September 2003 Issue - Essay # 8
Grandpa
By Christine Casoli
|
Grandpa
and Grandma’s house always smelled like cigars and gravy. Every Sunday
we went there for dinner and Grandpa would sit on his big green chair,
whose arms were as wide as park benches, and watch television in the
living room that smelled like cigars.
All the furniture in that living room was covered with plastic
except for Grandpa’s green chair.
My
cousin, Michael, would straddle the arm to Grandpa’s left and I would
straddle the arm to his right and we would rake our fingers over the
flower-textured vinyl and chant of tractors.
Michael would chant “red tractor” and I would chant “green
tractor.” It was
Michael’s game, but I played along so that Grandpa would have some
sense of symmetry. We would
chant until we tired and, though it must have made it difficult for him
to hear the television, Grandpa never told us to be quiet. Sometimes,
if we asked nicely, Grandpa would do the denture trick for us.
This involved Grandpa loosening his dentures and balancing them
precariously upon the tip of his tongue.
Naturally, the denture trick unfailingly sent my cousin and me
into gales of hysterical laughter. I
loved to watch the generous purple-gray swirls of smoke from Grandpa’s
cigar floating gracefully in the beam of early afternoon sunlight that
came in through the picture window.
Sometimes I would abandon the tractor game to twirl in the
fragrant, smoky sunlight. Arms
outstretched, dissipating the calm, elegant clouds, I was the warrior
princess of stogies. Eventually,
cousin Michael and I would sneak into the kitchen that smelled like
gravy. The table was covered
with a white tablecloth lined with neat rows of homemade raviolis and
chickadeles. The raviolis
had fat, round, vulnerable, white bellies that just begged to be
squished. We liked to poke
our thumbs into the ravioli bellies until the aunties noticed and told
us to cut it out. One
Sunday Grandpa came into the kitchen just as we had been caught. He
asked the aunties, “What’s a mattuh?”
The aunties pointed at the massacred raviolis and said “Look at
the raviolis, they’re poking their fingers in them!” And
Grandpa looked at the aunties, then at us, then at the raviolis. And
then he stuck his big thumb into the fattest ravioli belly and said,
“Ahh, let ‘em alone, they’re having fun.”
And then the three of us poked the fat ravioli bellies until the
aunties chased us out of the kitchen snapping angry dishrags.
“We’re going to make youse eat all the squished raviolis,”
they said. We
all went into the living room, giggling, and climbed back up onto
Grandpa’s great, green chair. Grandpa
always called us Grandpa. He
snuggled us close, warm Grandpa smell, cigars and Old Spice.
He said “I love you, Grandpa.
No one loves you like I do. Always
remember that.” He said that more times than I could count.
|
| Author's Biography Christine
Casoli lives in a faux tropical paradise overlooking scenic downtown E-mail
Christine at fashionfoe@hotmail.com |
Essay
Reviews! Site Reviews! We'd
like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do
you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? Get notified! Would you
like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on
the Web? Tell a friend! Do you
enjoy the Seven Seas site?
|
|
Go back to the table
of contents
|
