Rememberance - In no chronological order

I am looking at the only photograph
I have of my grandmother and grandfather
taken during the 1920s or early '30s

They are both young
My grandfather is wearing a three piece suit and a straw hat
My grandmother a pair of delicate leather boots
and a coat with a fur collar

They are standing somewhere in Brooklyn
It might have been a special occassion
or Sunday or maybe they just dressed that way

I never met my grandfather
He died in the late 1930s
My grandmother lived into her eighties
but my memories of her,
at this point in my life
are nothing more than small eclectic sketches

II

She lived through the Depression
And for the rest of her life
She saved and reused
Scraps of aluminum foil
Paper bags, rubber bands
Rags, and even the string
From the bakery boxes
Long before recycling
came into fashion

She used torn pieces
of brown bag paper
Instead of band aides
To stop the bleeding
If she accidentally
Cut herself
while pealing potatoes
or dicing onions

She used naphtha soap
And ammonia and bleach
And plenty of hot water
And elbow grease
When she cleaned

She had her own way
of doing things -
Like sharpening pencils
With a razor blade
Instead of a pencil sharpener
And I could never use them
Because the points always broke off
As soon as they touched the paper

She had a big glass jar full of buttons
That we used instead of money
When we played a card game
Called Steal the Old Man’s Pack
And a dice game called Put and Take

She used the term “dear”
Whenever she thought
Something was too expensive
Which was just about all the time

She taught me how make
Ravioli from scratch
Rolling out the dough
Cutting the shapes
With the rim of a glass
Filling them
With ricotta cheese
Tightly crimping the edges
Putting them int0
the boilng water of the "big pot"
Watching them sink to the bottom
and parachuting to the top when they were done

She put supper
On the table every night
For us after my mother died
And by then she was in her late sixties

She sang quietly
To herself
At the kitchen sink
While she washed
The supper dishes -
But stopped if she caught
Anyone listening

She watched wrestling
And loved Andre the Giant
And Gorgorius George
And never knew that what
They did in the ring wasn't real

She married twice -
Her first husband died
And she divorced the second one
Because he was too stingy with
His money

She went to mass
Almost every Sunday
And to Bingo
Once or twice during the week
And when she won
She always gave money
To all her grand children

She worked in the garment district
And sat at the kitchen table
Every Sunday night
and counted out
The piece-work tickets
form the previous week,
Wrapping a thick rubber band
Around each neat little stack

She lived into her eighties
and I thought she'd be around forever

She used to call me Joey
and then one day
time rewired all her memories
and the Joey that she knew
wasn't me