Memories of Mom

September 1939, age 16

            Quite a few years ago my mother asked me to retrieve something from a remote corner of her walk-in closet. 

            “See that yellow shoebox in the back,” she said.  “I want to show you something.”

            I lifted the shallow lid and saw a pair of shoes so unlike anything that my sensible-shoe mother had ever worn in her entire life – shiny pumps with 3” high heels.  Tucked into the left shoe was a folded piece of paper.

            “Read it,” she said, smiling.

            Written in her unmistakable scrawl:  I want to be buried in these shoes.  It will be the only time that they won’t hurt my feet.

            These designated shoes later fell victim to moisture damage or mildew attack.  Nonetheless, in keeping with her wishes, you may have noticed the fancy new kicks that will now adorn my mother‘s feet throughout eternity.  When I bought those shoes, I could feel my late sister, Judi, hovering over my shoulder, impish glint in her eye as she said to me, “Get them for the old girl.”  I heard it in my head, loud and clear.

            As a footnote, known to family and close friends only, my mother had a lifetime obsession with shoes.  She had a “fit” problem, as she called it, and she could never seem to find a comfortable shoe.  Hundreds of shoes, mostly mail order from specialty retailers, passed through the front door of the Garbarini home, only to exit through the back door where they were hand carried by my father, Aldo, to the local post office for their return trip.  Over the years he may have been better known at the post office than any of the ten most wanted. 

            From vintage family photos I remember a particular picture of my mother as a little girl, a toddler, dressed to the nines in a soft wool coat and matching hat tied with ribbons under her chin.  She proudly pushed a child-sized wicker doll buggy along a snow-covered street, a favorite porcelain baby cradled into a handmade blanket inside.  Her handsome brother could bee seen in the distance, pedaling his little roadster on a freshly cleared sidewalk.  The year of the photo was dated 1925 and my mother was age two.  Their parents were hard-working immigrants – dad from Denmark and mom from Austria. 

            Fast forward to 1942.  My mother was now a beautiful young woman having, in her words, the time of her life.  She worked at the Waldorf Astoria in downtown Manhattan and enjoyed a rich and full social life.  There was a war going on, big bands were playing and she was dancing.  A few years later she met a warm and funny man, unique in so many ways, with red hair, rare for a person of Italian decent.  His name was Aldo and he changed her life forever.  They married in 1951.  They lived among the beatnicks in Greenwich Village for a while and when they wanted to start a family, they moved back to their hometown – The Bronx.       

            As my mother, Edith was always there. She made a comfortable home for our family, and when we were young she listened to as much as my sister and I wanted to confide when we were teenagers (which intentionally wasn’t all that much). She baked Christmas cookies for us and made pot roast for dinner on Sundays. It was good.  Edith and Aldo were both great parents and together they raised two daughters through the idyllic fifties and the turbulent sixties.  They were happy and there is never any question that they belonged together.  They balanced each other on their well-calibrated scale of marriage, until Aldo’s death on November 7th 1989.

            Edith imparted to me a deep love of books.  She always had a novel or two in progress:  the classics, contemporary fiction of the time, even an occasional risqué selection.  She shared her books with me, fostering her passion of the written word.  Sometimes, as I would pick up a novel to read that she had recently finished and she would warn me, “There are some things in that book that you should skip over.  That’s what I did.”  Of course, I questioned how she knew what parts to skip without ever reading them, and how to know when it was safe to go back to the story. 

            Her father (my grandfather) passed his musical gifts to my mother.  He was a professional piano-player for the silent movie theatres and he taught my mother until she became an accomplished pianist as well.  I remember the magical way that the music transported her whether she played classical or modern pieces.  For the time that her fingers flew over the black and white keys, she was no longer my mother, nagging me to clean my room, but a self-fulfilled musician.

            But, Edith’s first joy in life was her family.  She was unwavering in the pride she had in her two daughters, the artist and the nurse.  One by one, her grandchildren filled her life, and as they grew she encouraged them to pursue their own dreams. When her first grandchild was born, my son, Joey, her excitement was uncontainable as she made the long solo trek to Anchorage, Alaska to meet him.  And my mother often said how lucky she was to have two such wonderful sons-in-law.

            Edith Peterson Garbarini would have been 91 years old this month.  That’s a long and full life.  Dance on in heaven, Edith.  I hope those shoes feel good.