Surfing A Network Of Mind And Heart

My grandmother stands on the front porch of the duplex at 121 Third Ave., smiling at me from a distance of 2,000 miles and 48 years.

She’s at the top of the wooden steps, her head tilted left, as if someone has just called her name.

The photograph arrived at my office on a day when the electronic mail was filled with hostility, the telephone calls were less than congenial and at least one letter writer suggested I go back to where I came from.

I came from the place in the photograph. Where my grandmother stands.

It was sent to my office by a woman whose family once lived in the other half of the Third Avenue duplex, in a town north of Pittsburgh. The woman’s mother was going through some old pictures and found one with the name “Palmira Montini” written on the back, along with a date, “Aug. 22, 1949.”

It’s the year the Russians got the bomb. I looked it up.

It was the year “Death of a Salesman” was produced and “1984” was published, though my grandmother would not have noted these events.

A gallon of gas cost 25 cents in those days. A loaf of bread, 15 cents. A pack of cigarettes, 21 cents.

Americans purchased 60,000 TV sets a week in 1949. There was a television in the front room of the house at 121 Third Avenue. My grandparents would sit there with friends from the neighborhood and watch Milton Berle, who could make them laugh even in a language they didn’t quite understand.

In the photograph, my grandmother wears a dress with a pretty floral print and shoes with heels and straps across the front.

On an ordinary day, she would not tolerate such footwear. She preferred shoes she purchased at the five-and-10-cent store. She liked the flat-soled walking variety that she could fashion into sandals by cutting off the sides and backs.

The picture of her in the dress must have been taken on a special occasion. Her white hair is pinned up on her head and she’s standing at the edge of the front porch as if a parade were about to pass by.

Maybe that’s it.

In the town where she lived, the Italian immigrants celebrate the feast of San Rocco each August. A parade is held during which the men from the neighborhood carry a statue of the saint through the streets. It’s their way of honoring God and dead relatives.

Most of the immigrants were born in the same village in Italy and moved to the same town in America.

They worked in the same steel mill and lived on the same hill in company houses that looked the same. The housing complexes were built according to a series of master plans.

I wasn’t at 121 Third Ave. on Aug. 22, 1949.

My older brother was two days past his second birthday when the picture was taken, but I still lived with the angels. That’s how Mother describes it.

A couple of years before I was born, my grandmother Montini went to live with the angels, too. She’s the only one of my grandparents I never met, though I know her from stories.

The children of the immigrants who honor San Rocco are told they’re being watched over by relatives who’ve gone before them.

It’s the sort of thing a child needs to believe and a grownup wants to believe, particularly on a day when the electronic mail is hostile, the telephone calls nasty and at least one letter writer is suggesting you go back where you came from.

But, I don’t need to go back. Not on this day. Someone from the place I was raised came here.

The old immigrants told their children and grandchildren that you can count on your family, that they’ll be there for you when you need them. No matter what. And it’s true.

Even if getting to you is a trip of 2,000 miles and 48 years.