New here? Start with “The Nonnas,” Fran’s introduction to the women in these stories.
2006
2008
Toss Me a Salami: The Football Wedding
The bride looks beautiful as she enters the church basement for her wedding reception. The nonnas, decked out in blue silk desses and wearing feathery hats, follow the wedding party into the hall. They…
A Dinner Party
The nonnas from both sides are visiting their newly married granddaughter’s house for the first time. The bride has to entertain the elders by preparing a first-rate dinner for them. The bride is an…
The Macaroni’s in the Basement—The Wake Is Upstairs
There’s been a death on the nonnas’ block. Whether someone dies after a prolonged illness or has the good fortune to “drop dead after work on his way home from the subway,” a wake…
Waw-dee-mell-OWN, Tutti Frutti, and the Ladies from the Block
“Watermelon—it’s a good fruit. You eat, you drink, you wash your face.” — Enrico Caruso. And you can’t get enough of it on the scaldingly hot nights in Brooklyn in the 40s. They are…
A Winery—in Brooklyn?
When you open the door that separates the vestibule from the main hallway in many Brooklyn tenements, you encounter an exotic, fruity but almost acrid odor. Follow your nose to the back of the…
No, No, Nonna, or Nonna the Red Menace
It’s been a long, eventful, and what has turned out to be a blessed nine months. Now the little guy is happily ensconced in a well-upholstered bassinet in a Brooklyn second-floor bedroom. The visitors…
Hurry Up… The Bride’s Getting Out of the Car!
The greatest sporting event in the neighborhood, and the only one nonnas sprint for is the weekly viewing of the brides. Just like baseball, football, and hockey, there is a season for this activity—spring…
2010
The Statue’s Eyes Moved—Really
It was a usual fall Friday afternoon in the parish church. The eighth-grade girls, ready to help the nuns and the sacristan with the weekly cleaning, had entered from the side door. The early…
The War of the Flowers
Early on midsummer mornings, city nonnas descend to tend their gardens. Some attack a plot of land “out front,” or in an area way, separated from the sidewalk by a short fence. Others wade…
Getting Sauced
The sound of frying—garlic, onions, and fennel-seeded sausage —fills the air as a late-waking nonna hurriedly makes her way home from a Sunday 9 o’clock Mass. The other nonnas had attended “the eight” (o’clock…
My Town’s Better Than Your Town
The young mothers — or ladies on the block — get together every weekday to pick up the kids from school, and on Sundays to go to Mass as a family. They trade recipes…
Sand in Their Shoes
Coney Island—the boardwalk mecca — at the last stop of the Sea Beach Express. The nonnas huff and puff and under their breath call out to the saints, as they drag grandchildren, ages 2…
Celebrating a Saint
On a blustery Friday night in February, when a nonna answers the door, three compari walk up the stairs, stopping to knock at the door on each landing as they make their way to…
A Block Party
It’s easy to organize a guest list when all the invitees live within a three-block radius, some in apartments in the same building. So any occasion for celebrating — a baptism, a first communion…
Piecework
The nonnas arrive at the storefront factory at 8:45am. Each carries a paper lunch bag filled with last night’s leftovers, no matter what they are (even pasta often turns up), stuffed into a sandwich…
How the Garden Grows
Zucchini, zucchini, zucchini everywhere! Light green, dark green, striped, yellow with orange-tinged ends. Some weigh two pounds, some weigh four, a few weigh four ounces and a tiny bit more. The nonnas’ front aprons…
Problems! Problems!
On a beautiful day, the nonnas and the grandchildren arrive at Prospect Park, Brooklyn’s premier park. They let the children run freely in the playground while they sit on a bench — never taking…
The Saint’s Big Day
The ladies lean out their windows as they hear the band approaching. They rest their elbows on pillows on the windowsill. Some share the space with a child. Each clutches a quarter, or a…
TV Time
The nonnas can’t quite believe that television is coming to their neighborhood. From their vantage point on the stoop, they begin tsk-ing whenever they see another antenna attached to a tenement chimney. “I don’t…
Price Wars
The nonnas don’t go shopping. In their own language, they “make shopping,” and they “make shopping” a work of art. It is the con’s art of wearing down storekeepers to give them the best…
Saturday at the Movies
On weekends, the nonnas often take the grandchildren to the movies. One Saturday, the women and children enter a local theater. The children laugh as they race down the aisle. Even though it’s ten…
Covering a Fig Tree
The nonnas arrive in a backyard. Each drags a piece of rolled-up linoleum — a leftover from that on her kitchen floor. They are here to take part in an annual event, the covering…
A Live Show
For the nonnas, Saturday morning shopping is more challenging than their daily stop at the vegetable stand, butcher shop, or fish market. On Saturday, they go to the poultry market, a.k.a. the chicken market…
Fireworks
Nonnas don’t drive. (For that matter, neither do nonnos.) Instead, they rely on sons, sons-in-law — sons of cumare , and sons of neighbors— to get them where they have to go. And they…
Fire Hydrant Days
When the temperature hits the mid-nineties and the linoleum on their floors starts to buckle, the nonnas realize that even they can’t stand the heat in the kitchen. Each carries a folding chair as…
