian accent. Bad actions were all those things that went against the norm: not going to mass, late garbage pick-up, etc. I have only fond memories of my grandmother, although I'm certain I would have been called communiste if she were alive.

Moles and Beauty Marks

It's another Actor weekend, and last night's show was, once again, a blast. I told some friends that I'm having literal FUN when I do this show, and it might sound pathetic, but I can't remember the last time I had such a good time. Maybe it's because I'm hanging out with a bunch of women who I don't know and who don't know me -- it's a release of sorts. During the last six months, due to things unbloggable as well as the relentless grind of seizures, I've sort of morphed into my Italian grandmother who was known to walk around the house in her black house-dress with rolled-down support stockings, fingering her rosary beads and muttering pray that I die, pray that I die. I don't wear black all the time or stockings, and I sure don't finger rosary beads, but I've been on the edge of a constant whimper, if not a praying to die and I have the moles to prove it. With the show, I've lined up enough childcare to get away and have a glass of wine or my favorite beer each night with either the women in it or my beautiful friends who've come to support me. Last night, I sat in the car with my friend Jody for nearly an hour after the show talking and laughing about nearly everything under the sun, suffused with the warmth and horror of our shared experiences. Today I'll be running around with The Athletes (my sons), but later on I'll dress in my black shirt and pants, put on more makeup and drive to Burbank where I'll meet some friends for wine and dinner before getting back out on the stage and doing my reading. I do believe I've been replenished doing this performance, so perhaps on Monday, when it's all over, I'll stop whimpering and shout How lucky am I? And when I pluck the errant hair from my mole, I'll just be thankful that I have so many beauty marks.

I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Walt Whitman

The Truth at Last**

Grandma Josephine, my Nonni

Speaking from my own experience, I would argue that the best mothers are Italian-Americans, in part because they are warm and affectionate, but mostly because of the manicotti. When I was a kid, my own Irish-American mother was a terrible cook, so I would dutifully eat the remains of whatever luckless animal she'd just burned to a crisp, puke it up and then run down the street to Richie Giardinelli's house, where his mother was always baking ziti or cooking up a fresh pot of meatballs or making manicotti.

I never met anyone who was more beloved by her kids than Mrs. Giardinelli, though she wasn't much different from all the other Italian-American mothers I have known. Italian-American moms love their kids, they look out for their kids, they defend their kids, and because of that their kids generally grow up to be pillars of the community. If I had to do it all over again, I'd come back as an Italian-American kid—in part because of the warmth, the affection, the passion and the generosity, but mostly because of the manicotti.

-- Joe Queenan, from Why Italian Moms Are The Best

** This is no way denigrates my own mother's mothering. She was the best of mothers, but she was half Syrian and half Scotch-English. Despite that, she could cook very, very well!

On Being a Peasant

My grandmother (standing) with her sister  at home, Mendicino, Italy

A while back I went to the doctor for the first time in three years. Not the OB-GYN kind but the regular kind although my doctor isn't all that regular as she works in what's called a center for integrative medicine. It's the kind of place where tabletop fountains make a beautiful noise and the receptionist asks you whether you'd like a cup of green tea as you sit on the little sofa in the waiting room and leaf through yoga magazines. Santa Monica breezes waft through the room, It would be nauseatingly politically correct if it weren't so damn peaceful, and while I have to submit paperwork to my insurance company because the center doesn't deal with insurance companies (a plus, in my book, actually!), it's worth the extra hassle and money.

It turns out that I'm perfectly healthy -- my "numbers," the blood work, all that jazz, are well within normal range and for that, I'm very grateful.

Except that I need to lose weight. I knew that already.

Sigh.

A while back I wrote an essay on the tyranny of exercise, how much I hate it, how much I hate that it's so good for you. I think I tied it up with the tyranny of Roman Catholicism, too, but that's another story. But speaking of Roman Catholicism, my Italian grandmother, a devout Catholic, was an incredibly strong woman. It's said that she could carry many bags of groceries blocks and blocks in New York City and then up many flights of stairs. She had worn, leathery arms, one of them covered by a large scar that was the result of stirring tomato sauce that spattered when she was a child. She was quite stout and not particularly cheerful, but she was a good grandmother, tucking dollar bills into our hands for the ice-cream man and urging us to eat more and more of her astoundingly good food.

I doubt my Noni ever worried about her weight and probably took her physical strength for granted. She became quite demented in her old age but died at nearly ninety years of age.

When the doctor laid out the results of my blood work and cheerfully told me that everything looked fine, except for my actual weight, I felt a tinge of annoyance. I'll admit to the insane thought I had that it would almost be easier if there was a life or death reason to lose weight. It seems like I have the constitution of a southern Italian peasant but the desire for a Sophia Loren body.

Today is the second day of a doctor-directed 21-day Cleanse. I'm eliminating sugar, caffeine, dairy, wheat, beef and pork from my diet for 21 days in the hopes that I'll kickstart my metabolism and perhaps take some weight off. I'm going to try to appease the exercise tyrant as well.