The Memory Bubble

It’s a long and stressful trip home, and I hesitate to ask my husband to make a special stop. We’ve been away an entire month, and although our time with children and grandchildren was wonderful, we’re tired and anxious to get home.

I broach the subject tentatively; “I’d like to stop in Maryland to see my aunt.” I know there will be resistance.

Aunt Josie with great-grandchildren

“We’ll see,” my husband responds. I know from childhood requests to my parents, “we’ll see” usually means “not a chance in hell.” I forge ahead with determination, not to be stopped or put off.

“She’s 93, and I don’t know how much longer she’ll be around for me to visit. It’s a good stopping place, and I want to see her while I still can.” He knows I won’t be talked out of this, so he gives in to my request.

I look for a nearby hotel, and we plot our GPS to bring us into Silver Spring. I give her a call that night to tell her we are nearby. She’s excited, but declines our request to treat her to breakfast in the morning. Instead, we agree to visit her the next day at the assisted living facility where she resides. She calls my mother that night to say she thinks company is coming to visit.

“I’m not sure,” she tells Mom, “but I think Josette is coming.” My mother gently corrects her; “I believe it’s Lucia who’s coming, Josie.” My aunt thinks for a minute. “Yes,” she responds, “I think you’re right.”

The next morning, I knock on her door. I notice a shelf outside her apartment where her nativity scene is displayed. It must be at least 70 years old; it's rich in sentiment, and its value is more than money can measure.  The door opens and she peers through the crack. Her face lights up with happiness and a bit of surprise.

“Lucia,” she cries and throws open the door. I step in and bend down to give her a hug. As I take in her appearance, I marvel at how she looks. She’s decked out in a cheerful red sweater adorned with an embroidered Christmas wreath. Her gray hair is carefully coifed, although I’m surprised to see she no longer dyes it. Never a tall woman, she has shrunk to an even smaller stature, and her hands are gnarled and stiff. Still, her spunky personality shines through; it is hard to believe she’s in her nineties. She turns to my husband, who towers over her. He folds himself in half so he can receive her hug.

Uncle Cosmo with Donald



“Come in, sit down.”

I know what comes next.

“Can I get you something? How about a cup of coffee?”

We thank her, but decline.

“Are you sure,” she asks.

Yes, we’re sure; we just want to visit with her. We know the question will arise again and again throughout the conversation.

After the third time, I agree to have a cup of coffee. Pleased, she jumps up to prepare it for me. I follow her into the kitchen, hoping to help. “I’ll give you the special Christmas cup,” she announces as she stands on tiptoe to reach it. I hold my breath as she brings it down to the counter. We heat up what is left in the pot, then return to her living room. She’s happy now.



I want this to be a happy visit, and I know the most treasured conversations are those that recall times past. Since it is the holiday season, it seems a good way to begin, so I prod her. “Remember what fun we had when we all got together for the holidays,” I ask. Her eyes light up and she turns to my husband. “Oh Bob,” she says, “You would have loved the parties we had. We were such a crazy bunch!”

I help her with bits of information, and she is able to round out her stories. I coax her with another memory. “Remember how we had to split into two groups in later years because there was so many of us?”

Gene and Julie's Wedding



She laughs and reminisces about how we overcame the separation. Again, she addresses my husband. “We hated being separated, so we’d play pranks on the each other, even crashing in on one another. One year, we sent our garbage over in a taxi cab! Oh, we were a crazy bunch alright!”

She stops for a moment caught in her own reverie. She looks at me and says, “I live on my memories now. I have good memories, and those are the ones I try to focus on. I have bad memories, for sure, but I ask God to help me forget those memories.” Her eyes travel toward the table beneath the window. Her family pictures reside there, including pictures of her two oldest sons who died within 11 months of each other. It is heart-wrenching to remember the loss of Donald and Gene. My uncle was alive then, and together they buried their children.

Gene, Donald and baby Paul

I take in the other pictures on the table, including the one of her daughter-in-law Julie, who was heartbroken at the loss of her 53-year-old husband.  She died three years after Gene, just months before her own son’s wedding. It was up to my aunt to nurture the two young adults left behind by their parents’ deaths. It was my aunt who traveled to Oklahoma for weddings, births and holidays. I think the loss of their parents was mitigated a bit by their grandmother’s devotion and presence.

She picks up the thread of her conversation, happy to regale my husband with more anecdotes. How many times has the story of how she cared for me as a baby been recounted? Both she and my uncle loved to tell Bob tales of babysitting me while my mother worked. Always a good sport, my husband laughs and tosses back the conversational ball so she can continue her recital.

At one point, she looks at me and says, “You’re Pauline's daughter, right?” A knot rises in my throat at this question, so strange and unexpected; I answer calmly in the affirmative.

