lees lives here

olvidare:

The fact that there’s over 7.2 billion people in the world and not even one of them is taking one for the team by dating me is extremely unacceptable

(via raynicholemarie)

Today

Parole dal mio Nono (Words from my Grandfather)

As I lay on my back in the small rickety twin bed that my father once slept in I squeeze my eyes as tightly as I can and will myself to sleep. When I peek my eyes back open I am instantly overcome with disappointment. I am still awake. Still staring at the cracked off white ceiling, lit up with the luminous yellow glow of the night light on the hallway wall. Below me I hear the unmistakable noise of grandma’s cheetah print slippers shuffling across the old linoleum kitchen floor. I am staring out the quaint weathered window at the navy New York sky, dotted with light from millions of miles away. My mind travels to my own kitchen back home. And my mother. I wonder what she is doing now. I wiggle my restless toes in the sheets, creating little mountains and valleys. I am not tired, I convince myself, not ready for sleep. “Grandpa” I hiss, my voice filling the small room.  The sound settles back into the silence. I toy at the idea of saying it louder. “Grandpa?” The air remains still aside from the trickle of water in the kitchen below. “Grandpa?!” I finally muster the courage to call down the stairs, my six year old voice splitting a clean slice through the habitual silence that is settled throughout the house. A few moments pass before I hear him. He is slowly padding up the narrow, old, creaky staircase and soon I am nestled in the crook of his arm. I wait with great anticipation. His fingers fumble at the flaps of his tattered leather eyeglass case. Satisfied with myself, I relax. Soon I am fighting my eyelids, which slide involuntarily down my eyes. I am struggling to stay awake as a story unfolds before me. 

The importance of family was never a question for me, even though relatives were strewn all across the country, and it seemed impossible to have everyone present in one place. As I hopped from city to city following the path of my father’s seemingly ever-changing career I always hoped the next move would bring me to New York.  I wanted more than anything to live close enough to see my Grandparents more than once a year, close enough to know my cousins, to have Aunts and Uncles at my birthday parties like the rest of my friends did.  However, I was lucky; despite the distance I had developed a special bond with my Grandpa over the love of language we both shared.

From a young age he kindled in me a passion for words. At anytime of day he could entertain an entire room with a story from his internal library. Each one was distinctly his own, sprinkled with random Italian words, and surrounding comical characters reflective of his facetious personality and childhood in Italy.  A story of a fat italian housewife falling victim to a popper’s trickery and gaining a “culo genta” just happened to be the perfect remedy for homesickness. The fooling of an overzealous policeman Colotti and the soiling of his hat? The ideal distraction from a war with my sisters. And his rendition of Billy and the giant? The ultimate comfort when life just wasn’t fair.  Whatever was the case, after hearing one of his stories the world seemed just a bit brighter, whether I understood the morale of the story or not. 

Once I was a bit older, the nightly story time I had experienced when Grandpa came to visit turned into reading time. I had already become the girl in my first grade class replacing Go Dog Go with Little House on the Prairie, coming in early the next day to get the next book. Reading was my first love. And I realized this perched on the armrest of a green La-Z-Boy chair picturing Harry, Hermoine, and Ron in my mind, as Grandpa’s low rough voice peeled each word from the pages of Harry Potter. Together we read through the first three books passing them around among Grandpa, my sister Cara, and me, each taking turns demonstrating our best Professor Snape as we read J.K. Rowling’s characters off the pages and into our big farmhouse.

As Rowling wrote more books, Grandpa got older, and all of a sudden it made a difference that he had been in his late 30’s when my dad was born. His visits became much less frequent, and it seemed whenever he was around I was too absorbed in soccer practice, and dance, and playing outside to ever appreciate his constant offers to sit down and read or help me with homework. Even though I became neglectful of him, he remained persistent, even from hundreds of miles away. At least once a month I would receive letters, their envelopes over stuffed with Edgar Allen Poe, his favorite poet, and newspaper articles about deer jumping through windows or the increasing rate of absurd crimes. At the time receiving Grandpa’s letters weren’t the most exciting moments of my life, but I was smart enough to tuck each one away into a box. My pack rat habits coming to good use. 

When Grandpa was diagnosed with lung cancer, it was hopeless. The doctors completely misdiagnosing, dismissing him with mere back pains until it was much too late for anything to be done. I had been lucky enough to live to 13 without ever experiencing a death or loss of anyone important to me, but all of a sudden my glass castle I had seen to be made of bricks came shattering down around me. After the funeral I sat, in his tattered gray fleece pajama pants dad had bought him during his first and only round of chemo, on our cold concrete basement floor and fumbling through boxes until I found the letters. As my eyes caressed each letter of each word of each sentence I realized the importance of writing. I knew I would never have my grandpa back, but I also knew it was because of him that I loved to read and would never turn down a good story. Because of him for future boyfriends and best friend’s birthday’s a simple text message would never do. I had learned the importance of sitting down to write out a full letter, carefully choosing each word to explain just how much someone means to me. “My dearest Elise,” all of his letters began “Seems like just yesterday we were together.”

the end is the most seductive of all.