The Family That Picnics Together

(This is another "dusted off" piece, but in keeping with yesterday's entry, good food for thought. If anyone in my family is insulted, I apologize. I love you all.)


We were approaching the due date of our annual family reunion picnic. My father was one of seven children who married and pro-created Catholic-ally, and I have twenty seven first cousins who are mostly married with children and grandchildren. There are only three of the original seven left, two uncles and an aunt.


When everyone shows up, we are our own little village...or circus depending on the pull of the universe and any one or forty three personalities having some sort of delusional off day. Last year, half of them were in a snit, and in the spirit of some weird unity, an entire block declined to attend. I was trying to remember exactly why this morning and had to think for a few minutes, which is always the way of a past unpleasantness whose origin is never as important as the result.


We had talked about doing a picnic for years and finally got it together just three seasons ago. After the first one, e-mails flew back and forth between the cousins about how much fun we'd had and how it brought back so many memories of us all growing up together. We had shared many 4th of July celebrations, riotous loud affairs when our young parents joined in to toss water balloons and horseshoes, and bocce that went on all afternoon. Of course, they were Italian picnics with the best food anywhere and all my favorites, Aunt Millie's eggplant parmesan and my grandmother's anisette cookies to name just two.


My father's brothers and sisters remained close by all their lives, to the benefit of everyone. Sunday visits to one or the other were the rule in a time when nobody was too busy for a leisurely afternoon. It seemed everyone was thrilled to be together again.


Then somebody got insulted somewhere between the fall and the following summer. There are a few versions of who did what and what was said to who. A couple of nasty themed e-mails were hurled and copied into the entire family e-mail address list. Many tried to soothe over the situation and some didn't want to get involved for fear of making it worse. There is no lack of loud and pointed communication skills in this family. I suppose the ensuing hard feelings still exist because I just learned that the succeeding group would not be attending again due to each individual having "a prior commitment."


One aunt turned 90. One uncle is 85. We cousins are in our 40's and 50's, with a few past the 60 mark. There have been some serious medical issues.


I don't know if any of my relatives read this blog, but who gives a damn who said what to who. Did you forget how nice it was to say "Hey, do you remember.... ?" That we looked at each others grandchildren and said, "Did you ever think.....?" We share this one remarkable family, warts and disappointments included. Get over it. Get on with it. Let it go. I don't want to be standing in some cemetery listening to your regrets.



POSTSCRIPT: After this was written, two of "the cousins" passed away. My brother John, and my cousin Dennis. May they rest in peace. And yes, I stood in the cemetery and listened...

Just A Little Bit

(The 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival is coming up soon. This was written before the 2008 Festival, but carries the message at the end I want everyone to know today. The poem is newer, and I share that with you too)



I am hoping for beautiful weather for the weekend for the Dodge Poetry Festival. I want a sunny and warm invitation to let me lose myself there for two days. I need all the poetry I can get. I need to spend more money than I should on books. I need to see all the familiar faces and give them a hug. I need to hear the ones I don't know and escape in their words. I need to figure out how not to feel guilty and sick and sad about wanting to have all of the above.


I went to Dodge 2006 trying to remember every moment to bring back to Steve because he was too weak to go. I called him on the way home while it was all still fresh to report and brought him an armload of books and an extra program.
This time I go having learned that my brother's brain tumor is "end stage," and the doctors say three to six months. He has outlived his prognosis by two years, but that’s not enough for me. I'm selfish. He's my baby brother and my only sibling.


I want my buddy Steve alive and talking non-stop all over Waterloo Village. I want my brother's brain with no malignant cells and for him to tease me like the little brat he always was. I want him to play, “Do you remember when?” with me at my dining room table as we linger for hours after a holiday dinner.


Right this minute, I want certain market-watching idiots in my workplace to stop whining about it and just go on up to the counting house and shove their investments someplace really uncomfortable. I have all I can do to keep from screaming. I wish them just ten minutes of knowing someone you love is dying, and to hold their hand and know that they know it too. I'm sick of all the crap that never mattered.


And to my friends who read this blog…I love you...right now... for all the things that do matter, and for however long we have.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Did You?

