The movie Home for Holidays is on- with Holly Hunter and Robert Downey, Jr. It is one of the classic dysfunctional family movies ever. It reminds me of one of the more interesting Christmas Eve dramas during my childhood. I used this story in my book "Inside the Spaghetti Bowl." The family just refers to this event as "The Curse."
No one can recall the year, but our most memorable Christmas Eve involved “The Curse”. Grandma Z was holding court. She boasted that she had twenty-two grandchildren while no one in her church and work social groups had more than six. In fact she said, “I have more grandchildren than all the women at my last card party combined.” For those of you not familiar with the grandchildren phenomenon, here is the story. Italian grandmothers believe their place in heaven in based on the size of their family. The theory was that if God blessed you with many children then in God’s eyes, you were a particularly important person. God would watch over you and if He felt you were an exceptionally good person, He would send more children your way. After all God would not give you more of his children to care for if you were a loser. You have to remember, there wasn’t much sex education being taught back then!
Grandma Z figured since she had five children and they produced twenty-two grandchildren, then by her math (four children minimum per grandchild) she should have eighty-eight great grandchildren and three hundred and fifty two great great grandchildren and so on. Grandma Z would have family tree so large that her place in heaven would be next to God Himself. Given how much Grandma liked to win, we all thought if she was that close to the throne, she might bump God over and keep the throne herself.
One of my female cousins said, “No way Grandma. I’m not having four kids. I just want two a boy and a girl.” To which Grandma replied, “You get how many God sends you. You don’t have a say in the matter.” My cousin responded, “Oh yes we do. It’s called birth control.” The instant we heard those words, we all braced ourselves for the volcanic like eruption that was about to occur. Grandma’s face got so red that we thought her head was going to explode. She slammed her hands on the table and stood up and it yelled, “You people (whenever she was real upset you people were always the first two words) can’t practice birth control. It’s a sin. You’ll all go to hell and I am not about to have that black mark on my record. So you all just want one boy and one girl. Well as of this moment, I put a curse on all my grandchildren. You’re first two children will be the same sex. Now if you want a boy and a girl you will have to have three children. How do you like that?” My cousin knew enough to just back away. If she didn’t her twenty-one other cousins would have pulled her into another room. Grandma continued to vent, “There is no way Mrs. LaTona is going to have more great grandchildren then me. Oh she would just love that.” Then with a wave of her arm she said, “You are all cursed.” Aunt Mary then intervened and started to get Grandma ready to leave for midnight mass at 9:15.
After Grandma left for mass, all the cousins got together and started to laugh. My brother Frank said “Can you believe that? She put a curse on us. I think Grandma has finally lost it.” Everyone laughed and thought this will be a good story to tell the next generation. None of us took her curse seriously, to quote Julia Roberts from the movie Pretty Woman, “Big mistake! Big! Huge!” Eighteen of her twenty-two grandchildren became parents. In every case they had two boys or two girls. After the third or fourth occurrence my cousins with one child all started to panic. Whenever they would find out if one of us was pregnant with their second child, the phone calls would start. When they found out Frank was going to have a second child he received the phone calls. “Find out the sex of that baby” they would insist. His response was, “I don’t care. I just want a healthy baby.” “Well find out and let us know because we and thinking of having a second child, but someone has to break the curse first.” I am here to tell you, NEVER EVER laugh at a curse from a full bloodied Italian Grandmother. My cousin Phil finally broke the curse. But by the time he had children the rest of us were long done with having babies. Grandma won. The curse worked. I can hear her laughing in heaven.
So my point is drama at family holidays is inevitable. Just go with the flow and take good notes - it will give you great stories for many generations. Merry Christmas and a very Happy 2012 to everyone.
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