Nonna to the Rescue

Once Upon a Time (not too long ago) Timothy was following me around the kitchen, worried. 

"I think I've been MOSTLY good. I mean, sometimes I wasn't, but MOSTLY I was. Do you think I've been good?" he asked.

"I think that worrying about this on December 24th is a little late," I replied.

Timothy stopped pacing.

"That's it," he announced. "I'm calling Nonna."

And after he finished talking with Nonna, he handed me the phone and I got a lecture.

#NonnaConnections

Here, There, Everywhere

When it's your turn to host Sunday dinner and your parents have just returned from a trip to Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Shetland Islands, and Nova Scotia ... they show up to your door as Viking Man and Viking Woman.

They also come bearing gifts: bottled water from the Greenland Ice Cap (the purest natural drinking water in the world) ...

and petrified wood from Sydney, Nova Scotia.

They also show you their certificates for having sailed through the Arctic Circle.

After lunch and just thirty minutes after they left, my friend who was visiting HER parents sent me the following text: The Viking is here ...

and here was my response: They're EVERYWHERE! They were just HERE!

In fact, here's another sighting ...

\

And just in case you're wondering if my parents know how to have fun, allow me to present the following ...

Mad Hatter Dinner, Myrtle Beach, SC

New Year's Eve family cruise to Cozumel, Mexico

Somewhere in Chile, South America

Dancing in Argentina

I want to be them when I grow up.

P. S. I also have a video of Timothy and Nonna dancing the floss. It's a GREAT video, but I'm not sharing it. Whereas Nonna wouldn't mind in the least, Timothy would ;-) 

The Heart of a Lion

Let me tell you about my dad. He’s 75 years old. He doesn’t smoke, and he doesn’t have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes. He eats healthy meals. He works out and plays golf. And yet, he has heart disease. He’s had two bypass surgeries (the first one at age 40). Last November he had a cardiac catherization and had a stent put in. 

This morning, he underwent yet another cardiac catherization and received yet another stent.

Why am I telling you this? Because despite all this, my dad never complains. He’s poked and prodded and patched up, but still he smiles. He jokes with the doctors and charms the nursing staff and flatters the technicians. Everyone likes him .... really, really likes him.

(And so do we.)

After three days in the hospital, tomorrow he’ll be home again, and like always he’s not going to let heart disease stop him.

Hear him roar.

How many clouds do you have? (or, the Misadventures of Nonno and Nonna with their iPhones)

Last Friday evening Joe and I made a quick visit to my parents. We let ourselves in the front door and discovered my parents sitting at the kitchen table huddled over their iPhones.


"We are downloading all our photos from the clouds," says my mom, wearing her reading glasses and using an index finger to jab the keyboard.


"Um, Mom. You do know it's a CLOUD. Just one," I reply helpfully.


"Oh no. I have hundreds of photos. I definitely have more than one cloud."


She jabbed away. I thought about the time my mom purchased an iPhone specifically for an upcoming cruise. She was proud to have entered the modern age! She took classes at the Verizon store. She learned how to text, take photos, and send an email. She asked Nicholas to set her screen image, Jonathan to increase the font size, and Timothy to edit her address book. She was ready for their trip.


After their cruise to Scandinavia, I picked them up a the airport and right away my mom wanted to know why I never -- in the entire two weeks! -- replied to any of the texts and photos she sent.


"Your sister answered my texts. Your brother did, too. But not a word from you," she complained, making it clear who were her favorite children.


I had no idea what she was talking about. But upon investigating further we realized that she did indeed send me photos and texts. Lots and lots of them. To our home phone ... our LANDLINE.


Evidently, the Verizon class didn't make that part particularly clear.


So, standing there in my parents' kitchen, I figured a cloud by any other name (whether plural or singular) was still a cloud. I left it at that.


EXCEPT ... except my father, who up until a month ago sported a tiny flip phone clipped to his belt, now has an iPhone.


Consider yourself forewarned.

Surprised, shocked, and totally dismayed
The world is in complete disarray.
Things like this don’t happen every day …
For Nonno bought an iPhone today.

-from the files of very bad poetry by bia

Because everyone needs a turkey on their head

A few years ago our entire family celebrated Thanksgiving on Hilton Head, and to commemorate the occasion Nonna gave everyone turkey hats. Most of us wore them indoors -- under duress (no hat, no food!) -- but these two wore them everywhere. And they got lots and lots of attention.

We still have those hats. They're in our hat box. You can borrow them if you'd like. 

 

two turkey walking on the beach

a turkey taking in the view

two turkeys playing cards with Nonno

The Nonno who always said No! No!

I wrote this fun story for my father on his 70th birthday. Last week he turned 75, so I thought I'd pull it out of the archives ...

Once upon a time there was a Nonna and Nonno who had opposite ideas. For example, when Nonna said they should go this way ...

Nonno thought they should go that way.

Nonna liked to walk fast,

but Nonno didn't. At all.

Nonna liked to visit art galleries and museums,

but Nonno would rather go fishing.

Perhaps the biggest opposite thing about them was this: Nonna liked to say Yes! Yes! to trying new things,

but Nonno always said No! No!

One day Nonna had an idea. A perfectly wonderful, exciting new idea. "Let's take ballroom dancing!" she announced.

Nonno was horrified. The Tango? The Jive? The Waltz? Nonno thought ballroom dancing was a perfectly awful, no good, very bad idea. And just to be sure he said,

Well Nonna wasn't going to listen to Mr. No-No. She thought about Nonno's personality and realized three things:


1- Nonno used to be in the Army. He was used to be told what to do -- when to march, sleep, stand in lines, stop, and run.