I wondered if you knew me at the end
when I dropped morphine into your cheek,
watched the clock,
the undertaker’s card tacked to the wall.
I wanted you to reach over
and poke me in the ribs
until I smacked you back
so you could call Mom
and she would tell me to stop –
stop what I was doing.
“Just leave him alone,” she’d say
“Ignore him and he’ll be fine. “

Linda Radice July, 2010

Tatoo....or Two ?

I do not have a tattoo. I am not tempted to get one, even in a place so hidden it would never see past my underwear. My children do not share my reluctance to dabble in such decoration. My daughter has a smiley face at the base of her spine. My son has a few more interesting designs.

When my son was little, I slathered his skin with sunscreen and made him wear a hat to avoid skin damage. He was ( and still is) allergic to fabric softener, and we used fragrance and dye free soap and detergents to keep his arms and legs free from rashes that itched and irritated. He is not, however, allergic to the tattoo artist's paint, nor does he seem to mind the pain the needles cause or the burning aftermath that shines with Bacitracin.

He started out small...the masks of tragedy and comedy, and the Impala symbol for his classic cars on his forearms. Then came his last name in gothic letters across his shoulder blades, and then some flames leaping from his ankle and partway up his calf. He has an almost completed "sleeve" that starts on his right shoulder and carries on down toward his elbow. I have to say that the artist does wonderful, intricate work on the detailed mural of buildings, a woman's face, and an old car that blend together beautifully. I suppose I just never thought that the tender baby skin I powdered and oiled and protected was being primed as a canvas.

His self-expression thing is probably my own fault. I let him get his ear pierced when he was in the third grade. The other mothers were horrified, a number of his friends started asking for earrings, and one kid's father told my son that "only fags wear earrings." That incident was one of my stellar mother moments. Suffice to say that after I spoke to the man, he kept a lot of space between us forever after.

I never had a problem with clothes or hair. My generation was the one that cleared all those paths, and my kids benefited from my, "as long as you're clean," attitude. My son had a multitude of hair styles. He grew it down to his rear end and had a Mohawk. Then there were colors. Red, blue, and green, in a style that required a variation spiky Mohawk with short dyed hair around the sides and back. He insisted on wearing the largest jeans he could find, size 48 waist, hacked off at the bottom and held up with a woven belt that went around him twice. He topped that off with a triple extra large t-shirt that hung well past his knees. For a couple of years, he appeared as a rather squat, well padded adolescent. On the evening of his junior prom, he came downstairs in his perfectly fitted tuxedo, a slim and trim, size 25 waist, 16 year old. We had forgotten what he really looked like.

My daughter was more conservative, but I do remember the "Punky Brewster" two different color shoes phase, and she did have "very big hair" at the same time she dated a guy with a Porsche that had a sun roof. When she got into the car and the roof was open, her hair stuck right up through it.

There are a lot worse things than having sections of your body look like a page from the Sunday comics. I admire other people's tatts and the talent of the artists who do such amazing work. I'm all for everyone doing their own thing. And since I’ve long passed financing my kids self-expression of choice, I say go for it.

Where Do You Come From?

The town I've lived in all my life has changed. It has gone from the bedroom community of my youth, (close to the NYC rail lines and buses for commuters) to a little village with many immigrants, mostly South American. The downtown strip of stores are now Spanish food stores and restaurants, places that teach ESL, and travel agents with store fronts full of little booths where people can pay by the minute to phone home.


Many have a problem with the new population. There is overcrowding in the schools, illegal housing problems, and that old common fear of people who are different. There has been "white flight" going on for years now, and I've been asked many times when I'm going to sell and get out. I would be dishonest if I didn't say that I'm not happy with the increase in my property taxes because of the need for more classrooms and services due to the changes. But for now, my family and friends are pretty much still within spittin' distance, this is my home, and I happen to like diversity.


Maybe it is the second or third generation that has conveniently forgotten how their grandparents or great-grandparents wound up here. Or maybe they don't have a story as I do, one that they just can't forget, about the settling in of their ancestors.


My mother's parents came from Sicily. They first lived in Brooklyn where my grandfather, a tailor, worked until they were able to save enough money to buy a house. They found one right here, a block from the spot where I'm writing this, and moved in sometime in the early 1930's. One of the neighbors was not happy about the family with the fig tree, grape arbor and chicken coop in the back yard. The man who lived directly across the street came to my grandfather and offered to buy his house if he would not buy another one close by. He made no apologies when he stated that he did not want Italians in his neighborhood. My grandfather was the gentlest soul I've ever known and I cannot imagine what his response could have been, but my understanding is that he just told the man that he did not want to sell his house.


