A Christmas Memory

I’ve had many homes. Many more than I could have ever dared to dream.

Sometimes, however, the train of memories bring me back to the first one, a tenement on 58th Street in a section once known as Hell’s Kitchen.

I left there the year I was 19, but somehow when the Christmas music fills the air, I float back in time to that crowded street.

We lived on the fourth floor, and returning from High Mass on Christmas Day, as I climbed the wooden staircase, I could smell the culinary feasts being prepared by each of our neighbors. It was always easy to identify the nationality of each occupant as I slowly walked to each level.

The first odor that invaded my senses was from the lone Spanish neighbor, the Venuelez family. The strong scents that filled the first floor were spicy, and hot, exotic and inviting to anyone who had not as yet been exposed to a different culinary culture.

The second floor was comfortably familiar, two Irish families. Both the Garretts and the Rileys lived there, and the smell of beef roasting was not only familiar, but happily reassuring that the occupants were comfortable enough financially to enjoy such a feast. Life wasn’t always like that for everyone in the parish.

The third floor was eerily without aromas. The two families on the third level, Harold and Lillian Gumb were recent newly weds and the other Mr. and Mrs. Esposito, an elderly Italian couple, both enjoyed large surrogate families, and obviously had left to join their kin either around the corner or up the block. Most families had relatives, all living in the neighborhood, either up or down the “Avenue” during that long ago time. A vague recollection of the enticing fragrance of Mrs. Esposito’s wonderful gravy prepared on Christmas Eve still lingered outside her door as I walked by.

Then as I reached the fourth floor, I could smell our turkey roasting, and the strong scent invaded the rest of the building. Possibly because it was so large. We fed two families, our own, and Mom’s bachelor brothers and sister who lived on the top or fifth floor.

This happened so very long ago. My own journey has taken me from across our beloved country to foreign lands, and ironically, the memory of those brief 19 years becomes stronger as I come closer to the end of my own road.

Half a century later I now have reached a time and place when I am acutely aware that the memory of the food is only a symbol. The persistent memories represent the love and security I was embraced with in those early years, long before I could possibly foresee the path God had planned for me.

I have lived in other homes where I was happier, and in a few where I was sadder, but when Christmas comes, I always remember the first where I learned to accept love and the importance of loving others, and taught the very meaning of Christmas.