I grew up in the seventies….a baby of the the seventies. My great grandmother was Italian and she only spoke Italian. She was a big fluffy woman, stocky and stout and completely Italian thru and thru. She wore sturdy clothing and big burly shoes and a hankerchief in her hair….what we refer to as a babushka. She was a a proud “studda bubba”. Most people from the Pittsburgh area will know exactly what I mean, yet my great grandmother was not Polish….she was Italian. Studda Bubba means old ugly lady….and yet many people use that terminology to refer to an older Italian or Polish woman and the term was used often in an endearing manner.
She was amazing and yet I have only fragmented memories of her. She smelled like an old woman and yet on her it was this intensely amazing scent. She worked hard and she came to America and was an immigrant. She had an amazing home that if I could now replicate would make people insanely rich with happiness now. She had the old Singer sewing machine the old aluminum chairs, her home was fantastic but it has taken me 30+ years to figure this out entirely.
She passed away when I was 9 years old. I have flash images of memories associated with her. When her home was being dismantled years later my Mother asked me what I wanted from her home. I immediately recalled my most complete memory. My grandmother had a cookie jar sitting in her dining room on her Singer sewing machine. She spoke so little English and yet when she saw me and my siblings arrive she would always yell out “Yate a Cookie!…Yate a Cookie!” and direct us towards her cookie jar. That jar did not hold my grandmother certainly but her gesture and that memory somehow was enough for me to always embrace the intense fact that my grandmother loved us. My mother got that cookie jar and put it on my great grandmother’s hutch in her dining room. Now I have no idea what happened to either of those items since I have not spoken to my mother since I was 19.
The other day while scrolling through E-bay….I caught sight of this cookie jar and my heart broke…..and then it burst forth with so many happy childhood memories of my great grandmother in her studda bubba attire…yelling out “Kristeeeeena…Yate a cookie yate!” My grandmother was a big woman…with a smiling face…a smiling soul. I never knew her or much about her as she passed when I was 9. However….she impressed upon me something sweet and profound in her mere gestures…as she could not communicate via language.
Her’s was a language of sharing. Her’s was a language I still understood. Although I could not communicate with her I loved her. I loved her mere presence and image. I do recall her Italian and the way she spoke with my still living grandmother who spoke Italian fluently with her.
My cookie jar arrived today and I intend to buy lots of Stella D’oro cookies like grandma always had! I cannot eat anisette without getting homesick!
Check out my “Cookie Log”… (that’s whats written on it in red)
I was quite pleased to realize after she arrived that she’s brown and red….and matches my tan/red kitchen theme. She even matches my granite countertops. Something I had not even considered….it was totally an emotional purchase and now she totally fits in. Do people even keep cookie jar’s anymore? Do you have one?? What’s the story behind your cookie jar? Do you think someone will want it someday? Do you offer your grandkids, your visitors….cookies when they arrive at your house??
That’s my deceased father’s brass pepper mill too. Man…man oh man how I miss him. It can sometimes overcome me in intensity. He was an amazingly quirky and smart man. I recall many things and laugh inside often. That’s HIS actual pepper mill….he had one and lost it in the divorce..it was legendary…that argued over pepper mill. When he passed it was the only thing I wanted to salvage….only because it meant everything to him. I didn’t realize it would mean the world to me too.
