As recorded by Rosalie Ragucci-Cook (her granddaughter)

By the time I started dating my husband, John, my grandma was already in the nursing home. She absolutely adored John. He made her laugh and he’d ask her great questions about her life. We still laugh today about “Riley”. Grandma told John one day that someone (I don’t remember who) was “living the Life of Riley”. John asked Grandma “Who’s Riley?” She said “Oh, he had it good!!” She never told him who Riley was (old TV show character) but we still joke about Riley all the time.

One day, she told him about her trip to America. Her family was Italian but lived in Tunis, Tunisia because her father worked there. He came to America and she came with her mother and siblings later. They left from Marseilles, France. She said that she remembered her mother making them be quiet and making them stay away from the windows during the trip and she said that the windows were all painted black. They came to America during the war so they were trying to keep the ship dark at night so that it wouldn’t be bombed. In fact, after the ship dropped them off in America, it was bombed on the way back to Europe.

My grandmother fell twice in her later years. Each time, she literally broke one of her eyes. She was almost totally blind in the last 6-8 months of her life. At that point, she developed “blind senility”. She could see shadows and light and dark but not even enough to make out a shape. It would make her think she was seeing things and it was heartbreaking. In her last year of life, before she became blind, she would ask me if John and I were going to have a baby. I confided in her that we were trying. After she became blind and very senile, she would say to my mother (her daughter Rose) “bring me the boy. I want to see the boy”. My mom would ask “What boy? We don’t have any boys.” My mom was an only child, I was an only child, there were never any boys. Grandma would ask to see the baby, the boy. So I always knew that my baby would be a boy because my grandma told me before I was even pregnant. She never lived to see him but she would have loved him!

 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!