Author's Note: as with the previous Chapters I continue to delve in detail into Marie and Patrick's past and hint of their future to put their Romance and deep feeling for each other into perspective. Some won't like the story for its lack of constant vicarious sex. While others will like it for the balance of both in keeping with the Romance that it is.
*****
MARIE:
IT'S A SMALL MIRACLE; despite the telephone call in the kitchen when Patrick had Dad banging his telephone on the table; my blue knight received from my father what my ex husband couldn't in our 16 years of marriage...Dad's respect.
Actually three small miracles occurred; two on the first day of our visit and the 3rd during lunch the next. My father hugged him and thanked him for bringing me home to them. Dad kissed Patrick's cheek catching Patrick completely by surprise. My love's eyes got big like when I kissed him in Macy's in front of the clerk and I stuck my tongue in his mouth. My blue knight glanced in my direction and I smiled and nodded to assure him it's my father's way so get used to it from now on.
Dad stepped back with his hands on Patrick's shoulders looking him directly in the eyes. This is Dad's way of apologizing, a rare occurrence under any circumstances and asked "Do you still demand an accounting from me, Son?"
"No, Sir, that field is plowed under," and he hugged Dad briefly slapping his back...minus kissing Dad on the cheek of course...that first happened on the day our twins were born and that was the first time I saw Patrick cry...and Dad was crying along with him as they hugged Sam who was standing between them twisting his ball cap in his hands "happier than a Blue Jay in a field of sunflowers" one of his many quaint expressions and just as thrilled, Sam barely managing not to cry now that he was a grandfather; the dear sweet man that he is.
I mentioned a third small miracle...an astonishing sharing of tradition with an outsider to the family; the men in the Bernardino family, especially my Dad's two brothers now living in Connecticut, cling tightly to the tradition of who receives a heel from the bread. It is a serious matter with them. At family gathering there are enough loaves of crusty Italian bread for each to have their accorded heel. Nonetheless, regardless of who is hosting the get together; the first heel from the first loaf cut always goes to Dad; it's our Tradition that goes way back in our family.
My Nonno Aldo, Dad's father took both heels from the bread when he was alive. Bread is sliced by the oldest male at the table and the basket is passed around after we say grace. Dad is the eldest son and after Nonno died, Dad sliced the bread and had his choice of heels.
He dropped out of school at 17 and worked two jobs to take care of his mother and his younger brothers; Vincent 13 and Rico 15. They found part-time jobs after school to help out. There was no way the Bernardino brothers will allow their mother to clean houses for other people to support the family. Dad wisely gave Uncle Rico a heel to keep peace and harmony among his brothers and in turn Rico gave Vincent half of his.
Dad and Patrick were sitting next to each other at the kitchen table. There was a large antipasto platter and fruit on the table. Mom and I were sitting beside our men. Dad sliced off the heels from the bread and put them on Patrick's plate...the first seed of the plowed field and Patrick gave one back to Dad, nodding in acknowledgement. My father's gesture of respect was solemnly accepted and returned and both Mom and I wiped a tear from our eyes.
I first shared the story of the tradition of bread with my Blue Knight while we were sitting at the farm on the porch swing wrapped in a quilt. It was a wonderful starlit night and we were listening to the crickets. Over our antipasto salad, Patrick told my parents how his father always received the liver, gizzard, heart and neck from the turkey or chicken served at a meal regardless of the bounty before them.
His Dad did it to remember the hard times. Patrick's father joked that he was so poor while growing up when the Great Depression came he thought it was an improvement. Patrick described how during the Depression his grandfather and father raised chickens to be canned for their own consumption and nothing went to waste; including the feet from which his mother made a flavorful broth for chicken soup and they were thankful to get it. He joked it took 24 chicken feet to make a cup of broth, however, that one cup kept him on his feet all day long.
Patrick described when he was growing up how they rarely purchased beef being Dairy Farmers. Eventually a cow aged to the point where it stopped producing enough milk to become a source of beef, however tough, to be canned by his mother or traded off for a spring lamb or a hog to be butchered.
Granted, both Patrick and his Dad had a roof over their heads and enough to eat while growing up. It is the little things and luxuries that I've always taken for granted while growing up such as a new this or that. At times Patrick had to settle for used or hand-me-downs. I went regularly to a beauty parlor with my Mom and my Dad to a barber.
Patrick's Mom cut his hair and his father's hair and she used her skills as a seamstress to put aside a small portion the money she earned to go to a beautician; her one luxury in life. I've seen photos of his mother and she was a strikingly beautiful woman. They had so much; and they had so little; and they had what money can't buy: it put into perspective the first time I brought him a cup of coffee, something that pleased him so much; and after, we sat on the front porch swing wrapped in a quilt listening to the crickets and watching the fireflies.
My Dad needled Patrick about not having indoor plumbing on the farm and they didn't until 1965. Electricity in the farm house came a mere 10 years earlier and only after they did the barns first.
Patrick's father was also a staunch optimist and great admirer of Will Rogers. He quoted him in part saying "We farmers have to be optimists or we wouldn't still be farmers." After lunch, Dad and Patrick went to Dad's social club to play Bocce.
DOMANIC BERNARDINO:
