Nonni

At any given time I've always got 5 or 6 dreams that I just can't figure out rolling around in my head. I ruminate over them all the time. In the middle of the night. "What does it mean?" In the middle of traffic. "What does it mean?" In the middle of lunch. "What does it mean?" In the middle of converstaions with other people. "What does that dream mean?" This subroutine: figure out these damn dreams, is almost always in gear.

This past weekend when I visited my Aunt T. I did something I rarely do, I described one of the dreams on the "hot list" in great detail and then asked her what she thought it meant.

I asked her because this dream concerned some of our family members. My Aunt also happens to be incredibly perspicacious. I've always wished I could be as keen and insightful as she is.

Keep in mind that the dreams I can't figure out are the best/worst puzzles in my head. It's usually the most simple and straight forward dreams that I cannot figure out. The reson: there is no such thing as a simple, straightforward dream. If you don' t believe me about that, ask Freud or Jung.

One of the people in this particular dream was Nonni, my great-grandmother, who's been dead since 1977.

My Aunt T. asked me about Nonni and I told her the very basic facts that I knew but that my impression of Nonni was that she was a victim. Where I got that impression I don't know. I think it's because I knew my great-grandmother when she was very old and all she did was sit around talking to my grandmother in Italian and I thought, There's the really old Italian lady who likes to eat vanilla ice cream melted, from a bowl.

It turns out Nonni was much cooler than that. She was the youngest of 5. Her mother died when she was very young. Her father was of high standing in the village. She was told by someone not to marry a farmer's son. Then when she was a teenager her father told her that she had to marry a rich farmer's son. She said no. (She refused an arranged marriage? Hot damn!) She moved to a city where she fell in love with an older man who was a painter. They got married. He got sick and died. She was 23 and a widow. Her brother and sister lived in the US and her brother sent her the money to come to the United States. She moved here and soon was working in a corset factory. She hated it and cried everyday. When my Aunt T. asked her why she didn't leave she said she had to come up with the money to pay her brother for passage to the U.S. and then she had to earn enough to go back to Italy. By the time she'd accomplished both, she was more or less a part of the fabric of the community in which she lived.

She met her second husband, Romeo. They got married. His father owned a produce delivery business and soon Nonni and Nonno opened a store. The had 2 children. They sold the store, moved to Italy for a bit, returned to the US and opened a second store. They sold that store and I believe Nonno died when they owned the third store.

They worked their asses off. They raised their children. They were very successful. As far as I know, when Nonno died in 1965, they had USD$250,000.00 in savings. And in 1965, $250,000.00 was a lot of money.

Even though I've always felt bad for my great-grandmother, because her second husband said and did unkind things to her, in the end she was someone who I might want to emulate. I've yet to determine if I'm the marrying kind, but owning and selling businesses and turning a nice profit -- that's worth copying.