Family Tree

I got a lot done when I got home from work today. I vacuumed, mopped, and dusted the whole downstairs. It looks great and I fully intend to be the Shoe Nazi until Thanksgiving Day.

Tonight I brought up the fact that my dad never had real spaghetti sauce until he was in college. Up till that point, he only knew to put tomato sauce into pasta because that's all his mother had ever done. My mom's husband listed off several things that his mother killed in the kitchen before he was taken elsewhere to eat and discovered most of the food wasn't horrid; she was just screwing it up.

I asked my mom if she had ever "discovered" a food after getting out of her house and she said that besides Chinese take-out, her house was where people discovered new foods. Her family was Portuguese and apparently my Nana made stuff like Octopus soup and Rabbit and a few other things. her father, my Avo, used to make her peanut butter and banana sandwiches, which isn't as odd or Portuguese, but its something I remember.

Apparently my nana had been pregnant with my mom when she and my Avô came over from Portugal in the early fifties. They were so poor and had so little to eat that my nana would starve herself and save the food for my Avo. When he got home from work she would tell him she'd already eaten. It got to the point where my Avô took her to the doctor and he said neither my nana nor the baby were going to live. The one he probably didn't know about for awhile, I'm not sure. He said that he had just moved from Portugal and not a year later the doctor was telling him his wife and unborn child were going to die. Of course they didn't, somehow. Frankly, my nana was probably the most sickly person I've ever met. I only recently learned that she had a tumor in her throat when she was a teenager in Brazil and it was operated on. Back then. Oh my god. On top of that she inherited diabetes and was on dialysis from a few years ago until her death in 2003. I recall her having a mild heart attack a few years before that. I know that as a young woman she was told she had a tumor in her breast. She prayed it away, I've been told. She sat in her room full of fear and prayed. I was also told recently that she had to have a metal plate put in because her ab muscles weren't strong enough to hold her guts together by themselves. Its some crazy shit.

I think my Avô was born in 1934. I don't think he knows exactly when he was born, but we celebrate a birthday, so it must be close. He was good-looking. I've seen black and white shots of him from when he was 18 on his wall. He grew up in the Azores and we actually visited his house and looked around inside while we were there on our trip to Portugal in 1999. My nana was born in Portugal and there is an elaborate story about how the family had been rich but when they moved to Brazil they lost all their money somehow. Don't ask. They eventually moved back to Portugal and my grandparents met. He would've been 21 when my mother was born. Holy shit, he got married at what age? And moved to a different country at 20?? I can't even imagine doing that. People and places are different though. And at 21 he was told his wife was going to die. Um, yikes.

After that the next thing I know is that my mother didn't know English until kindergarten. Kids would make fun of her and she had no idea what they were saying. She thought she had something on her face. She had mad banana curls that were super cute and really soft and her aunt was taking care of ehr one time and got sick of trying to brush her hair so she took her to a salon and got them all chopped off. They never grew back quite the same. She still has them in a bag somewhere. Her parents were very strict to the point of not wanting her to ride a bike or take swimming lessons. To this day she can't swim. Her mother was a pretty angry woman it seems. She mellowed out when she was older but I've seen her get mad. I guess now since I've written this much about her I'll talk some about my dad.

I think I know much more about my dad's upbringing because he's a storyteller, but I probably know much less given that he tends to distort periods in his life that make him look weak. Either way, my Grandma was born in 1912 or thereabouts. She always lied and said she was born in 1913. I don't know why one year makes all the difference. She met my grandfather on a cruise where his and his brothers band was playing. They called themselves the Marsh Brothers because they knew no one would be able to pronounce our name. There were four brothers and two, my grandfather and the other middle child, were identical twins. Their parents had come over from Germany and their father left their mother I think. Something about a fish market and stuff, I don't know. I mean that's where he worked. Anyways, her nickname was Liepzen or something. It was pronounced Leap-shin and it meant "Darling", but as I hear it she was anything but. But let's get back to the cruise. my Grandma's mother had the balls to stand up and ask my grandfather if he was single. My Grandma was wicked embarressed. Later he met her out on the deck and later on he told her that he had been rinsing with Listerine and she happened to come out when it was still in his mouth. He didn't want to spit it out in front of her so he swallowed it. He had been married before, so they had a small marriage since her parents dissapproved, but later on they had a larger wedding. At the age of 40 she had my father and a year or so later, his sister. My father has commented on how he can see why his father never wanted to put the effort into disipline because he could never imagine dealing with a child at the age of 40 and up.

Anyways, I'm going to continue this later. I'm getting carpal tunnel. Hopefully I'll also find out more and have more to add as well since this is more of a spewing of the little I know and less a story.