Do our lives end as they began? Is our existence one great big circle? No beginning...... No end.
As I sit on Jil's front porch I'm brought back to my childhood at 146. A beautiful centenarian, with a wooden wraparound porch and a 3rd floor rotunda.
Nanu spent most evenings out there with our tenant, Marie Barker. They sat on a squeaky porch swing for two.
He was a massive man..... ribbed guinea tee stretching across his Santa belly. Rank smoke coming from a soggy cigar still permeates my memory. The smoke ran through his matching hair.
He was also a devil! As Nani cooked behind floor to ceiling windows with concealed lead weights on chains, Nanu and Marie flirted like teenagers.
Marie was a beautifully robust woman..... strawberry blond hair that matched freckles all over her body. Her cheeks always glowed with that reddish, Irish hue like a permanent aura around her.
They sat for hours on that pitted swing with vinyl cushions that wheezed rainwater. But like all teenage dreams, theirs came crashing down one memorable day. Add a pallet of cinder blocks to fix said porch & this was a recipe for disaster.
First came the loud crash. Then Marie yelling, "Mike!" as Nanu fell through the old wooden floorboards. I never knew why they called him Mike because his given name was Paul (my namesake). My overactive imagination thought he was on the lam from the Sicilian mafia.
I followed my dad to the edge of the jagged hole. It looked like the jaws of a great white had swallowed him whole. Dad yelled, "Pop, are you okay?" As Nanu brushed cinder blocks off like dandruff he mumbled a string of every Italian curse I had ever heard.
We all gasped in fear ‘til Dad noticed the stogie still clenched in his teeth. My father put his hand on my shoulder and said, "He's okay."
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