The OG Carmel(l)a
(Original Grandma)
“Name?” asked the tall modelesque hostess. I cleared my throat and prepared to project my voice, squeezing from my diaphragm so she could hear all three syllables.
“CARMELLA,” I yelled over the thumping music. I took another deep breath right after the last syllable, knowing almost certainly she would get it wrong.
“CARMEN?” she yelled back. Everyone in Miami thinks my name is Carmen, which I guess is fair given that this is a predominantly Latin town. I smiled sweetly and yelled again, “NO, CARMELLA! C-A-R-M-E-L-L-A.”
“Ooooh sorry. What a beautiful name!”
“Thank you so much!” I cooed back angelically, blushing as my annoyance instantly evaporated. I love when people compliment my name.
“You know, I had a cousin named Carmela, but with one L!” she says, shaking her head and smiling to herself as if she was recalling a time when this Carmela did a typical Carmela thing.
“Yeah, I was named after my grandma. She just had the one L, too.”
I’m instantly reminded of my study abroad host mom in Italy, Elena, nonchalantly rolling a cigarette with one hand and leaning over to light it on the stove as she told me my spelling was “not the correct way.” Every time she left a note or sent me a text, she wrote my name with just one L out of pure defiance.
“Oh how funny!” the hostess says, as they all say, and leads us back to our table.
I used to constantly correct people on their pronunciation of my name, which I always thought was odd because it’s so phonetic. Car + Mel + la. Sound it out! Alas, I still got Camilla, Camille, Carmen, and sometimes Carmelo.”Like Carmelo Anthony!” If it weren’t for The Sopranos, I doubt anyone would get it right to this day. I could never find my name on any of those kitschy little keychains at souvenir shops when we went on vacation either– plenty of Carmen’s and Camille’s, but never a Carmella. Growing to love its uniqueness required some imagination, a little getting over myself (ahem!), and a lifelong curiosity about my namesake.
My grandmother’s full name was Carmela Dolores DiPasquale, though she went by “Dee” for most of her life. In fact, she only learned that her real name was actually Carmela when she went for her working papers at age fifteen to help support her family, staring in disbelief at the birth certificate in her tiny hands.
“You were named after my mother,” my mom would say with great honor and adoration, my melodic name reverberating through generations of little Italian girls with hairy arms and unibrows. Mind you, this decision came roughly after the first 72 hours of my life, during which I was actually a Gabriella. My mom ended up having a minor meltdown over how grating the nickname “Gabby” sounded and called back our entire family to tell them she changed her mind— a snafu she still insists was the fault of my other Grandma from my Dad’s side (RIP). Her name was Dorothy, and she wore white to my parents’ wedding, but that’s tea for another time.
I searched for pieces of our shared identity whenever I was with my grandma, bumping along in the back seat of her car as she drove 20 miles per hour through town, listening to her hum along to the radio. I didn’t know any other Carmella’s throughout my entire upbringing— just myself and this cute little old woman who was, as far as I was concerned, always an old woman. In my ten year old mind she was never not an old lady, cast in amber forever with her bifocal glasses and her Betty Boop memorabilia, and I couldn’t compute how I somehow ended up existing as a result of her.
Carmela Dolores DiPasquale stood at just over four feet tall, shrinking by the minute. She had high cheekbones and tiny brown eyes that squished into a squiggly line whenever she smiled. Her nails were always painted a shimmery mauve, the same shade that was popular for bathtubs back in the 80’s. She drank Manhattans every single Thursday night until she was probably 83. She loved old movies and old movie stars– Humphrey Bogart, Carey Grant, velvety-voiced men who always wore a fedora with one eyebrow perpetually arched.
