Last night while talking to my dad he mentioned a few things that I want to write down before I forget them.
Oddly enough, at 47 years old, I still learn new things when an elder starts opening up about family.
Here are some brief bullets from lasy night’s call that I hope to build on over the next few weeks.
I learned today that the reason my father and his brother had 5 years
between them was because my grandmother had miscarried a baby girl.
Ummm, a possible aunt? That would have been nice.
During Air Raid Drills or power outings my father, grandparents and
my uncle would pile into “the bathroom with a candle in the sink to wait
it out because it was the safest place to burn a candle”.
My grandfather was an air raid officer. I had no idea.
My dad and his family had the first TV on the block because my
grandfather built it. This story I had heard before but I didn’t know
that he was able to build it because he went to TV and radio school. TV
and radio school? What the hell is that? He was a construction dude when
I knew him. He helped build the Brooklyn Bridge what happened to his
education?
My uncle was born on V-Day in Brooklyn NY. He was what they called a
Victory Baby and everyone at the hospital was very excited so much so
that someone stole the placenta. Grandma had a vaginal birth but my
uncle was born inside the placenta like a calf or a horse. He had to be
cut out of it and it came on with a V shape on top. Sounds like some
crazy, old Italian
malocchia thing.
Malocchia by the way was used often in my house whenever someone was
ill or if I wanted to get out of school. “I feel over looked.” Don’t ask
because I don’t know where that term came from but “over looked” meant
someone gave me the malocchia and it was taken very seriously in my
home.
Anyway, I digress…as I was saying, my uncle had to be cut out of the
placenta like a fowl. The placenta was wrapped around him in the form of
a “V”. Ummm, ok…I am just relaying a story here people, these are not
my memories. Anyway, when he came out a nurse exclaimed, “we have a
victory baby.”
From two accounts of the story, my dad and today my sister who heard
from my Grandmother, things are sketchy here. My dad says that my
grandmother wanted to keep the placenta to put into a necklace because
supposedly she heard this would keep you safe at sea, as if she was
boring an ocean liner in the near future! Anyway, when she asked for it
she was told that it disappeared and that perhaps one of the nurses had
stolen it.
My sister says, my grandmother told her that a nurse had wanted it
for a necklace and when she asked for it, she was informed that it was
missing.
Weird, either way I say. No?!
I also learned tonight that my dad was an
RH factor baby
and that when my uncle was born very ill. He was sickly as a child and
very blond with blue eyes. My grandmother and my grandfather both have
brown hair and brown eyes. The story is that when my grandfather came
home from the war, he asked “whose baby is that?”
I am here to say that my cousin’s born from my uncle look like my
grandfather, especially the oldest. He is the spitting image. It is
actually a bit distrubing considering my
history with my grandfather.
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