Mom had a pedestal glass fruit bowl which she bought prior to her mother’s death.  This fruit bowl was always visible both while living in Brooklyn and when we moved to New Jersey.  For some unknown reason, Mom was extremely attached to this fruit bowl.  I’m sure it held many fresh fruits when Mom used it in Brooklyn.  However, I don’t remember Mom ever putting fresh fruit in it when we moved to New Jersey.  Rather, the bowl, usually centered on the kitchen table, always contained artificial fruit.  One day Mom said to me, “You better not throw this fruit bowl away after I die.  If you do, I will come back to haunt you.”  Needless to say, I still have this fruit bowl.  It doesn’t hold the same significance for me that it did for my mother.  Rather, it has become a part of my mom’s history. 

The torch passed from my mother to me.  I keep the treasured fruit bowl safely stored in the attic.  It does not hold the visible reality it did when my mother was alive.  I have now passed the torch onto Rosalie.  Surely she knows she had better not throw the fruit bowl away or else my mother will come back to haunt her!

Recollections of Rosalie Ragucci-Cook

Songs my grandmother always sang: 

• “Lazy mary you’ve got to get up. We need the sheets for the table!”.
• “Take it off, Take it off, said the boys in the rear.” – Yes, she sang this very inappropriate song to me as a child. I’m glad I didn’t understand what it meant then!
• She sang me an Italian lullaby which I now sing to my baby.  We have no idea what the words mean or how to spell them… “Nina nonna mia pachina.  Bambolina day a mama.”  One day, I was singing this to my infant son and thinking of my grandmother.  As I started singing, he turned his head and looked into the dark dining room and smiled.  It was so amazing that I actually said out loud “Hi grandma”.  I know she was there singing with me. 

Recollections of Rosalie Ragucci-Cook

My grandmother spoke English perfectly but she also spoke Italian, although she could not read or write Italian.   She could read and write English but her spelling was horrendous.  She tried to teach me Italian but I never wanted to learn.  I only know a few choice words!

I remember my grandmother talking on the phone to her sister or sister-in-law many evenings after dinner.  I always found the conversations to be so funny because they would talk half in English and half in Italian.  They would switch languages two or three times in each sentence!

Recollections of Rosalie Ragucci-Cook

My grandmother was always in the kitchen.  She made excellent macaroni and gravy with meatballs and sausage.  My mother would go food shopping on the weekend and my mother would make a list on the fridge for my grandmother to tell her exactly what she would cook each day of the week.  Some of grandma’s other specialties were roast chicken, roast beef, stuffed peppers.  She made braciole once or twice. I remember one time when Uncle Joe Ciaccio (her brother in law) came to visit and they made mussells for dinner.  She had quite a collection of cook books and her favorite TV shows were cooking shows (that was before Food Network!)  Grandma often made escarole for herself and my mother.  She loved fish and always made a traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner with no meat.

When I was a child, my grandmother was always afraid I’d be cold. She would always warm up foods for me before serving them to me, even if they were supposed to be served cold. Most notably, she warmed up Jello in a pot on the stove. Needless to say, it melted. She never did that again!

Recollections of Rosalie Ragucci-Cook

My grandmother (Rose Ciaccio) lived with us from when I was 6 months old in 1977.   In the years that she lived with us, she spent most of her time in the kitchen cooking.   She had a huge collection of rubber bands in the kitchen drawer that we always threatened to bury her with (we didn’t).  She went into the nursing home the summer before I left for college in 1995.  She had a stroke and nearly died that summer.  I remember saying goodbye to her when I left for school and thinking I would never see her again.  Amazingly, she recovered and although she couldn’t walk and had a difficult time swallowing, she was herself in every other way.   At 90 years old in her wheelchair in the nursing home, she would tell us that she didn’t eat her ice cream for lunch because she didn’t want to get fat. 

She died in 2005, nine years after her stroke.  When she lived with us, she always liked the analog clock on the stove, even though the rest of us didn’t use it.  The clock stopped working a few years after she went into the nursing home.  It had been broken for at least 7 years when she died.  The day of her funeral, her daughter was standing in the kitchen and heard this unexpected ticking sound.  She looked at the clock and not only was it working again but it was set to the exact right time!  The clock worked for a few days and then stopped again and has never worked again.  We know that grandma came home again and fixed her clock for us.