Looking over the hedge, like the redwoods of the forest, large oak trees guard the land from outsiders, while peaceful, colorful gardens span the yard from side to side.

Hedges run the length of the property to one side, and a fence on the other, a demarcation from living and dead. The house is stately and quaintly beautiful, white with blue accents on the dormers, the front door a dark oak accentuated by wrought iron handrails up the front stairs.

We do not use the front door, that is saved for special occasions or welcoming guests across the hearth during holidays and Christmas. there is something to walking through the front doorway into the grand living room with its picture perfect glass windows that look out over the sentinel trees out front.

Walking past the bulk of the house is the mud hut, the room that connects the separate garage from the house proper and invited us into the heart of the house, in Italian culture, the kitchen.

The kitchen is where everything happens, meals, prayers, discussion and argument. It is a bright room with many windows on two sides that look out on our cutting farm to the side of the house and the backyard and the huge vegetable garden where most of our food comes from.

Hardy wood hand carved cabinets are dark in color the old style fridge with sliding freezer on the bottom and the slide out stove is particular to this house. There are no new fangled roasters or microwave ovens, this is a house of the past, in a fast moving present. It is a step back from modernism and illustrates times of the past.

The floor is a speckled yellow, red and black linoleum perfectly polished by hand, an old style aluminum table and chairs sit stately against the kitchen wall. Out of place in the kitchen is an old stately roller chair, usually reserved for visiting guests to the house as the seat of honor. Aluminum chairs can be painful after while.

This is where the heart of the house lies. Many a meal was prepared in this kitchen over fifty years. One can imagine the views and how they changed over those fifty years. The seasons that came and went, the guests who came to visit and later died. If a kitchen could talk, I am sure she would have great and wonderful stories.

The dining room, painted in a soft green is home to a great sideboard buffet and a china cabinet filled with all the finest in serving dishes and glasses only reserved for high holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. This room sat vacant at all other times. Why use a table that sat twelve when you could sit in the kitchen and be close.

At other times of the year this room was reserved for sewing projects, storage of items not used during the regular business of the day, and the stacking of paperwork and odd sweaters and clothing.

Unlike other homes of the day, the half bath was located just off the kitchen and looked out over the yard. The den, to the opposite side of the house, was where the tv was located with a sofa and grampy’s chair and a second for guests. I remember many night watching tv in this room on summer vacations and in the years when we lived in New Britain.

The hearth of the home, the grand living room was a second room that saw little traffic save for holidays and family vacations. The front wall was a huge picture window where the Christmas tree would be set for the holidays. A grand red brick fireplace was also located in this room with the old 78 style record player that still exists to this day, collecting dust in my parents attic.

The most striking piece of architecture of the house was the grand staircase. It was a light oak color, with hand carved dowels that accentuated the handrail all the way up the outer side of the staircase. I remember playing on the stairs sliding on my bum down one step and then two and then three. Fine stately green wallpaper with gold inlay was on the walls. This is what made this house so unique because it held within it signs of the old world that must have been grand for generations past.

Two bedrooms were located on the second floor one to each side of the house as partitioned by the grand staircase. a huge walk in closet was in the hallway with access to the attic where we stored all the Christmas decorations. My grandparents, by this time were sleeping in separate bedrooms, my father long since grown, moved on and now bringing his own children to visit.

The basement was accessed by a doorway in the kitchen where one would descend into the old world. An old pickling closet that my grammy still used for canning vegetables and bottling jams.

She was an adept gardener and had a veritable green thumb. The house was littered with plants in every room, some hanging from the ceiling and others on stands and windowsills. The house was surrounded by gardens on all sides. That was her secondary passion, gardening. Her first passion was me, and cooking.

I could always count of learning from her, how to grow a garden and keep it healthy, how to plant flowers and plants by the seasons, where the plant the berry bushes and when, so that during certain seasons we could walk out and always find something edible at any time on the year, save the winter.

