Thursday, January 22, 2015 

Mom is singing. Words undecipherable. Most humming. So I hope she is content. I wonder if she sang when she was a child? I knew she loved singing as an adult. The Blues mostly. She often spoke about how someone heard her singing from the window of her mother’s apartment and told her that she should be on the radio. If times had been different and if ambition had been attached to her ability, perhaps she would have become a singer. Who knows? Godmother Mary (she was always called Godmother Mary) was indeed my Godmother. She had quite a beautiful soprano voice. Someone tried to get her to take voice lessons. There was talk she could have become an opera singer. I remember her lyrical, lilting voice. It was like listening to bells. I could imagine her singing the bell song from Delibe’s Lakmé. Godmother Mary and mom and I used to go to the shore and record our voices in one of those singing booths. We’d get a scratchy vinyl record and laugh and laugh when we would hear ourselves. My voice was always scratchy though. So it hardly mattered. I once sang a song that began “Once a froggy in the pond was feeling awful blue…” Something I had learned in school. I remember thinking I had sounded like a frog. I wish I had those vinyl recordings.

I spoke to mom only yesterday about Godmother Mary. Mom asked if she were still alive. I sadly admitted that she was not. Mom seems to have grown used to everyone dying around her. She once commented that she was the last one in her family, a family of ten. But I was able to say, No. You still have your brother. Our once gloriously huge family—there were 10 on dad’s side, too, but two had died at birth. Same ratio of girls to boys. In all, I had 41 first cousins. I remember watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Thula remarked, I have 23 first cousins alone! Beat you by 18, Thula! I mentioned this to an acquaintance once, who asked, Are you close to all of them? An odd question. Of course! Of course I am close to all of them. And now that we are aging, those of us left are staying in touch with the next generation, who want to hear all about mom and dad and Uncle Junior in their heyday. Big Italian families are a blessing. I am glad to be part of one.