Olives and Figs

A Song of Ascents

1 Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, 

who walks in his ways!

2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; 

you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. 

3Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

4 Lo, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. 

5 The LORD bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life!

6 May you see your children's children! 

Peace be upon Israel!

My Grandfather was a Coal Miner, a Railroad Builder, and an Entrepreneur. In his lifetime he owned a Grocery Store, a Shoe Store, A Motel, and an Italian Deli. My grandfather did not have a lot of things, but the things that he had were rarely replaced…and used well.  Thinking about him, I remember a few of those “things”, and their attached meanings…

…A heavy key ring (full of car keys and motel room keys)  that attached to his belt- when a young child would pull on it, it snapped back, heavy keys smarting on his backside….Having pulled it ONCE I knew, never to touch it again.

…A coin purse, worn and weathered, brown, cracked leather, and a snap that when opened contained enough change for a grandfather to buy a dozen donuts, a single candy bar, or an Orange Crush out of the Motel Soda Machine. The purse was used to teach how to give the shiny quarter (that you really wanted to keep) into the collection basket by a child at Saint Ann’s Parish Church.

…A pocket knife- sharpened like a razor that could slice right through a ripened tomato from an old man’s garden. Perhaps on a hot summer evening used while sitting on a metal lawn chair, with a tiny granddaughter on his lap, feeding her from the blade of the knife a summer peach freshly pulled from a hovering tree. Above our heads I could hear and see the fireworks popping over the Wasatch Mountain foothills, and even now hear his voice singing an Italian version of “The Yellow Rose from Texas”.

…A Sunday 1954 Missal, red edged pages frayed and a worn in what seems a peculiar spot in the center bottom of the page. Worn into near transparency, was, and is a dark oily working man’s patina marred across the center sewn binding. Hardly used in almost a lifetime, the message left by the print was only recognized fifty years later, when a middle aged granddaughter set her thumb into the worn out page while praying the recently resurrected Old Latin Mass.

…A “railroad watch” and years of wasted words in an Italian accent… not because we weren’t listening, rather because we were just too young to understand- about prisoners, and chain gangs, and seagulls choking on tortilla chips. This mysterious pocket- sterling, white faced, black numbered, silver watch  was in later years used to open the “neighborhood market” on time. His market was a place where the once younger man gave food and credit to the downtrodden families during the Great Depression.  This “young” man was unknown to us, but remembered by many people who told us about his doings 40 years later. An endless line of recipients of his generosity passed by telling stories to our family members, at the old man’s Funeral Mass.

….A pair of Red Silk Pajamas, purchased by a daughter in law, to remedy the insomnia that the old man suffered from for a lifetime. She knew, and I heard her say when I was a child,  that this sleep deprivation was due to the ritual eight p.m. two cups of coffee black…with a tablespoon of sugar… her point never pressed, her cure trumped by the quiet patience that all daughter in laws should have.  Not to be deterred,  one Christmas she bought her father –in- law a Christmas gift of red silk pajamas.  I realize the visual is odd, but it got even odder when grandpa ran a shoestring through the hem on each pant leg to keep the silky red pajama legs from cinching up around his knees. The neat white bow at the ankle was securely placed to ensure no unnecessary discomfort.

…and finally a "fig tree" bearing the ever illusive fig.

These meaningful props appear in my mind unexpectedly, and weave and  spin memories of solid gold – priceless tokens -so cherished that they seemed to be cached in the deepest recesses of my heart.  As I wander into middle age, a spark, a light, a memory of a past gone by, and unrecoverable, are mostly of those of my grandfather, my mentor, and my best friend. 

Symbols spur sad memories sometimes, lost time longed for... which lead to my own wasted words on ears too young to understand the "Motel Utah", killing the goat, and making sausage cured in barrels of olive oil and spice. How can I convey the importance and necessity taking the sausage out of the curing barrel and throwing it over the rafters of a cold dry garage to complete the curing process? For whatever reason, I often catch myself rambling about a corner store, a garden, and a soda machine, and am reminded of their insignificance at the first yawn of my youngest child.

At Thanksgiving Dinner this year, my sister Paula gave me a framed photograph of my eight brothers and sisters, taken by my father almost 40 years ago. My oldest sister appears to be 16, the youngest only 2, and my thirty -something parents looking very modern in their best Easter clothes.  Noting that my parents are younger in the photo than I am now, I look and find other areas of discomfort while staring into the frame, I am for some reason distracted by the photo while speaking to a customer on my telephone at work. Prior to seeing this picture, I thought that my family was far more sophisticated than the picture presents. I thought that I grew up in upper middle class neighborhood unlike this particular photograph expresses… I privately accuse myself of being a snobbish artist that dislikes the jarring photograph. Is it the bad memories of a mischievous teenager, who would have much rather been smoking cigarettes at the park with friends than standing in the middle of the photograph with my very uncool oversized family?  Reluctantly, I know it is my duty to set it on my desk at work feeling an unexpected cringe when a co-worker picks it up and asks, Is that your family?  Before I can answer, I hear my father’s voice “Sempre Famiglia”. These words of my father were codified as a family motto forever the day he placed a sign with those words on the wall of his office. 


“Yes” that’s my family I answer reluctantly, while thinking  to myself…Dad, why that angle?

It isn’t my imagination, because behind my family, is the neighbor across the street’s drab grey adobe, with a flat Eichler style roof, hardly an architectural masterpiece.  The neighbor’s Winnebago looks like a pull down set in the background enveloping my Mother, my Father  and my sister Jenny. –At the right bottom corner two black tires with silver rims catch the spring sun and draw the eye right to the wheels, not to be disrespectful, but what was he thinking?

