An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
When my sister visited from Boston last week, we dragged out the family albums and letters. Really, it’s only one side of the family that’s represented, and only one letter writer–our North Dakota grandmother, our mother’s mother Augusta. We knew … Continued
Late Summer Tears You don’t have to weep with me–not wrenching sobs at any rate, just a slow seep of wet, honoring the clouds of green and scimitars of swallows twittering against high blue. Mornings on the deck with black and … Continued
“Over the river and through the woods/ To Grandfather’s house we go” meant traveling three days and two nights on the train from Charleston, South Carolina to Hankinson, North Dakota. Grandfather’s house was a glorious, gingerbread affair set on a … Continued
You could tell my mother was fading because she became pale. She no longer remembered visitors’ names as she walked the porch across her South Carolina house. She slept and slept. Eleonora, my 94-year-old second cousin, is fading too. But … Continued
Back in the days before the transcontinental highway system and the plethora of family cars, we took the train. Almost every summer with our North Dakota mother (who didn’t drive), we boarded the Seaboard Air Line or later the Atlantic … Continued
I don’t mean white-washing atrocities or making up glories that never existed for the sake of local pride. This is a far more personal, individual venture–person to person, reader to reader. In the last twenty years, let’s say, there’s been … Continued
During the almost 14 years my mother lived alone after my father died, I often visited her in January, that month of deepest cold for us in Minnesota, but for her in Charleston, fickle in its flickering from warmish blue … Continued
While northern Minnesota is straining for a flash of white, ready to send a shot into the woods, I’m driving east and south into rolling farm country around Afton where glimpses of the St. Croix River shine through the trees. … Continued
My father used to complain that in my mother’s house, he walked on flowers, sat on flowers, ate on flowers and slept on flowers. My mother must have taken this as a compliment because she never changed the decor. It … Continued
Cooking by instinct didn’t happen overnight. In fact, in that first tiny kitchen, New York City circa 1965, I’m not even sure I could hardboil an egg. But I knew what, among my mother’s rather bland fare, I could taste … Continued