I was his left-handed grand-daughter and we both smelled our elbows on warm days. He always said that it smelled like roasted peanuts. We were the only ones to do it, and he took pride from it. He didn't like the apple blossom smell, or the cinnamon honey that came from the creams I would wear. They're not real smells. The roasted peanuts on the other hand, were unforgettable.
“You have to understand though that this curiosity doesn't work for everyone. I think only with left-handed people. Let me add the fact that I once worked with a friend at Sperry Gyroscope who had the same phenomenon as we. He was left-handed too. Very strange.”
I could never tell if he was joking. He used to scare me, and when he started getting closer to me and wanting me to spend time with him I was a little wary. I remember the summer when I tried to sneak down the stairs with a glass of milk. I wasn't allowed to drink in the basement you see, but I figured if I made it around my aunt in the living room – my grandparents would never know. I slipped going down the carpeted stairs and with every bump I made sliding down the steps, the milk in my glass went up and down, up and down, as did two sets of eyes who saw my crime. I got yelled at, of course, but they laughed. I think that scared me more than anything. Why would they laugh if I just did something bad?
That doesn't really matter now. What matters is the rosary I'm holding in my hand right now. He made it and gave it to me before I went away. It's so colorful, and so meaningful. Going to mass with them on Sunday mornings always felt like such a big deal. Wearing jeans just didn't cut it, but you still felt like a princess when he opened those big wood doors and ushered you in. He used to send those rosaries to my dad so that he could hand them out to the local first communion classes. The priests were so happy to have these rosaries coming from this kind man.
That's really what he is: a kind man. The one who squeezes you, and hugs you, and laughs at you. You really don't want to get him upset, so don't talk about Israel and Palestine or how successful you think the United Nations are, but you can ask him to tell you stories. It's the stories that got us close. He'd tell about the bitz-i-o's he'd order for the fire department in Brooklyn. His father died when he was young, and so the men in the fire department raised him. They taught him to shave, and when the first pizza parlors opened, they asked him to go pick up the bitz-i-o's for lack of knowing how to pronounce pizza. Or he'd tell you about how he didn't have to go to Korea because the two guys next to him weren't as skinny as he was. He'd tell me about all the car accidents my uncles had, and we'd sit there and compare our own scars.
“I just checked my forearm but there were no roasted peanuts there today. We have to wait until the good sunny days of late spring through the early fall to get it. I hope that you are here so that we can sit on the patio and sniff away."
