Plagiarizing Mia

My mom, in her infinite creativity, has decided that she will not be called Grandma at her young age (and she is young enough that I won't reveal her age...but I'll give you hint. If I'd had Lyric at the same age as my mom had me, Lyric would be driving already. Startling no?) .

I never really picture my mom as a "grandma," (grandmas should be...older? matronly? rounder? something). And her excitement for an alternative way of being called "grandma" concerned me a bit when she paused a long pause before revealing the name she'd be requiring my tiny girl offspring to call her. I figured she'd go with the ever popular Nana, in tribute to our Italian half. Almost! But not.

She came up with "Mia," which means "mine" in Italian. And I think it's perfect. :)

So speaking of my mom, I am going to reprint an excerpt from a couple of emails here, because I find that my own grandmother has not fulfilled my storytelling requirements of "gee, gram, tell me what it was like when you were a kid" as much as I'd like. But my mom, much more a storyteller (no, this is not always good, but in some cases, very much so), responded today to one of my emails mentioning a laundry delivery service. I really liked her reply, so I am archiving it here, for posterity.

I suppose it isn't actually plagiarism, but merely copyright violation, to reprint her cool story without permission, but I wanted to share it with you and someday with the fetus.

when i was little and we lived in the city, we had "the laundry man." it was quite handy, big bag went out, big bag came back and everything was magically clean and folded :)

of course, this was during the time of "the man" - as in the italian neighborhood fruit peddler, the vegetable man, the milk man, and most importantly, the lupini man. later, when we moved to the suburbs we lost everyone except the milk man, but we added the home juice man.

and so, everything comes full circle.the return of the laundryman!

(here I queried for more info on the lupini man, who particularly interested me)

yep - Lupini man brought ceci, lupini, red and plain pistachios, cashew, etc., on a little wooden cart. lupini man gave you whichever one you asked for in a little waxed paper bag. they were like a nickle or dime or quarter or somethin'. it was an incredibly big treat cuz he didnt come every day and even if he had, that didnt mean we could have it everytime.

oooh, and how could i 4get the snowcone man (metal cart w/shaved ice and lottsa colored bottles) - we hardly ever got to have that cuz it would "freeze our bellies," uknow. oh yeah, and the ice cream man ... which was, specifically, the good humor man. yummy, fancy ice cream bars with stuff inside them. :)

man, I really miss those mans.

now, for some odd reason, neither the ice cream bars from the good humor man, nor the italian ice we got at - yes, wait for it - the italian ice store, was expected to "freeze our bellies". yet, when the other ice cream truck came by with the highly suspicious soft-serve vanilla and chocolate cones, there was some belly-freezing concerns. the worst, tho, was the completely evil FROZEN BANANA that would likely kill us cuz the banana could be bad and we'd never know until it was 2late. whew!