As my mother told the story, this man also had a daughter who was my Mom’s age, and the little girls played together due to the kindness of his wife. My mother was allowed to play at her friend's house only when the father was not at home, but he would not allow his daughter to play with my Mom’s other friend, a little Jewish girl, at all.


My grandfather was successful and went on to own a tailoring factory nearby. He later bought a bigger house in town, but kept the one around the corner. It stayed in the family, from my grandfather to my uncle and to my cousin who finally sold it just a few years ago. My mother and uncles had wonderful memories of that house and the loving extended family that occupied it. It is where my father courted my mother.


My grandfather never told me about the incident, so I don’t know how he really felt about that discrimination. What I do know about him is that he was a kind and honest man, devoted to his family, and that I was the apple of his eye, "My sweet Leenduce," until he died in 1964.

My mother told the story many times, a first hand lesson for her children to remember, and I am grateful for the impression it made on me.


I often think about the unfortunate ending to the man across the street too. He died of a heart attack one Sunday morning. In church.

Bar Poets

I read my poetry for the first time in a bar. In one of those dive-y bars, which are just about the only ones that allowed our particular trick pony poetry circus to perform.


My debut had been scheduled, a reading with a few others for a small local journal that had published our poems, and the posters announcing this minor event a month hence were up in the local store windows.


The problem was that I'd had terrible stage fright my whole life. I was terrified of any sort of public speaking, and I was sure that I would chicken out. My dear friend Steve would hear none of my “I don’t think I can do its” and set out to help me overcome it. A musician who had performed for almost 40 years, he had a tough time convincing me that I could ever be on a stage unafraid and natural.


He started his crash course on, of all things, the New York City subway system. One afternoon on a very crowded train, he started singing “You Don’t Know Me,” in his beautiful voice, and motioned to me to join in knowing that I knew all the words. I shook my head, mortified, but he kept nodding and smiling until I tentatively began. “From your diaphragm !” he said during a breath, “louder!” The train shot through the tunnel with 40 strap hanging strangers listening as I let my voice get a little stronger, my shaking disguised by my swaying to keep my footing. I didn’t faint, some of our fellow travelers applauded, and he insisted we repeat the entertainment for every ride thereafter.


Then he rehearsed me for weeks reading my scheduled repertoire…”project, slow down, project”… until I was sick of my poems and myself. He was sure I’d be able to fly. I privately thought I’d keep my belly to the ground and plead illness.


The night of the reading arrived. It was in a bar on Somerset St. in North Plainfield, three blocks from my house, where they washed the glasses in the bathroom sink and had "none of that fancy new beer... this is what we got on tap and you'll drink it." Aside from our little group trying to transform a small corner into a coffee house with no coffee, it was full of tired men on a Friday night. Nobody came looking for poetry at the Sky Lounge. They wanted cold beer and the ball game.


While I waited to begin, I was shaking so hard I still thought I'd have to give up. I was convinced that if I managed to get through part of the first poem, the bar patrons would considerately boo me off the wobbly stool that was the stage and I could leave.


Sitting up there gave a different perspective. They were watching the game, shooting pool, and largely ignoring us. Steve was standing in the back of the room directly in my vision after telling me to just read to him and forget about everyone else, but I was too nervous to look anywhere except at the vibrating pages in my hands when I took a gulp and began.


One line into the first poem, I heard the loud "break" of a pool game beginning, the sports commentators droning, and the conversation around the bar. I relaxed a little, thinking that no one was going to listen anyway.


I suppose all the rehearsing and reassurance had taken root without me knowing it. I was muddling through slowly, projecting at my blessedly inattentive audience, when suddenly I realized that the room had gotten quiet. The pool game had stopped and they’d muted the TVs. When I looked up they were looking back. Steve was grinning. When I looked down, I could hear them listening.


They applauded when I finished. A man at the end of the bar called out and asked if I had any more. Afterwards when I walked over for a drink, they reached out to shake my hand with their rough working man's clasps and told me how much they had enjoyed it.


