Abuela Estela recounted how she had learned how to make homemade pasta from her mother and her mother’s mother in the old country, in a beautiful village that overlooked the Mediterranean. Being the eldest, she watched over and helped raise her four siblings.  She was a beauty and a coquette, and she told all of her various suitors she hadn’t made up her mind about them, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.

”Your grandfather eventually put his foot down,” she snickered in her Italian-lilted Castilian Spanish, “and since he seemed like a gentle, warm and loving soul (saintly, according to all those who knew him), I agreed to stick to just courting him.”

My maiden name and my grandfather’s name is D’Angelo, which means from the angels – so the name fits.

I lamented I did not remember him. I had emigrated at the age of three.  He had since passed on while I was innocently and naively growing up and apart from my entire extended family.  It suddenly dawned on me that news of tragedy, birth, and all events were occurring very far away from my reality.  Grief, joy and its aftermath were not experienced without my participation, nor was I learning how to be a part of it.  I observed alone and processed in a vacuum.

In her Italian-lilted Castilian, she interjected, “Did you lock the side door when you came in?  With the chain bolt?”

“Yes, yes, yes.  Go on about what happened with Abuelo,” I pleaded.

“More tomorrow. It’s time to sleep now.  We need to get up early and I will teach you how to make homemade pasta.  It’s your daddy’s favorite meal and you should know how to make it,” she concluded.

I settled in and was lulled peacefully into a gentle, lasting dream state where expectations of delicious strings of chewy fettuccini hung above my mouth.  I tilted my head back and welcomed the warm and tasty dripping sauce in first, anticipating the first bite of my Abuela Estela’s sublime homemade pasta.  Satisfied, content and at rest, I fell into a deeply profound and calming sleep.

The lights would eventually be turned off (save a nightlight she insisted on) and we’d say goodnight into the semi-dark and inevitably would start to communicate.

“Que fue ese ruido?” (What was that noise?), she would ask in her Argentine Spanish called Castilian with a melodic sing-song heavily laden Italian accent.  I later learned in a linguistics college course that once you reach the age of puberty, you are stricken with an inability to ever lose your accent  when learning a new language due to the jaw bone rigidity that is perpetuated with adolescence.  It is a convincing and scientific argument for learning several languages at once before the junior high age.

In my unbelievably horrendous version of the Spanish language, I replied, trying to console, “No es nada Abuela, solo es el viento.” (It’s nothing, Grandma, it’s only the wind.)

The chatting ensued.  Abuela Estela told me about my similar-aged girl cousins (whom she was lucky enough to live with), my dad’s childhood including his mischievous but clever antics, and about her own life growing up in Italy as a child and into her teenage years before her move to Argentina.

Interspersed and interrupting our conversation, she queried,  “Estas segura que apagaste la luz en el bano?  Te lavaste las manos?” (Are you sure you shut off the bathroom light?  Did you wash your hands?)

“Claro que si” (of course) I assured her so she could sense all was well and resume her narrative.

Abuela Estela, as I affectionately called my grandmother, slept in the adjoining twin bed of my upstairs childhood bedroom when she came to stay with us.  Our thin, cherry-colored, summer bedspreads matched.  Bed sheets had to be tucked and pulled tightly – military style.   Dividing our parallel single beds stood a cream-colored nightstand with a black-swept antiqued finish. My mom had painted and distressed all my bedroom furniture on a plain pine canvass of dressers, desks and bookshelves.  The red and black wall-to-wall tightly woven carpet juxtaposed my rosy-pink lemonade walls.  My furry stuffed animals shared space on my many shelves with my colorful Childcraft Encyclopedia Set and my treasured amateur international shell and stamp collections. Nag champa incense smoke occasionally drifted and mysteriously comingled with the fragrance of Jean Nate eau de toilette body splash. Perhaps these became my gateway scents into the world of Chanel #5, fine perfumes and the early warning signs of the outright obsession I have with aromatherapy today.

The only other time my grandmother had traveled at all was when she was sixteen and crossed the Atlantic from Italy to Argentina circa 1928 via an ocean vessel that must have rocked and rolled along the waves at an excruciatingly slow and frightening pace because she dreaded all forms of voyaging.  Coming to the USA to visit her son and grandchildren was a sacrifice for her. It was an enormous undertaking and a courageous feat.  She was comprised of and exuded fear, worry and more layers of trepidation and terror from every pore. Her panicked anxiety and agitation over everything defined her and was clearly evident in her twitching body and trembling voice.

I watched her.  Her signature crimson matte lipstick made her tan complexion glow and she wore it at all times like a monogram.  She limped and rocked from side to side due to a bad hip she refused to have surgery for because she was afraid of being put under anesthesia and the knife.  Occasionally, she winced and let out a small yelp from the pain if she walked too much or too far.  Her youthful loveliness visibly stood stalwart behind her midlife lines and flaccid skin.

I understood and comforted Abuela with all the compassion and patience a pre-adolescent could muster. Nightly, I cuddled up and read from my Illustrated Children’s Bible to soothe me before bedtime. I had to turn my head and look away while my Abuela undressed and put on her nightgown.  She was extremely modest, embarrassed or both and required this of me and deemed it highly important to our evening regime.  Whenever I forgot, she chastised me with a severe and loud plea to turn away, “por favor.”

My father loved homemade pasta. And in the era of Jell-O, Tang, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Rice a Roni and Ronzoni dried pasta – there was none to be had, unless, of course, you went into NYC and found a neighborhood dive in an Italian section of town that might still be serving fresh noodles.  We rarely ate out ever because my father pronounced my mom’s cooking so delectable – “Why go out?”

“Your dad is just cheap,” my mom would explain.

My parents immigrated to the USA from Argentina in the early 1960’s, and after a series of moves and efforts, finally settled on a long stretch of sand and loam called Long Island.  It lay sandwiched between Connecticut and the Atlantic Ocean, jutting out from the state of NY like a pencil.

My dad raved about his mom’s homemade pasta.  He described its texture, taste and feel frequently and with abandon. How it was chewy but didn’t stick in his teeth. How it somehow magically transformed flour, eggs, salt, oil and water into an alchemic delight.  How he only needed butter and cheese, no sauce, to authentically relish it in its most naked form.

My mom hailed from Spanish descent (Andalusia and Castile) and learned from another set of apron strings.   Or, maybe, she did not care to compete with her mother-in-law’s handiwork. Nonetheless, on the pretense of showing off our new life and first home, my paternal grandmother was summoned to come stay with us for a visit from spring to October back in 1971.  I was 11 years old and she was going to be my roommate.

TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR MORE…..