Make It Nice

by Dorinda Medley

  Unlike my mother, my father wasn’t born in Great Barrington. He is originally from Brooklyn, born to Polish immigrant parents. As a teenager, my father was singled out because of how smart he was and picked to go to Bronx Science, a high school for gifted teenagers. He got perfect grades and was on a straight track to college—until his father bought a farm in Great Barrington. My grandfather got cancer right after they moved, and this massive farm became my father’s responsibility. Everything my father dreamed for himself was gone—poof—just like that. Every day my father would wake up before dawn, milk the cows, collect the chicken eggs, and then head to school, where the kids would make fun of him because he smelled like farm animals. Listening to him talk about how beloved he was by his friends at Bronx Science and how he had won all these academic rewards before he was forced to leave is always somewhat heartbreaking, but there is never any sense of resentment or tragedy in his voice. It was because of this that he made sure his children had all the opportunities that he didn’t have, and I think he lives vicariously through our successes.

  Now let me tell you about the most important figure in my family: my mother. My mother was and is my world.

  My mom’s job was to run the household with intent, like it was business. Just because my dad was bringing home the weekly paycheck didn’t mean my mother wasn’t working. Our house was like a business center. Every Friday my father would obediently bring home his paycheck and hand it to my mother. From those paychecks, she would give my father an allowance to go play his weekly poker game with his friends (which still happens to this day). Our household was a well-oiled ship—but then again, there was a natural chaos that came with having four children under the age of eight at twenty-six years old. She was completely devoted in all ways. The house was spotless, she cooked every day, and most important, she was available to us and to my father 24/7.

  I had no idea until I became a mother myself how difficult it was for my mom to manage to do it all. Later, when I had Hannah, I was living in London and I had a baby nurse and a housekeeper and I found the complete and constant devotion to one child sometimes overwhelming. How did my mother do it? In retrospect, I see how hard it must have been. Married at nineteen, four children, responsibilities and not a lot of money to work with, and somehow she did it each and every day with the commitment of a professional athlete. My mother embodied what it meant to be a Cinkala, and like her, we were expected to work hard, to do our part, to take care of one another, and to stay constant.

  If my mother was the rock that we all relied on, the rock that my mother relied on was God. I think God gave my mother the space to imagine the future and to find balance in the present. God meant that there was nothing too big to be unconquerable, because the good of God was always bigger than the bad of the moment. Looking back, I realize my mother took great refuge in religion and especially in prayer. Watching my mother pray is almost magical. It’s the type of thing that makes you want to cry. Experiencing her faith is enough to make you not only believe but also take part.

  As kids, we did take part, and without questioning it. Religion was a constant presence—and I mean that both literally and metaphorically. There were life-sized statues of Mary and Saint Anthony all over the house. My mom was a devout Catholic, but she was never militant about it. What religion gave us was a moral compass. It acted as a second parent that was “always watching”—which was both comforting and scary. Sure, God’s teachings were about morality and spirituality—“love thy neighbor as you love thyself” was a big one—but my mother also used to tell us that the Ten Commandments would keep us out of jail, which felt like it was less about religion and more about how to stay out of trouble. I guess you could say that religion gave us a set of bumper rails for life. Like getting my period or my first training bra, religion was just a fact of life for me growing up.

  In some ways, my mom has become more of a relaxed Catholic these days. Or at least she’s started to question some of the stories. A few years ago, she said, “I don’t know if I believe in that Noah’s Ark thing anymore. It doesn’t really make sense that they had two of every animal on a boat for all those days.”

  We were all beyond shocked when she said this. Her admitting to an affair would have been less surprising than her questioning Noah’s Ark.

  “Maybe it wasn’t exactly as the story goes,” she said. “Maybe there weren’t two of every animal on the boat.”

  “Mom,” I said, “if we’re going down the controversial road here, what about Adam and Eve?”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you think it was real?”

  “Yes, it was real, Dorinda! Don’t ask me silly questions like that.”

  These days, I still go to church, but I go because I want to go, not because I feel that it’s an obligation. For me, spirituality is not governed by Mass times and locations. It’s wherever and whenever I need it. Church to me is similar to what yoga, therapy, or meditation is to other people. I find it peaceful. It allows me to quiet my mind. I love the stories and the smells, because it reminds me of childhood. It gives me time to reflect and reset and have a quiet and confidential conversation with God. It gives me the feeling that all is well. Stay steady, stay accepting, and keep going: these are the reminders of church.

  The cast of important characters in my young life included not only my parents but also my grandparents. My mother’s parents, Vera and Adorno Joseph Magadini, had the biggest presence because they lived a bike ride away. My grandfather was an especially influential figure, not only because he came over almost every day but also because of the way he took up space in a room. At six feet two, he was a big figure with a huge personality to match. He was loud and fun and handsome and irreverent but still totally elegant. He loved his community. He also didn’t follow the rules. I remember him waking me up in the middle of the night to watch Evel Knievel on television. In my other memories, he’s surrounded by food and laughing and having a great time just being alive. In a lot of ways, I am like him.