“I try to go through the family tree to train my memory. Philip is at the top in your family, right?” she asks.

“No,” I reply. “Always remember, I’m at the top,” I say in a teasing voice. I run down the five children in my family in the order of their birth. She repeats each name, concentrating to remember what I tell her. Again, she gives me that steady look. “Isn’t it awful I don’t know this?”

She sighs. “I’m not at the top of my game any more,” she admits. I can’t travel like I did, and I’m in constant pain. Each morning, I wake up and say ‘darn, I’m still here.’ I’m not complaining; I’ve had 90 wonderful years, but the last three years have been hard. It’s time for me to go now, but I guess God has other plans.”

My eyes start to well up with tears, until the next moment when she complains about the women who are her circle of friends.

“But I’m a lot better off than my girlfriends,” she states with disgust.

It seems they had each received a gift of a plant holder, and it needed assembly. My aunt spent a morning pouring over the instructions until it was completed. When she informed her comrades about it, they complained they couldn’t put it together. “I told them to knuckle down and read the directions,” she says with renewed disgust. “They’re only in their eighties,” she declares. “They can’t even keep up with me when I take my nightly walk,” she adds. My sad tears turn to chuckles as I see the feistiness still there.

It is almost an hour since we arrived. We see her energy flagging, so we prepare our goodbyes. She stands to walk us to the door, a strict family rule to be observed when visitors leave. In times past, she would ride down the elevator with us, waving from the front entrance as we drove away. Today, she waves through the crack in the door, and then quietly closes it before we enter the lift.



Aunt Josie, Uncle Cosmo and their boys Paul, Donald, Gene, Rick



I keep the picture of the tiny, gray-haired lady in the festive red holiday sweater in my mind. It is a mental picture, but firmly entrenched in my brain. I hope she’ll be there when we pass through in April. If she is, I may have to remind her of this day’s visit. I hope she’ll remember me. However, it doesn’t matter if she forgets who I am because I never forget who she is. I’ll remember for both of us.

The Big Black Phone

It was black and heavy, especially for a 7-year-old child, and yet, it held a certain fascination for me. It sat in its own little niche at the bottom of the stairs, and maybe it was that little arched cubicle that attracted my attention. The first time I saw it, I was in the midst of taking in a new landscape, my mind focused on something familiar in an unfamiliar environment.

My father had brought us to this new place in Toledo, Ohio, and it was far away from the family we were used to seeing frequently. We had arrived the day before, flying into this unfamiliar city. It was the first time any of us, including my mother, had  been on a plane. I was the oldest, followed by my sister, who was four, and my baby brother, a very rambunctious 1-year-old. My mother was exhausted from both the flight and my brother! My father was showing her around our new home, but as I think back, Mother probably wanted a hot bath and a soft bed in lieu of this grand tour. I remember she didn't like the wallpaper in the kitchen. I didn't care about anything in the house except for the phone in the special cubbyhole.

We settled into our new home, but not easily. All of us, including my parents, had been born in the Batavia, a little town in upstate New York. Our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, the lifeblood of an Italian family, all remained behind in this little hamlet we called home. It was a difficult adjustment, especially for my mother. She was the first in her extended family to "leave home", as her move to Ohio was referred to by her siblings. I can't imagine what it was like for her to not only be far away from family, but to also put on a brave front for her children.

Sadly, the heavy black phone in it's special spot was not the link to our hometown it would have been today. In the 1950's, long distance was expensive and saved only for special occasions, like holidays and birthdays. When a long-distance call was placed, we were all acutely aware of time and cost, so conversations (if you could call them that) were kept short. We were allowed to say a quick "Happy Birthday" or "Merry Christmas" before the receiver was passed to the next person in line. This was a big challenge in a large family!

Instead of lengthy chats on the phone, we would exchange letters with our faraway family. These were always a source of excitement when they arrived. This was how my aunts would pass on family news and keep us up to date with these eagerly-awaited missives. I still remember the letter one of my aunts sent when she discovered she was pregnant after many years of trying. Her husband was my mother's youngest brother, and everyone was ecstatic about the news. It seems strange today to write such important news in a letter! And yet, that was how information was conveyed. No one picked up a telephone frivolously! There had to be a very good reason to use that black instrument and spend the money attached to using it! And so, I grew up reading family news through the letters written by my aunts. It meant that I could read the words over and over, savoring the tether to my family those letters created.

The black phone in the special niche did hold a measure of entertainment in our early days in our house - a party line! My sister and I would gingerly pick up the muscled arm of the phone, hold our breath, and listen to conversations on the party line. It was a delicious bit of mischief, and our hearts would beat when we heard the angry admonition "I'm using the line; get the hell off!" We'd slam down the receiver and race to our room, sure the "party line police" were on their way!  It was a little disappointing when we finally got a private line and could no longer snooop on our neighbors!

