Antonio

   My grandfather was a quintessential, old-school Italian from Strangolagalli, in the province of Frosinone.  A staunch, traditional man, he remained thin in stature, eating and drinking only the essentials: wine, coffee, bread, soup, pasta and very small portions at that.  Rather tall, or though it seemed that way to me, he wore the same sweater and baggy trousers and saw little need to comb his thinning, grey hair. His sunken cheekbones, wrinkled and weathered, rested beneath the bags under his eyes.  Likely, he endured interrupted sleep on the cot which was strategically set up in another room, separate from my grandmother's. That "room," a narrow and dark hallway, always smelled like cigars, sweat, and age.
    On Saturday, the day of our regular visit to Grandma's and Grandpa's,  we would enter the three-family house up the back two flights of stairs, through the kitchen. I remember watching all the sheets billowing from the clotheslines and wondering how someone connected the lines from my grandmother's house to the house across the driveway.  It seemed so far and near at the same time.  I would then kiss my grandmother, who was always in the kitchen, and if it was winter, I would warm my hands with the pilot light flickering on the stove.  Then I would meander down the hallway of the railroad apartment into the room where my grandfather could always be found.  Sometimes he would be sleeping and then an hour or so later, I could hear his shuffle down the hall, one foot, then the other, rhythmic and deliberate.  He would gently touch my chin between his thumb and index finger, say very little, for he knew very little English, and then head to the kitchen to sit in his chair, the torn one on the end with the beige, plastic cushion. This was when he ate his soup, drank his black coffee, and dipped Italian bread, perfectly sliced from Pacelli's bakery, into each.
     It seemed strange to me that my grandfather would offer me a cup of coffee at that time, but even stranger was that he poured a shot of Anisette into the cup.  I don't remember really liking coffee, nor did I have a taste for licorice liquor.  I was eight.  But I felt so grown-up being offered the grown-up drink that I never refused it.  I sipped it slowly, allowing it to rest in my mouth and seep into my gums and tongue.  I almost never finished the cup of coffee, but it didn't matter.  No one cared. No one noticed. 
     I learned later that my grandfather was my grandmother's second husband.  She loved the man she married in the early 1900's, and had one child with him, but he died during World War I.  It was the Italian custom that should a husband die, his brother was told to marry the widow.  Antonio, unwillingly but nonetheless, respecting the tradition, married Assunta, had four children with her and never showed anyone his warm, fuzzy side.
     I didn't know my Italian grandfather very well.  I don't think anyone in the United States really did.  But I do know this:  He loved me. In his own, hardened way, my grandfather loved me. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me.  I felt it in his fingers when he touched my chin. And I knew it in my heart when the Anisette found its way there. I hope he'll be watching over me next year when I try to find my way to Strangolagalli, an hour south of Rome.
     I'll be sure to find someone there who knew him.