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February 2009 
Last of the Matriarchy
Posted on Jan 3rd, 2009
by 
Your Words' Worth
Your Words' Worth
The last of my father's sisters passed away on New Year's Day - Rose Bordo, eldest of the five daughters born to Philomena DiAndriole Rizzo, for whom I have chosen my use-name.
As I prepare to drive with my father and son to her wake tomorrow, I remember the summers spent witih Aunt Ro, Uncle Frank and their daughter Francine, who was like a sister to me. We played Barbies together, caught raindrops on our tongues, learned to knit, and listened to our parents talk of adult things as we whispered together iin Frannie's room. Our cousins Marina, Nicky, Bea, Carmen, and Michelle often joined us for elaborate storytelling sessions and jokefests.
Aunt Ro's home was as gracious as a woman gifted in handcrafts, with a classic Italian taste for decor, could make it. I remember her pride as she would present my parents with her ceramics...afghans...knitted booties...and assorted knicknacks through the years.
She and her sisters inherited their mother's culinary talents...learned at Gram's side, feeding family and friends, with countless days spent gathered with the family around Gram's kitchen table putting up garden vegetables or making linguine or cookies or the curious pastry called "anthills" - mounds of honey-saturated balls of dough, which tasted like heaven and settled like lead. Communal cookery days like quilting bees, with all the Rizzo women chattering and rolling and snipping and frying. Cholesterol? Never heard of it!
In fact, girth to Gram signified health, and she led by example, with soft and generous curves and pillowy lap concealing the muscles of a powerful home keeper, the hardworking daughter of peasants. Dad often recounted the story of Aunt Ro letting out his pants while Gram tut-tutted "Louie, Louie, you're looking so thin!"
Her children called Gram "the iron fist in the velvet glove," enforcing a distinct division of labor. Gram's daughters Ro, Marie, Delores and Bea, were wizards at the cooking, mending, gardening and lighter tasks, and my father and Uncle Dom would leap, unasked, to do the heavy lifting and repairs. Gram could be a martinet: her daughters were expected to take care of their men, and the sons and sons-in-law were expected to serve their wives, no questions asked. But to the next generation, she was an adoring and indulgent grandmother.
Visits "up home" were fragrant affairs: riding up with a bushel of steamed crabs firmly wedged in the back seat between Mom and me. We would arrive at Grandma's and Aunt Ro and Uncle Frank would quickly arrive with Frannie. We'd all settle down to a massive crab feast, with Mom tsking over Uncle Frank's exuberant shell-pounding and lack of surgical precision, and Aunt Ro wondering how we could eat anything that looked so much like an insect.
When I was reaching adolescence, Uncle Frank died suddenly, leaving Aunt Ro and Frannie in their new-bought home, where the basement was divided into his pool room and her quilting rooom. He was the first of his generation to go.
The family grew, with more grandchildren arriving to swell the ranks. Gram's seven children produced 15 grandchildren, who went on to produce...well, let's just say it was a crowd that continues to grow as the great-grandchildren arrive.
Gram died in 1980, and Aunt Ro and Aunt Bea - the oldest and youngest of her daughters - together worked to fill in the gap left by her passing. Our trips "up home" were spent now with Aunt Bea, with long summer evenings spent on Aunt Ro's big back porch. The sisters would reminisce with my parents while the cousins chatted and our children played.
It was in the late 1990s that Bea died after a long struggle with cancer, and the linchpin came out of the family. One by one over the decade that followed, the sisters passed on. As they slipped away, I had the sense that the tide of their generation was going out, washing their lives away with it.
Aunt Ro was the last of the sisters to go, dying 14 months after my mother and less than six months after Aunt Delores. Of Philomena Rizzo's children, the last remaining is my father, Louis.
And the choices of the family's future are being passed now with our generation - whether and how to maintain old patterns and traditions, or to move forward with a new and different path.
As I prepare to drive with my father and son to her wake tomorrow, I remember the summers spent witih Aunt Ro, Uncle Frank and their daughter Francine, who was like a sister to me. We played Barbies together, caught raindrops on our tongues, learned to knit, and listened to our parents talk of adult things as we whispered together iin Frannie's room. Our cousins Marina, Nicky, Bea, Carmen, and Michelle often joined us for elaborate storytelling sessions and jokefests.
Aunt Ro's home was as gracious as a woman gifted in handcrafts, with a classic Italian taste for decor, could make it. I remember her pride as she would present my parents with her ceramics...afghans...knitted booties...and assorted knicknacks through the years.
She and her sisters inherited their mother's culinary talents...learned at Gram's side, feeding family and friends, with countless days spent gathered with the family around Gram's kitchen table putting up garden vegetables or making linguine or cookies or the curious pastry called "anthills" - mounds of honey-saturated balls of dough, which tasted like heaven and settled like lead. Communal cookery days like quilting bees, with all the Rizzo women chattering and rolling and snipping and frying. Cholesterol? Never heard of it!
In fact, girth to Gram signified health, and she led by example, with soft and generous curves and pillowy lap concealing the muscles of a powerful home keeper, the hardworking daughter of peasants. Dad often recounted the story of Aunt Ro letting out his pants while Gram tut-tutted "Louie, Louie, you're looking so thin!"
Her children called Gram "the iron fist in the velvet glove," enforcing a distinct division of labor. Gram's daughters Ro, Marie, Delores and Bea, were wizards at the cooking, mending, gardening and lighter tasks, and my father and Uncle Dom would leap, unasked, to do the heavy lifting and repairs. Gram could be a martinet: her daughters were expected to take care of their men, and the sons and sons-in-law were expected to serve their wives, no questions asked. But to the next generation, she was an adoring and indulgent grandmother.
Visits "up home" were fragrant affairs: riding up with a bushel of steamed crabs firmly wedged in the back seat between Mom and me. We would arrive at Grandma's and Aunt Ro and Uncle Frank would quickly arrive with Frannie. We'd all settle down to a massive crab feast, with Mom tsking over Uncle Frank's exuberant shell-pounding and lack of surgical precision, and Aunt Ro wondering how we could eat anything that looked so much like an insect.
When I was reaching adolescence, Uncle Frank died suddenly, leaving Aunt Ro and Frannie in their new-bought home, where the basement was divided into his pool room and her quilting rooom. He was the first of his generation to go.
The family grew, with more grandchildren arriving to swell the ranks. Gram's seven children produced 15 grandchildren, who went on to produce...well, let's just say it was a crowd that continues to grow as the great-grandchildren arrive.
Gram died in 1980, and Aunt Ro and Aunt Bea - the oldest and youngest of her daughters - together worked to fill in the gap left by her passing. Our trips "up home" were spent now with Aunt Bea, with long summer evenings spent on Aunt Ro's big back porch. The sisters would reminisce with my parents while the cousins chatted and our children played.
It was in the late 1990s that Bea died after a long struggle with cancer, and the linchpin came out of the family. One by one over the decade that followed, the sisters passed on. As they slipped away, I had the sense that the tide of their generation was going out, washing their lives away with it.
Aunt Ro was the last of the sisters to go, dying 14 months after my mother and less than six months after Aunt Delores. Of Philomena Rizzo's children, the last remaining is my father, Louis.
And the choices of the family's future are being passed now with our generation - whether and how to maintain old patterns and traditions, or to move forward with a new and different path.
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