The years passed, and the phone remained in its special spot at the bottom of the stairs. Throughout this time, members of my family sat on the steps, carrying on hundreds of conversations. All of us perched there as we spoke into the black box that magically carried our voices over slivers of wire and allowed us to communicate with friends and family.

It was over this phone one day that we learned my grandfather, my mother's father, had died. I remember her sitting on Dad's lap and crying because she hadn't been there when he died. He had asked for her, but she was 300 miles away. Without turnpikes and highways, she might have been 3000 miles away. It was one time where the message was too urgent and important to convey in a letter. No, this was a message for the black phone.

During our time in that house, I became a teenager. Now the special little alcove seemed a less private place to carry on my conversations. There were no extensions in our home, so I was forced to conduct my important teenage business within earshot of my whole family. In retrospect, this was probably a blessing to my parents. They  listened closely to these exchanges in order to keep abreast of where my hormonal tendencies might be leading! My time on the phone became lengthy as I contorted my body into wildly intricate shapes while I chatted with my friends. The cord would be wrapped around the railing like a snake crawling on a vine. The walls carried imprints of my shoes as I laid myself lengthwise on a tread while my feet supported the wall. After what I considered an unreasonably short amount of time, I'd hear my father's voice ordering me to "get off the phone!"

When I was fifteen and a sophomore in high school, my father, who worked for JC Penny, came home one day and announced he had been "transferred." That meant we had to move to another state (this time it was Kentucky), and once again, we'd have to leave behind all that was familiar. For me, that meant friends - including a boyfriend! Could there be anything more tragic for a teenager? I conveyed the sad news to my friends. We were all sufficiently devastated. My boyfriend promised to write, but how long would that last? While my father traveled ahead to find housing for us, my mother stoically packed up our belongings and prepared us for the move.

My sister and I were distraught at leaving our friends. When my father returned to collect us for the trip to our new home, my two best friends stood beside our car, arms locked together, weeping profusely on each others shoulder! As my father watched them in the rear view mirror, waving pathetically as we drove away, he said he felt like a criminal as he listened to my sister and I sobbing in the back seat! Our parents tried to find a way to soften the blow, so as we traveled south to Kentucky, they described the bedroom my sister and I would share. It was a huge room on the bottom level with lighted panels that would light up over our beds. They were decorated with butterflies, they told us, and best of all, we were to get a special bonus for our brave acceptance of the move. He and my mother were having a phone extension installed in our room! A pink phone! A pink Princess phone!

We quickly dried our eyes, sitting up with anticipation. We begged for more details about this fabulous new room. "How big is the room," we asked. This was an important point for both of us because we had a significant love/hate relationship. During the periods when we couldn't stand the sight of each other, large expanses of space were necessary to prevent bodily harm. "And we can really have a phone in our room?" We felt it was imperative we nail down this particular item before we crossed the state line. Our parents assured us  the room was large and the phone extension was a guaranteed perk! We settled back with contentment for the rest of the trip.

The room we shared was indeed large, although we were a little spooked by the butterfly panels. It turned out they were real butterflies that had been wedged between two panels of glass. After we got over our sympathy for the butterflies (and our "gross-out" over their manner of death), we decided we liked the lighted panes. There was sufficient distance between our beds so we could shout insults to each other safely. But best of all, we had a pink princess phone. Although there was no special little alcove, we both agreed it should be installed near the stairs leading up from our bedroom. Once again, we used the stairs as a background for our conversational contortions, sprawling and twisting as we gabbed with friends, both new and old! 

As wonderful as our new little phone was, it couldn't measure up to the heavy antique we left behind in Toledo.  No, that was a special phone never to be compared with any that came after it.

Today, phones do amazing things.  With a flick of a finger, you can pull up a phone number, find a list of nearby restaurants, access your email, and take a picture of a spectacular sunset.  You can navigate unfamiliar territory with your phone's GPS system, videotape a bank holdup and talk without ever picking up the receiver.  You can slip your phone into your shirt pocket and have room left over. 

Yes, your phone can do amazing things, but with all those incredible functions, there is one thing of which I am certain.  Nothing could ever compare to the heavy black phone of my childhood.  The size of it, the weight of it, the color of it can never be matched.  I'm sorry for any who have not experienced the magic of that long-ago relic of my childhood. 

The Information Highway never visited the black phone in the little niche on Maplewood Avenue.  The black phone didn't have a dataport, voice mail, call waiting or touch tone dialing.  But that phone had character and a dignified presence. 

If ever you should come across that big, heavy black phone, please send my regards.  It's number is "Cherry 6-3574!"