  My grandfather found success in America when he opened a masonry business called A.J. Magadini and Sons. The name proved to be telling because my mother was excluded from the business, despite her devotion to my grandfather and her intelligence. Similar to my father (who had to leave Brooklyn and his education behind), my mother was offered a full scholarship to college, which was a big deal for a woman back then, but was told that there was no point in her going. My mother was no Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan, but she was a strong feminist—even if she didn’t realize it herself. And therefore, she was adamant about her daughters and sons being treated equally and having all the same opportunities—including the ones that, unfortunately, hadn’t been granted to her. I decided that I was never going to allow what happened to my mother to happen to me.

  I think that it was because I was most like my grandfather that I was willing to spar with him. We both had strong personalities, and I didn’t fear him like the other members of my family did. I spoke up. We were very close and we spent tons of time together.

  On Friday nights, we kids all stayed at our grandparents’ house. We would get out of school on Friday afternoons and rush to find my grandmother at the local hairdresser, where she had a standing weekly appointment to get her hair washed. My grandmother liked a routine. A heavyset Italian woman with silver hair, she, like my mother, took her job as the woman of the house very seriously. She cleaned her house daily and buffed her linoleum floors as if the Pope would be arriving at any minute. She went through cans of Lemon Pledge like nobody’s business, and she would never have thought to leave her house before all her tasks were completed and she had taken her daily bath, which included the same products every time: Dial soap, Jean Naté body powder, and Jergens lotion. She kept these products in what she referred to as the pigeonhole, which was a small nook in the hallway. She’d yell, “Kids, get my lotion in the pigeonhole!” After her bath, she would powder her face and apply lipstick. My grandmother took pride n
ot only in who she was but also in the way she looked.

  Every Friday, I’d rush to her as if I had not seen her for ages. She was warm, loving, and all the things that come to your mind when you think of the perfect grandmother. She adored her grandchildren and we adored her. She loved to tell stories and gossip about her neighbors, and we would hang on her every word. She also liked to gossip about the soap operas she watched religiously at three o’clock. We’d discuss the drama between Luke and Laura on General Hospital as if it were factual. I loved my grandmother so much and often still think of her and her nonstop stories and the smell of all her products.

  Fridays marked the beginning of our secret life with my grandparents. We were allowed to do things with my grandparents that we were not allowed to do at home with my parents. This included eating Devil Dogs, Twinkies, Snoballs, white bread, cold cuts, Coca-Cola, and chocolate Fudgsicles and other branded ice cream, like Friendly’s. We got to stay up late and watch Carol Burnett, Cher, and Saturday Night Live. It was magical, accessible, and abundant.

  One of my responsibilities at my grandparents’ house was to take the weekend donut order. On Friday nights, I would meticulously write down what each member of the family wanted and draw accompanying pictures to hand to the women at Spudnuts donuts early Saturday morning. I took this job very seriously.

  Before going to Spudnuts, my grandfather and I would take a trip to the barn to feed the chickens together and collect eggs. I was always amazed, driving around in his dump truck, at how he seemed to know everyone. He was like the mayor of Great Barrington.

  My grandfather expected me to become the same type of traditional woman as my mother, but I knew that that would not be the case. I already knew that one day I was going to move out of Great Barrington and be a big shot. When my grandfather and I drove past the manor in which I now live and I pointed at it and said, “I’m going to buy that house,” he laughed at me. He was familiar with the house because he, along with his father, had helped build it. He was a mason worker. That was his station in life. And he didn’t believe that I, as a female, could rise to a higher station. But I didn’t care. I was going to show him.

  My Polish grandparents on my father’s side were also important influences on my early life, but we didn’t see them as often because they lived in Clark, New Jersey. My grandmother was incredibly warm, and she had strong hands from years of working. She was almost a character out of a Hans Christian Andersen fable. And my grandfather was rough and mysterious in that typically Eastern European way.

  Whenever we drove down to New Jersey to visit my Polish grandparents, we would get so excited. We used to count down the days. Three more days! Two more days! I remember every time we arrived at their house, my grandmother would be waiting for us outside on the porch. Every single time. This was before the era of cell phones and the drive was hours long, so she couldn’t possibly have known at what exact time we would arrive. Whenever we pulled up, she would run down her landing, passing the Virgin Mary statue that had been painted and repainted a million times, speaking in Polish, and then she would hug us and cry because she had missed us so much. She spoke Polish to my father and soft broken English to us. Even if it wasn’t perfect, I understood everything she was saying because it went beyond words. My grandmother spoke with her loving eyes, and she spoke through the food she made us, too. During our visits, she would feed us tremendous amounts of Polish food and special little candies with liquor inside.

  Whereas my Italian grandparents were more Americanized, my Polish grandparents were not. My grandmother never learned to write in English. The last time I saw her she gave me a check and scribbled there was her name, Mary Cinkala. The signature is tenuous, as if she wasn’t accustomed to writing. I look at that check and think about how hard it must have been for her to leave Poland as a young girl with little education and start over in America in the hopes of creating a better future.