I have a poster from that reading, blue and fading, hanging on the wall next to my desk. It fills me up every time I look at it. My paralyzing old stage fright never came back. My sweet friend is gone, but I see him standing in the back of the room every time I take the stage.

Such a little thing...

(Note: I dusted this old one off, because my sentiments are still the same. Many things in it have changed, but it makes no difference as it still goes out as a giant hug to all my friends who read this)



A client sent me flowers today. He told me that he appreciated all the extra work I did for him, and since it wasn't appropriate to hug me, flowers it was. He reminds me of my uncles, Italian men with expressive faces and hands that illustrate every word they say. The rest of my office would have been uncomfortable had this kindly older man given me a hug. I would have thought it perfectly natural. There were a few times during his frustrating matter, through no fault of his own, that I felt like hugging him too.


I come from a touchy clan. It takes half an hour to greet and appropriately hug and kiss...beginning respectfully with the elderly and working your way down. Nobody claims "personal space" around them either. First of all, there's not enough room given the amount of people who usually show up. Secondly, you can't be that far away for the constant nudging and stroking necessary in conversation. We don't know how to emphasize without physical contact.


I'd like to hug some of my clients. I'd like to hug the people who serve up my coffee every morning. Sometimes I have to restrain myself from hugging my granddaughter as much as I'd like. She's old enough now to squirm away to more interesting things than being squeezed and smooched by me. I did impulsively hug my boss once when he gave me a nice bonus, and I think he was surprised but only mildly embarrassed.


My husband's family was not used to the likes of this. They are far more reserved in a "How do you do," sort of way. A quick peck on the cheek and a little shoulder clasp of a second or two is about it. They are respectful of each others space and talk one at a time. They wait for for someone to stop speaking instead of interrupting....and even notice when somebody interrupts them. Then along comes full-body- hugging-kiss-on-both-cheeks-and-a-little-rub-on-the-back-of-the-neck-yackety-yack - me. The Eye-talian girl who married in.


A number of years later they're all used to me, although I'm still the only dark-haired, dark-eyed chatterer in the bunch. About three years in, my father-in-law told me that he loved it when I came to visit because I always hugged and kissed him....coming and going.

Hello There...

I am one of those people that strangers talk to. People appear and begin conversations with me all the time.


Just now I was on my way to Dunkin Donuts for coffee, a two block walk from my office, and an older woman stopped me to ask if I thought it was going to rain and did I think she should stay in town and have lunch or go on back home.


Its the kind of conversation I get often. Rarely does anyone just want to know what time it is, they want a discussion. And, as in the case today, my calculated judgment. Now the sun is out and I told the lady that if she didn't have an umbrella then maybe she should go home, so I'm sitting here feeling guilty that I spoiled her downtown lunch on a nice afternoon. I'm wondering if she'll have her umbrella if I ever run into her again, and if she'll see fit to smack me with it..."Thanks a lot. Don't you realize I don't know how many nice lunches I could have left at my age!" ...whack, whack.


My friend tells me that I look 'approachable.' Yeah, well, so do hookers. Its a good thing she's a well meaning friend, because she laughs when I say that, but she also admits that she doesn't get accosted nearly as often. When I consider how I think I would look to the casual passerby, I imagine appearing unfocused and preoccupied. I'm not usually thinking about what I'm doing or where I'm going, and frankly congratulate myself when I don't walk right past my destination or forget what I went into the store to get.


I'm amazed anyone would think I'd be the one to strike up a conversation with, but they seem to think I know something. Maybe my far off expression leads them to believe that I'm gathering information from a benevolent spiritual guide instead of trying to get that one damn line in a half written poem or what it was I promised myself I wouldn't forget to do.


Although I seem to be popular with all ages of strangers, I'm the biggest hit with elderly men. Maybe whatever attracts them to me is a vibe that I have a soft spot for them. I love to listen to their stories, respect their wisdom, and always come away having learned something. They always seem disappointed when I have to say goodbye, which is just another thing I can add that to my ever expanding and invisible guilt quota jar. I often feel like offering my phone number so we can continue another time, but then consider their little old wives finding it scrawled in a shaky hand on the back of a prescription bag and demanding to know "who this hussy Linda is." And then I see them trying to explain that I was just a woman they met on the street who looked..friendly.