Maria Dominica Mazzaferro Tedaldi 

January 30, 1907 -  October 28, 2005

My most vivid early memory of my Grandmother was sitting on the floor in her screened in front porch, cutting out a big circle from a remnant she had taken home from the shop.  It was to be a flair skirt and the first thing that I would ever sew.  Grandpa was sitting there, chewing his tobacco. As she guided me through the cutting and hand sewing of the garment she insisted that I had to sew it all by hand before she would teach me how to use the sewing machine. As she put it “You have to learn to do it the hard way first, Nita. You might not always have a sewing machine, you know”. In between instructing me on the finer points of cutting on the bias, her hands were busily shucking peas into a big bowl on her lap. She had grown the peas in her wonderful yearly garden that at the time took up half of her back yard. 

 As the years went by, those same tireless hands brought  warm milk and honey for coughs; rolled out boards and boards of the best raviolis in the world; hemmed and sewed garments for all of our important occasions; moved quickly and efficiently over numerous strands of rosary beads; hung out bushels and bushels of wet clothes; hoed and weeded; baked thousands of cookies; checked foreheads for fevers; and lovingly pushed back hair to “get it out of your face”.  As I look back now on the 55 years that I knew her, I have come to realize that her hands were truly the symbols of her life.  Unlike many people who struggle with the meaning of their existence, for Nanny there was no question about it…life was tireless duty and service to family. For her, the most important thing was to get up each morning bright and early and get on with the business of getting things done to make sure that her house was in order and those she loved were clothed, fed, and safe. 

Sometimes you could wear yourself out just watching her.  If she ever questioned her priority of putting everyone else’s needs first, it was never evident to me.  I remember the day she received the letter saying that her mother had died in Italy.  Tears were streaming down her face as she scrubbed the kitchen floor on her hands and knees with a scrub brush.  I was furious that she seemed to be adding to her misery by, what I considered unnecessary, hard labor and so I went to get the sponge mop, but she wouldn’t hear of it.  Looking back, it is clear to me that hard work was her form of meditation. She was doing what she knew how to do best … keeping busy and accepting what life handed her with courage and determination.

That is not to say that grandma was always the easiest person to live with.  As all of her grandchildren who ever checked before we entered her house to see if we were wearing an undershirt know, there were times that her insistence on doing it her way could drive you crazy.   Sometimes it seemed out of step with the times.  But her intentions were always to teach us what was right and best for us…according to the way she had been taught, during her brief childhood at the school of hard knocks. 

For, of course, her service to family didn’t start when I was born.  Her many stories about her early life were always amazing to listen to and went far in explaining how she became the grandma I knew.  The stories bore the tale of a life of duty. She told of her early life in Popoli, Italy where she would carry lunch every day to the men in her family who were working the fields; her difficult journey to the U.S.A. in steerage on the S.S. America at the age of 9; her early adolescence spent in the brickyard cooking and cleaning for her brothers between walking miles to a two room schoolhouse where she had to sit in the third grade until she learned English; an arranged marriage to a man much older than her; her many years of slaving in a piece-work factory to make ends meet; and the numerous moves and financial hardships she experienced as she raised her two daughters;

The women in Steel Magnolias couldn’t hold a candle to my Nanny.  But she also had her times of laughter and softness, like when she would hold her grandchildren and great grandchildren in her arms and bounce them on her knees, singing patty cake, planning all the while just what to feed them next. It seemed as if they were the dolls that she never had in her youth, and of course, her pride and delight in each grandchild’s accomplishments shone through always.  More than once I heard her brag about each of us when her friends would be around and I am sure that more than one picture of this one’s graduation and that one’s dance recital, First Holy Communion, and educational or athletic accomplishment, was passed around at the shop, at senior citizens or at her house, over a piece of the best apple pie you could ever hope to taste. 

Sometimes, on a Sunday morning, you could catch her singing along to the Italian hour as she started cooking her Spaghetti (if she didn’t hear you come in, that is).  I still savor the memory of seeing her pleasure when she would open her hope chest to take out some special linen she had packed away years ago, or when she would carefully unwrap the paper from an afghan that she had recently finished and wanted someone to admire.  I cherish the memory of the satisfaction and pride on her face when she would take me to her closet in the bedroom to show me a dress she had just finished making from an old pattern she had altered or cut down from the shop.  If she made it well, she felt good about it, but if she made it well and had saved money doing it, she felt even better.

Nanny always knew where you could get groceries for the best price, and she was delighted to get a bargain. When I would scold her and tell her to splurge a little on herself, she would invariably reply “I have everything I need”. What she really meant was that she had her family, and that was enough.  In her later years she enjoyed her soap operas and, true to Nanny’s style, she would give out advice to the characters from her armchair, but she seldom relaxed and just watched… those hands were always busy at some crocheted or knitted project… either an afghan for the church rosary society raffle, a throw for grandchild’s dorm bed, a hat or scarf for her daughter or, a baby sweater or mittens for one of her great-grandchildren… this multi-tasking seemed to make the sitting down permissible. 

Holiday’s at Gandma’s were gastronomical delights. To this day, nobody in the family even attempts to make her homemade raviolis. Christmas Eve dinner was a special treat with the mounds and mounds of Christmas cookies ;that she would start baking in November; the Bacala and spaghetti with tuna sauce; followed by caroling around the table accompanied, until he died, by grandpa’s harmonica,  As the years passed, and accomplishing this feast became harder and harder for her, our whole family felt the loss and frustration along with her.

At the end of her life, especially in the few weeks when she began to slip away, I reluctantly managed to find a way to say goodbye to this noble, caring woman.  The family’s decision to get out of God’s way and let her make her final passage was heart wrenching for those of us, who on some unconscious level, secretly thought that she would be here with us forever, as she had always been.  We tried our best to ensure that she would transition with dignity, as she had lived.  When I left her bedside only two short hours before she passed, I whispered to her to go and claim her reward for a life of service well lived. When I heard that she had died, I felt comforted in knowing that Nanny finally did something for herself.  Although it has been six years since she passed, I have always felt that she is really only a heartbeat away. She is, of course, alive in my heart every time I remember all the valuable lessons that she taught me about life… the value of service, giving to others, perseverance, and faith.  These lessons are as precious as she was and I find myself calling on her memory often…and as I do, I always find myself smiling, trying to resist the urge to check to see if I’m wearing an undershirt. 

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