AUR LitPut III Spring 2023 - From Now To Then
"When I found out about my father’s diagnosis, my first impulse was to light up,” Nalu Gruschkus writes in the opening line of Abnormal Whites and Excessive Blues, her striking piece about her father’s cancer and her own addiction to smoking. In A Bit of Extra Fun, Delaida Rodriguez is having an unpleasant lunch at a restaurant with her boozy mother. Over a chicken sandwich she has barely touched, she peers into her mother’s jade eyes only to realize with dread that she is more like her than she would care to be. Sam Geida looks back in Friday Night Dinners to the glorious family get-togethers at his grandmother’s house – now it’s only a few of them around the same table, with paper plates and the flat blue and white cardboard boxes of Gino’s Pizzeria. The stories in last year’s issue of Lit/Pub were mostly about making sense of things as we emerged from our Covid isolation. The mood is more assertive this year. Isabela Alongi’s vibrant cover design brilliantly evokes a world in movement and young people going places. It is a thread we pick up again in Josephine Dlugosz’s delicate musings (Work of Art), and in the short fiction of Scott Cameron and Raegan Peluso (A Song for Mr Solomon and Two-Faced). The poetry section is especially strong with Gina Carlo’s compassionate trilogy about love and loss and Scott Cameron’s haunting poem about his return to the bleak post-Katrina wasteland. On the lighter side, Lit/Pub spoke to Professor Bruno Montefusco about campus fashion. In the new memoir section, D.P. gives us a tender account of a childhood road trip with her father to Arizona (Snow). And students are traveling again! Emily Chow takes us with her on her intrepid solo trip to Malta. Rome, May 2023
"When I found out about my father’s diagnosis, my first impulse was to light up,” Nalu Gruschkus writes in the opening line of Abnormal Whites and Excessive Blues, her striking piece about her father’s cancer and her own addiction to smoking. In A Bit of Extra Fun, Delaida Rodriguez is
having an unpleasant lunch at a restaurant with her boozy mother. Over a chicken sandwich she has barely touched, she peers into her mother’s jade eyes only to realize with dread that she is more like her than she would care to be. Sam Geida looks back in Friday Night Dinners to the glorious family get-togethers at his grandmother’s house – now it’s only a few of them around the same table, with paper plates and the flat blue and white cardboard boxes of Gino’s Pizzeria.
The stories in last year’s issue of Lit/Pub were mostly about making sense of things as we emerged from our Covid isolation. The mood is more assertive this year. Isabela Alongi’s vibrant cover design brilliantly evokes a world in movement and young people going places. It is a thread we pick up again in Josephine Dlugosz’s delicate musings (Work of Art), and in the short fiction of Scott Cameron and Raegan Peluso (A Song for Mr Solomon and Two-Faced).
The poetry section is especially strong with Gina Carlo’s compassionate trilogy about love and loss and Scott Cameron’s haunting poem about his return to the bleak post-Katrina wasteland. On the lighter side, Lit/Pub spoke to Professor Bruno Montefusco about campus fashion. In the new memoir section, D.P. gives us a tender account of a childhood road trip with her father to Arizona (Snow). And students are traveling again! Emily Chow takes us with her on her intrepid solo trip to Malta.
Rome, May 2023
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Prose<br />
in surgery right now. Apparently he is fighting through it, but we will see. Pack up some stuff, we are<br />
going to the hospital.”<br />
What’s a brain aneurysm? I thought to myself.<br />
Grandpa survived, but he wouldn’t have made it long without the help of my grandma. She<br />
became his caretaker, and she no longer was much in the mood to make her grandchildren laugh with<br />
little life stories. Friday Night Dinners became quieter. We didn’t laugh, or even smile, and conversations<br />
were measured. It didn’t seem right to be having a good time when Grandma wheeled Grandpa<br />
up to the table and spoon-fed him like he was a baby. Grandma didn’t cook anymore, and relied on<br />
other family members to bring food to the table. Coffee and conversation didn’t last long as Grandma<br />
and Grandpa were soon off.<br />
He died three years later, and so the official tally fell from thirteen to twelve. At first, some<br />
were a little relieved. Grandma was crushed by her loss but was now free from her caretaking duties.<br />
<strong>To</strong>asts and cheers were made for Grandpa as well, and having Grandma back at the head of the table<br />
was important.<br />
<strong>Then</strong> came Grandma’s unexpected death, and the end of Friday Night Dinners as we had<br />
known them. The gap at the table was too big. Silence filled the first floor of the house. At the table,<br />
those who were left often stared down at her empty seat, lost in a trance.<br />
Grandma was the last of her generation to go. The next generation seemed uncertain and rudderless.<br />
For the first time, there were arguments at the table. Uncles and aunts clashed between empty<br />
chairs. It all seemed a lot of nonsense to me. I drowned it out by listening to myself chew or by closely<br />
examining the pieces of food on my plate. Sometimes, remembering where I was, I ached to stand up<br />
and scream, “What are you guys doing?” Yet I never did. I felt I was too young to understand. Instead<br />
of toasting the great life Grandma lived, we stayed mostly on the surface, making only brief comments<br />
about the food while my cousins and I swapped concerned glances and wondered how this had all<br />
happened.<br />
The room grew emptier and emptier. Sure, knees and elbows had more wiggle room, but the<br />
walls and floors no longer shook with merriment. The arguments scared uncles and aunts away from<br />
the table. My cousins moved to Florida and Maryland to pursue careers in business. It was a slow and<br />
14
Change language