Across the majority of the back of the yard was a the great Italian garden with hanging strings for tomatoes, beans, and stalky vegetables. We grew everything that was edible from squash to tomatoes, beans to cabbage and lettuce. To the rear of the garden against the hill behind was the berry bramble. Even today every time I eat a pint of raspberries I think of her and our garden.

To the opposite side of the back yard was the most amazing terraced flower and bush garden. The rocks that demarcated each level and boundary were all hand painted each Spring with bright and cheery colors that only accentuated the blooming plants and flowers. It was the most special garden, that I had ever seen.

Grammy was in a kind competition with Mary D’Angelo across the street. Mary’s house was a mansion in comparison to ours, it had three floors and was grander in style than any house I had known then and so were her gardens. Mary’s husband and mother toiled in their yard and gardens for most of the year and were the envy of that end of the neighborhood. But grammy held her own. It wasn’t quantity that mattered, it was the quality of the garden that meant more.

The lot to the one side of the house was vacant. You could, in the off season, often see the rubble of the old house that once probably sat on the location where I have seen pictures of 1920 and 1930’s family life, the immigrant family that worked the land and all that surrounded it until the time that modernization took root there.

For many years the dead lot became a dumping ground. People would come and dump cuttings, grass and bush trimmings and old dead flowers from their gardens that had been pruned and cleared season after season. Grammy had a plan for that lot. She, over the years would buy berry bushes that she planted throughout the lot. And she would as well, throw her cuttings over the fence.

What nobody expected was that dead plants and flowers carried with them seeds, that would sit, germinate and grow in the soil under all the droppings. The dead lot became a living organism. Imagine an entire acre of land raised from the dead, blooming and growing over the refuse and soil on that plot.

Year after year cuttings were dropped and year after year there were flowers all season, berries all summer, the community garden gave up flowers for many a neighbor’s dinner table and window vases. It was a simple life then. Neighbors visited each other, there was no suburb mania. People were concerned with taking care of their brother and sister. neighbors were selfless and concerned with each other, rather than today where people are self centered and only concerned with themselves. I learned some valuable lessons in my childhood.

The best memories are housed in my mental museum. These visual trips down memory lane are all I have left of the time that meant the most to me as a child. I travel there in my dreams on many occasions, and I walk through the house. Funny, dreams, I can enter the house and see it as it was, but where a door is closed I am never permitted to open it. That is one aspect of past dreaming that I have yet to figure out today.

I have left a major portion of this story out of the narrative for good reason, because two worlds collided in this house. One is of safety and love, the other is of addiction, violence and hatred. Neither belong in the telling of the other. Because the battle between all that is sacred and all that was profane took place under that roof.

Grammy died too soon and what was, was no more.

Both survived the generation battle, the sacred and the profane. Sadly the profane destroyed later generations, past resentments played out as children grew up and chose which side of the battle they would fight for. By this admission and narrative, you now know which side of the battle I chose to fight for.

I was a victim of the profane violence, the hatred and the addictions for many years, but eventually through hard work and the power of the Sacred God who lives, I am victorious. And so you now have walked through and experienced the best that grammy’s had to offer her visitor. A cornucopia of food delicacy, the beauty of nature and the hospitality of an old Italian woman who gave all she had to each person who graced her hearth.

I leave you with one final vision:

The windows are frosted over, snow is on the ground. The house is hushed with the expectation of guests for a dinner to fit a king. In the grand living room a roaring fire is set. The Christmas tree is alive with colored lights and a thousand ornaments all hand made and delicate. The room is comfy, cozy and warm.

Soon the guests would arrive, entering tonight through the front door, it is a grand occasion, the kitchen is rearranged for the holiday and the mud hut is unaccessible. The glow of the tree, against the frosted windows along with the roaring fire make for a wonderful holiday greeting card.

The table is set with the finest china, and the crystal glasses. There are platters of food, desserts that are fantastical. There are tons of gifts under the tree, and for one last holiday the entire family would be present for holiday dinner. It would be the last one in my minds memory…