September 13, 2026
Our grandparents … and how they loved us
Whenever I got into trouble as a young man — largely of my own creation — I always thought “Uh oh, the end is near.” But then, it seemed, I would miraculously emerge from the wreckage with only minor bruises. Figuratively, that is.
It got me to wondering, “How the heck did that happen?” and I often came to the same conclusion: Somebody prayed for me, and I’m convinced it was my grandmothers.
Don’t get me wrong, my grandfathers were probably praying too, but I never knew them because they died before I was born. My grandmothers raised their families by themselves, one on the East Side of Bridgeport and the other in the Hollow.
Since both my parents had to work to support our family, I lived with my grandmother Angelina in a second-story apartment on Sherman Street in Bridgeport. She was an Italian immigrant, who was widowed in her early 40s and raised nine kids during the Great Depression.
Every morning, she would take me across the street to St. Mary Church for Mass, celebrated in a mysterious ancient language called Latin, which I couldn’t understand and neither could she because she only spoke Italian.
The two of us knelt side by side in the back of the church, while I tried to figure out what was going on and she prayed her rosary.
Every afternoon at lunchtime, I’d lie on the floor in front of the stove with my coloring book and crayons, while she baked two sweet potatoes, one for each of us. She sat nearby in her rocking chair, praying the rosary, and she usually dozed off around the fifth decade but always woke up just in time to take the potatoes out of the oven.
Years later, I still remember those simple pleasures and our time together. Even now, in anxious times, I’ll whisper to her, “Please pray for me” because I’m convinced the prayers of grandparents are very powerful. Not to mention, Angelina means “little angel.”
©J Pisani
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