Jersey (Part One)!

And five days of it. We left our apartment in Peabody at around 10:30 or so on Thanksgiving Day, and although there was a little bit of traffic through Southern Massachusetts the roads really opened up from Rhode Island onward (maybe a bit too open, as I was caught speeding just across the Connecticut border on I-95 outside of Mystic, my first ticket in years), and we made it down to familiar territory in no time at all. As the picture below attests, we were in the Meadowlands at sunset, where my daughter Andriana had her first lungful of Jersey air and got to see the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, the place where I proposed to her mother all those years ago. At the time my wife and I were dirt poor - as opposed to now... oh wait, never mind! - so in lieu of an engagement ring, which I couldn't afford, I kept feeding quarters into one of those plastic novelty toy gumball machines you always find at rest stops until I got a plastic ring, which I then presented to Maria on bended knee. She said yes, she still has the ring, and for years afterwards she would stop and kiss the portrait of Vince Lombardi whenever we were passing through. The picture disappeared after a recent renovation, but to this day "Vince" has a fond place in our hearts. I even wanted to name our first child Vince Lombardi Bruno, if he'd been a boy, but my wife thinks that might be just a little too much homage; and besides, the first boy will have to be named Giordano. Maybe son number two.

The parents just loved Andriana, who's now seven and a half months old. Although she was a little skittish at first coming off of a seven-hour car ride, I rummaged through my mom's kitchen and found an old green plastic colander for her to play with, and she had found her bliss. Note to expectant parents: do not waste your money on expensive toys, no matter how educational or interactive they purport to be. All your child will want to play with for the first few months will be cardboard boxes, Tupperware containers, and your pots and pans.

Dinner was of course not the traditional Thanksgiving fare of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce straight out of the can, but the Bruno standard holiday meal of pork roast (and baked macaroni and cheese). It was tasty, as always, and in light of the times I felt proud to be engaging in an act of culinary subversion. My poor brother, who teaches English as a Second Language, has given up entirely on explaining to his students - the majority of whom are immigrants - that he doesn't eat turkey on Thanksgiving, as they're just too shocked and confused by this revelation, especially when all of them have Butterballs defrosting in their sinks at the time.

The next day we visited my grandmother, who is in a nursing home and doesn't really know who any of us are anymore. She got a kick of out of the baby, however; as did Andriana out of her. They actually ended up in a little face-off over a very realistic looking doll that my grandmother treasures and which has a baby bottle attached to one of its hands. Andriana immediately focused all of her attention on that doll, but especially the toy bottle, since she regards any bottle (real, toy, beer) as hers and hers alone. The look on both my daughter's and grandmother's faces as the former tried to crawl as close as she could surreptitiously while the latter watched her like a hawk was priceless.

Then my wife, my brother, and I went to Atlantic City...

(To be continued tomorrow!)