  For many years, my grandmother worked as a maid for wealthy people in New York City. She used to save the pantyhose her bosses threw away and fashion them into dolls and sell the dolls on the Brooklyn Bridge for extra cash. At the end of her life, when she was dying, she said, “Dorinda, you’ve become one of the women whose pantyhose I used to sell on the Brooklyn Bridge.” She was very proud. My life, to her, represented an American dream.

  When my siblings and I were growing up, my parents were determined to make us as American as possible. They didn’t teach us Italian or Polish. There was an American flag firmly planted in the front yard. But culturally, we were very much an immigrant family. We stuck together; we did whatever we could to make money; we didn’t forget where we’d come from.

  Food was love in our family, and I have endless memories of watching my mother standing at the counter baking or sautéing meat at the stove. She cooked dinner every single night at the same time—while teaching me lessons about life. If my mother was a teacher, then the kitchen was her classroom.

  One day, pen and paper in hand, I said, “Mom, I want you to tell me your lasagna recipe.”

  “There’s nothing to write down,” my mother said. “It’s not about what’s on a piece of paper. It’s about what you see while you’re watching me.”

  This was how my mother had learned from her mother, and this was how I taught Hannah when she asked me about lasagna. I repeated to her what had been repeated to me. “It’s more of a feeling than a recipe,” I said. Because there had never been a written recipe for that lasagna. It was more like a short story passed down from generation to generation.

  As my mother taught me how to cook, she was also teaching me about life. I remember her rolling out a pie dough and saying, “Everything you need to know about life happens in the kitchen. We solve problems when we’re cooking. We communicate when we’re cooking; we nurture and nourish ourselves with our food. We come to the table when we’re happy. We come to the table when we’re sad. But we always come to the dinner table, no matter where we are in our lives.”

  After my grandmother died, my mother went home and cooked and welcomed people into the house. I’m sure what she really wanted to do was hide in her room and cry, but that wasn’t an option. She just kept moving forward. Death, after all, was part of life. When I was a kid, when she used to say, “People are born and people die,” I thought it was cold. But now I see how incredibly strong she was. In bad times and in good times, she did her tasks and kept a schedule, and it was the glue that held us together.

  By watching my mother, I learned that if I just kept doing the next right thing, then life would keep unfolding. I still think this today. Having a routine is healthy. It creates stability. And it’s very simple. Just do the next right thing. That’s it. If you keep doing the next right thing, you’ll eventually move forward in the right way.

  Recently, Hannah said to me, “Mom, you cook all the time, but you don’t like eating that much.” And that’s true. When no one is around, I eat a tuna fish sandwich or a can of soup. For me, making food is about togetherness and tradition. It’s a way to show love. And it’s correct what my mother said. No matter what is happening in our lives, we always come back to the dinner table.

  When Richard died, I went home and my mother cooked, just as she’s been doing all her life. She cooked with the same pans I’d been seeing since childhood. We ate with the same forks and sat at the same table, and the comfort of this routine gave me peace. I thought, I can move forward because this is still here. I am going to be okay.

  The dinner table is like a situation room for our family. We laugh; we cry; we scream; we get into fights and make up. We eat and talk and eat and talk. I’ll be honest: I never really detached from my parents. A lot of people leave home and move far away and barely talk to their parents. When I go home, I’m like a kid again, and I feel lucky to say that this is true.

  When we were young, our parents were deeply committed to us having the brightest future possible and essential to that was Berkshire School, a boarding school just o
utside our town. There’s a funny story about when my mom first went there to request a catalogue. When the admissions counselor asked if she had any children interested in applying, she responded, “Absolutely!” What she didn’t mention was that the child in question was Johnny and he was two years old. You needed to be in the ninth grade to start at Berkshire School.

  At fourteen, I was accepted to Berkshire School as a day student. On the first day, I remember looking at these private school kids and thinking they were just different. They dressed differently, spoke differently, and seemed to live in a different world. It was a world I knew nothing about. These people seemed refined, and I decided that I wanted to be like them. But I soon realized that I didn’t understand their lives at all.

  When a new friend asked me what I was doing for spring break, I said, “I don’t know.” I thought, What does that even mean? What else would I be doing during spring break other than staying home and picking up a few shifts at Friendly’s?

  Up until that point, I didn’t even realize that going on vacation for spring break was an option. The friend sort of chuckled at me, and I thought to myself, I am never going to say, “I don’t know,” to that question again. I decided I would rather pretend I had somewhere fabulous to go than get laughed at. I wanted to belong. I wanted to be refined. And since I didn’t feel very refined, I would fake it. I would create a character for myself, and eventually, I would become that character. When in doubt, fake it till you make it!

  My mother used to say, “Have you ever noticed that people marry who they hang around with? It’s like schools of fish. They stay together. So if you want to get out of your school of fish, you need to make changes. If you’re swimming with the minnows, but you really want to be a shark, then you better figure out how to join the sharks.” The other thing she used to say all the time was, “If you want to catch an elephant, then don’t go to the ocean. Go to the jungle.”