I observed the quietly gritty way she moved through the world— her insistence in using every last drop of everything before buying a new container, the careful way she cleaned her dinner plate, the tsk-tsking of her tongue as she muttered “that son of a B” while watching Shirley Temple movies (namely Bright Eyes). She was the youngest of seven kids and just barely survived the Depression, growing up on welfare and stolen lumps of coal to heat their tiny inner-city flat in Buffalo, NY. After school every day since age 15, she would walk to work at the box factory, come home to do her homework, hand wash and hang dry her one singular outfit, then get up and do it all over again. I, on the other hand, was voted Most Stressed for our class’s senior superlatives because I was procrastinating all my AP English essays until 2am watching Old Gregg on Youtube and IM-ing boys who would never respond to me.
“I’m soooo tired,” I’d complain in my dreadful teenage vocal fry at our dinner table.
“You’re too young to be tired,” my Dad responded flatly, nodding at Carmela Dolores who was shakily trying to balance a penne noodle on her fork. “She is tired.”
I would watch her small knotted fingers plunge into a big silver bowl of ground beef and pork, the egg yolk bleeding into the granules of pecorino and bread crumbs, swirling into a gritty puddle at the bottom. It always made me queasy to watch as she grunted with each shaky churn of the raw mixture. She had to use all the strength in her body to incorporate everything, but they were always perfect– the only meatballs my brother would eat. She would gently form each ball into roughly the size of a lime, bits of parsley and beef fat getting caught around her wedding ring, and lob them onto a cookie sheet.
“Doesn’t that bother you, grandma?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“What?”
“All that gunk is stuck in your jewelry now.”
“Oh I don’t give a rat’s ass,” she would yell over the television in her thick Buffalo accent.
My brother and I would giggle and say rat’s ass to each other, over-exaggerating the hard ‘a’ like she did. She was like a cartoon to us— this tiny, sweet lady who would just as quickly call you an asshole as she would light a candle for you at church.
My grandma’s memory was always fragile, so it never occurred to me that she was living in a world she didn’t recognize until after my grandfather passed. She got our names mixed up all the time in those early days of her dementia, then slowly forgot them all except for his. Clutching a framed photo of my grandpa, she would rock back and forth in her chair, repeating his name, Bert, eyes welling up as she tried to shove down her grief for no one in particular in that very Depression-era way. Please, take me home to Bert.
“Come on little grammy, we’re gonna go to Vinny’s baseball game,” I’d say, buckling her into the passenger seat of my car, which actually used to be hers. It was a forest green 1995 Buick LaSabre that would rattle when I hit 60 mph and was full of Catholic religious iconography, or as my friends called it, “Jesus memorabilia.” She genuflected as she sat in the front seat.
“Who?” she asked, straining her eyes at me.
“The boy.”
“Oh, the boy. Oh alright.”
At a certain point, my brother was just “the boy” and I was “the girl,” until I would remind her, “you know, my name is Carmella, just like yours!”
“Really?!” she would gasp, her creased face stretching in surprise like an opened accordion. “Gee, that’s funny!”
It is funny, I thought. What if we were friends in another time? What kind of suffering did she endure before I existed? Will I ever understand that suffering? I would drive her in that car many more times after that and watch her have the same gleeful reaction to hearing my name. It was painful and tender all at once— mourning the loss of a woman I would never truly know in the way I wanted to, celebrating this simple but magical thing we share.
Sentimental. Honest. Clean.
What loving words about Grammy — i wished you could have met her younger self. She adored you. Thought you looked like Snow Whiite with your fair complexion and dark hair. She could have filled you with Depression Era stories that although were “hard times” were filled with love and some laughter from her 6 siblings. She had a grateful heart for the small pleasures she received like making whipped cream from the layer of cream that floated from the top of the bottle of milk allowed by welfare assistance or the sweet homemade peanut brittle her mother made from peanuts, her Uncle Vinny would surprise the family with. They were asweet highlight from a steady diet of Lentils and endless pasta meals. She didn’t dwell on the struggles. I think she was grateful for surviving a time that was difficult for many enjoying her present life with my dad - Bert the love of her life, her children extended family- especially her sister Fran and husband John who she lived next to for over 20 years and her many friends. Thank you for sharing your story about my mom I couldn’t have chosen a better one.