The Name Game
A new baby on the block! A new baby on the block! The nonnas are all excited. Mother and child won’t leave the hospital for several days, but the nonnas have ready their arsenal…
Church Ladies
The nonnas clutch their black cloth coats tightly to keep out the fall wind as they assemble on a Wednesday night on a corner near the church. While they wait for a perpetually tardy…
Preserving the Past
It’s a morning at the end of August. Nonnas lucky enough to have a grape arbor lush with filled-to—bursting concord grapes pluck the bunches by the stem and deposit them in bushel baskets. Other…
Homework
The nonnas like to have their own money to set aside in covered sugar bowls. They use the money for treats for grandchildren, for special gifts for their husbands’ birthdays, and of course, for…
Photographic Memories
On a rainy afternoon, the nonnas are having coffee in the kitchen. In the next room, separated only by a doorway, their grandchildren are turning the pages of old photo albums and rifling through…
It’s All in a Name
Ah, May… . the month of Mother’s Day, the month of Our Lady, of communion breakfasts, of the bishop’s annual visit to the parish church — and the time for Confirmation and…
Hot Stuff
The nonnas’ front aprons are full, full, full, brimming with hot peppers — long ones, chubby cherry ones, and wrinkly ovals. Red, green, stripes of red and green, stems curling around the nonnas’ fingers…
Across the Alley
The nonnas wash, iron, and pack clothing that their grandchildren have outgrown. Every couple of months, they go to the post office and mail the shorts, shirts, and skirts to relatives, no matter how…
Anything for Thanksgiving?
One of the nonnas’ greatest joys on Thanksgiving morning is to dress the grandchildren in ragamuffin outfits for their run around the neighborhood begging for coins, candy, crayons, or “anything for Thanksgiving.” The nonnas…
The Nonnas
A tribute to the nonnas (the grandmas) some of us knew — and to those we wish our children and their children could have known. The nonnas a half-century ago in any metropolitan area…
A Baby Is Born
On Christmas Eve, the nonnas meet on the corner near the Church. Each talks nonstop, paying no attention to the others, about the feast she has served for the Vigilia. Seven fishes. Eight side…
2011
Happy New Year
The basement with its laundry room and functional kitchen becomes a ballroom on New Year’s Eve. Twisted colorful crepe-paper streamers criss-cross the space’s low ceiling. The radio is turned up loud and brings in…
Ready for a Wedding
It is midafternoon on a blustery winter day; the sun is hiding behind a cloud. The nonnas sit around a kitchen table, each crocheting a lacy gift for a June bride. Their fingers move…
Queen of the Transfers
It is a Friday afternoon and the nonnas are cleaning the church. The door opens, letting in a burst of winter air, a late arrival enters. Under her heavy coat, she wears an outfit…
Sewing for Fun
Most of the nonnas sew piecework in a factory five days a week to earn a living; they sew for their family at home in the evenings and on weekends to relax. Once they…
The World at Their Doorstep
The nonnas leave their apartments to shop for food and fabric, to pay their respects at wakes, to have coffee with one another, and, of course, to make novenas and go to Mass. Oh…
Guarding the Fireside
There are no flowery fields of clover in Brooklyn. So on hot summer nights, streets and sidewalks become living rooms and tiny backyards become campgrounds. The nonnas’ grandsons gather their supplies for their campfire…
Pizza Rustica
South Brooklyn, 1947, Palm Sunday afternoon. Palm fronds cover a kitchen table where the nonnas sit weaving strands into sculptures. Each twists and braids and ties the green- edged leaves into crucifixes, wreaths, and…
Easter Sweet Grain Pie — Pastiera
Holy Thursday, twilight is descending as the nonnas leave the seventh and last church they visit. They are eager to return to their neighborhood to shop for an essential ingredient— dried grain, or wheat…
New Spot for a Garden
The groundwork for an exodus begins on a sunny springtime late Sunday afternoon when a daughter invites her mother to join her family for a ride. With the dinner dishes put away after the…
In the Style of the Shoemaker
The nonnas cook using “a dash of this, a spoonful of that, and a pinch of whatever.” So on a rainy spring afternoon, it is surprising when they sit at the kitchen table and…
We Need the Eggs
On a hot July afternoon, the nonnas are sitting on folding chairs at the curb, crocheting lace trim on linen handkerchiefs, and watching their grandchildren play in water spewing from a fire hydrant. “Too…- A Semi-Private Bath
Friday after the nonnas finish cleaning the church, they visit the fish market to buy dinner. Whiting, cod, calamari, sole, shrimp, scallops, mussels. Each nonna has to smell each piece to make sure it’s…
A Storefront Caravan
“In a quaint caravan, there’s a lady they call the Gypsy,” the song says. In South Brooklyn at autumn’s end, the quaint caravan isn’t a brightly colored, circus trailer set up for temporary living…
Let the Season Start
At nine o’clock on the morning after Thanksgiving, the nonnas scurry to the homes of grandchildren, ringing front doorbells until the children appear. No child is late. The nonnas, with their charges in tow…