I moved to Utah in 1982, running away from a bad marriage but pretending to help my dad’s aging parents. Selling the Motel Utah had bought them a house in a prominent neighborhood in Salt Lake City, a world away from Pitarelli, Cosenza, Italy… There was something as jarring about them living in this upscale neighborhood, the same jarring feeling I had looking at the photograph on my desk. For my grandfather,  there was no room for a garden, no motel or retractable key ring. There was no place to sit under a peach tree and have slices of fruit placed on your tongue. But then, I was older and expecting my first child. 


Certain things had not changed, my grandfather still suffered from insomnia –and when I told him I thought it might be from drinking coffee so late at night, I sensed for the second time in my life that he was angry with me.  The only thing that did please him however…was…a maturing Fig Tree in his back yard, that was growing giant black figs. 

When I arrived in Utah in the fall month’s sleep became illusive to me as well. It may have been  the nightly 8 p.m. coffee and cookie ritual, or perhaps from morning sickness. Each night I was woken up in the wee hours after hearing a sliding glass door open, then,  a rattling outside…then, the sliding door shut, a light click off…and the curtains opening. This was a recurring nightly event. Finally, one night, I peered through the curtains and could see in the dusky morning a diminutive Italian septuagenarian, with a pair of red silk pajamas swatting at the birds that were feasting on his figs…  


The conversation at breakfast the next morning went something like this:

“Cari, can you takea me to getta some rataweet?”

Nana, was listening patiently dragging her swollen foot around the kitchen, placing a bowl, a spoon, and a box of Wheaties before him. “Angelina, bring me a bigga spoon…” dutifully, she did so, poured the coffee and went back to the stove. The smell of red sauce and provolone cheese was already in the morning air.

“Sure Popo!”, I said, having absolutely NO idea that “rattawheat” was “rat wheat” a bait used to poison rats at a motel pantry where risotto, or pasta or flour were stored. His plan was to feed it to the birds that were feeding on his figs.

“Those damma birdsa, theyra eating my figs!”

Trees, I thought. What is it with him and the trees?

I remarried, and bought a house that had a huge producing Fig Tree in the back yard next to the pool. Twice a year, the figs dropped, and I would open them up, seeing the hairy purple and chartreuse heart and seeds. Grandpa had been dead and buried almost twenty years, but his memory both stung and invigorated my gardening every time I would open up a fig.  We  had four olive trees all of which I weighed heavily to the positive when we bought the house -remembering that my grandfather cured the olives one year off of the tree that my father had planted in the front yard at our family home. Grandpa could not grow olives in Utah. I don’t know why.

The Climate in San Diego I dare say, is an excellent place to grow trees. The Mission Padres, and the Rancheros, left fields and fields of tree fruit, avocados, pepper trees, and olives. We moved closer to my family when my Fathers cancer prognosis was deemed bleak. After his funeral, I had my husband drive me by the old family home. It appeared small now, and sterile. The giant Olive Tree that my Dad had planted was gone.  A car was parked on the concrete which had become the tree’s blessed grave.

My sister Frances planted an olive tree in her back yard as crown piece of landscaping outside of her newly built Santa Monica home. Whenever we are together for a birthday, someone says…”Wow Fran, that tree has really taken off…”- it's canopy now encroaching on two fence lines.

When I die, unlike the beautiful wooden casket that my Father had, I want a simple olive wood casket with a cross on the lid…I don’t care about a hinge. I am not sure why I start thinking about things like that… surely to me olive wood seems most appropriate, only because I do not think that anyone has ever made a coffin from Fig Tree.

My Dad, made "Seven Sacrament" stew every year on Christmas Eve. My whole family has met and exchanged presents on that day- a family tradition. I have missed every single Christmas Eve event for 37 years, however, since my Father died, I have managed to attend with my family to taste my sisters exact replication of the stew that everyone says is "Better than Dad’s". 


It is difficult to be a late bloomer, realizing late in life how many birthdays you have missed, how many family tiffs, and of course I realize I miss what I had missed. 


This Christmas Eve, my sister Francie brought 8 Fig Trees to Christmas Eve Dinner. No one said anything obvious, it was simply “known” that the Fig Tree had great significance.

My 18 year old son has transplanted my Fig Tree from the nursery pot that it came in and removed the red Christmas bow. Leaves are sprouting everywhere now from the once barren stick that poked up from the soil.  My five year old knows that it is his job to water it every day. Although I cannot replicate the mystery of my father and grandfather,  I do watch the leaves sprout, and the branches emerge,and I think of them and pray. I miss them terribly, and face that my own life is passing ever so quickly, yet consoled in knowing that perhaps in a moments time, I will see them again face to face. 

I called my Mom with a sense of urgency yesterday; I had to tell her how much I had hated the picture that Paula had given me at Thanksgiving and to tell her something else.  I was surprised to hear that she agreed with me and pointed out the terrible angle of the photograph without any prompting. We laughed for a few minutes. I told Mom that while I was on the phone with a customer the day before, I had discovered the reason why Dad had taken the picture facing the ugly house, and capturing the Winnebago. A long close look at the photo reveals that sprouting up toward Heaven, between us and the brown Winnebago were four long, skinny soon to be giant branches of the Olive Tree that my dad had planted just a month or two before the picture on my desk was taken. My mom was silent for a moment, recognizing the significance of the photograph, which had in a moment gone from a secret joke to a precious family treasure.