2- Nonno like John Wayne. He liked cowboys, stampedes, and barns.

3- And the third thing Nonna realized was that Nonno wasn't very graceful or hip; in fact, he was stodgy and ... adorably square.

So one day Nonna told Nonno (remember, he's used to following orders) that she signed them up for SQUARE DANCE LESSONS!


"Square dancing is perfect!" she said. "They tell you exactly what to do; you get to walk in a square; and even John Wayne knew how to square dance!"


(She wasn't exactly sure about the John Wayne fact, but she was pretty sure.)

Nonno thought about it. And an amazing thing happened. For the first time, Nonno who always said No! No! decided to say ...

To be sure, he didn't say Yes! Yes! But one Yes! is better than No! No!


And that is the story of Nonno who changed his No! No! to a Yes! and became Nonna's cowboy. They've been dancing through life ever since.

THE END

Pizza makes everything feel better

Dear Dad,


~This is a photo of the day we took a train from Naples to Sorrento.

 ~Then we took a boat to the island of Capri.

 ~Capri is a hilly island. You walked up, down, and all around with your bad knee. It was a long day....

 ~By late afternoon we took the boat back to Sorrento.

 ~In Sorrento, you turned left to head back to the train station, we all turned right to explore Sorrento.You did not know this was in the itinerary.

 ~You got a teensy bit grumpy about more walking.

 ~So we planted you at a restaurant and bought you a pizza.

 ~The pizza made your knee feel better.

 ~The end.

You're the best, Dad! Thanks for putting up with all of us! Happy, happy birthday!


Love,
Bia

On the train to Sorrento.

The Ride Home

This afternoon I drove Nonno's SUV to pick Timothy up from school. Within five minutes he had discovered:


1- Nonno's tic tacs,
2- Nonno's treasure trove of quarters,
3- Nonno's automatic seats that not only go up and down, but also tilt backward and forward,
4- and that Nonno doesn't listen to cool music (the radio was tuned to something called "Willie's Roadhouse" which, although terrible, is better than Nonna's car where the radio is always tuned to "Opera").


#funridehome
#whatcanwedowithallthesequarters

Timothy and Nonno in Disney World.
"I have to sleep on princess sheets?" yelled Timothy.

Seeking Sympathy

"Nonna, listen to this. We went to church this past Saturday night, like we always do. Then I will go to church on Monday because that's when the seventh grade goes. Tuesday I go again for All Saints' Day, on Friday we have our all school Mass, and then we'll be back again Saturday night. That's FIVE times in eight days. You need say a prayer for me so I'll survive."

~Timothy, in a voicemail to Nonna who is always the recipient on any news related to church or church attendance.

In which we lie ... repeatedly

To plan a surprise 70th birthday party for my Mom whose birthday was yesterday (Sunday, July 3) we all had to tell some fibs ...


Fib #1: "Since we were all together three weeks ago for the cruise, and since last weekend we all returned from trips [Bia to Lake Tahoe, Laura to Myrtle Beach, and David to Haiti] we just need this weekend to recover." said Maria.


Fib #2: "What are we doing on Sunday? We have a church picnic," said Laura.


Fib #3: "How about you come here on Monday instead?" suggested David.


Fib #4: "We'll celebrate your birthday NEXT weekend," all of us said.


Fib #5: "It's my turn to do Sunday lunch, so come here and we'll have a small pre-birthday celebration. But come later -- more toward 1:15 -- because we are biking on the canal in the morning." said Maria, who needed time for everyone to get here before i Nonni.


I don't know how we pulled it off, but we did. Maybe it was all that fibbing ...

Gelato Here, Gelato There, Gelato Everywhere

I was going through some of the bambino's old papers when I discovered this little paragraph he wrote a couple of years ago. It made me laugh. Out loud. You see, in listing all the reasons why he loves Italy, he left out the most important one ... GELATO.


Just before leaving on our last family trip to Rome and the Amalfi Coast, my parents promised to buy the boys a gelato whenever and wherever they wanted one ... no exceptions. If you wanted a gelato, Nonna and Nonno would buy it for you.


(In case you're wondering, Joe and I were NOT included. We had to buy our own.)


So, our boys basically gelato-ed their way through Italy.

Gondolas, race tracks, and pasta aside ...
it's the gelato!

"A better snack would be a gelato."
-Timothy, in Pompeii

"I really, really want a gelato."
-Timothy, in Pompeii

"Hey Nonno, about that gelato ..."
-Timothy, in Sorrento

Silence
(he's eating gelato)

"I'm ready for another gelato."
-Timothy, Villa Oplontis

"Nonna, can I have a gelato?"

gelato here, gelato there,
gelato everywhere!

What to expect when you're expecting your parents

This week I will be picking my parents up from the airport, and every time they return from one of their adventures I never know what to expect.


For example, last year my parents were returning from a trip to Sweden, Norway and Russia, and as I was standing there at the arrival gate what to my wondering eyes should appear but ...


my mom, wearing blond pigtails and a Viking helmet.

A few years ago when they returned from a trip to Mexico, my Mom was wearing a sombrero and carrying -- believe me, the auditory memory is still there -- some colorful maracas.

When they returned from Thailand, perched on top of my mom's head was a pointy straw hat because, you know, she was going straight to work in the rice fields.


So this week they're coming back from a High Seas Adventure (with 30-foot waves I mean that literally) where they sailed around the tip of South America and toured Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Which begs the question, what to expect at the airport?
 
This time I am somewhat prepared because a few days ago I received the following photo via WhatsApp ...

my mom, in Chile.