Uncle Bernard

Writing is a muscle, and mine’s been flabby and laying on the sofa lately, while other muscles have been powering through and overworking. Maybe it’s time to roll over and do some word push ups.

It’s not like I can’t write. I’ve had a novel published and it was a critical success. I have a book on women expats about eighty percent finished on my computer. I was actually in Italy to finish the writing of that book when covid and my mother’s illness cut my writing retreat short. So many things have clawed away time from writing in this crazy year. But I notice in the back of my mind, there are these attempts to string words together in a way that I’ll remember them, hoping to jot them down later, which I rarely do. The only way to write, really, is to write. Every writer knows this, and most shy away from that cold reality, no matter how much the desire is there.

I’ve been thinking about the value of the small story.

Small events in one’s life that act as turning points. I’ve had many of them, and the older I get, the more I seem to dwell on them and long to record them. Because small stories are often about big ideas.

So today I’ve decided to write a small story to exercise my writing muscle and to say something that has been with me for awhile.

I had a great uncle. He was more like a grandfather, actually, as my father’s father had passed away when I was just five. My Uncle Bernard was my dad’s uncle, and he lived with his wife Anna deep in the country side in Pennsylvania. Born in the hills of Emilia Romagna and immigrated to the United States in 1916, he was a highly refined man, very attractive and dapper; my recollections of him often involve a velvet smoking jacket (which he gave me and I wore until it was threads) and an ascot.

Bernard arrived in America in 1916 only to turn around and be conscripted in 1917 to fight for the United States in World War 1. I’m not even sure he was a US citizen at this point. After returning to New York, he waited tables until he saved up enough money to open a restaurant of his own, the Mascotte in Manhattan ( New York Italians who opened fine dining establishments in those days only opened French restaurants because Italian food was considered far too common) .

That was the good news.

The bad news is that he opened the Mascotte about two months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and had to close it within a year. I have two forks from that short-lived restaurant. I keep one here in Germany and one in Italy, so I always think of Bernard when I cook, no matter where I am.

Between fighting in World War l and losing everything he had in the restaurant during World War ll, Bernard and Anna also lost the only baby they would ever be able to have at childbirth. In between there was the Great Depression. They were no strangers to deep pain and anxiety and very difficult times. Despite all they went through, I mostly remember them smiling together. They were deeply in love and a very solid team.

After moving from Queens to Pennsylvania in the 1960s, Bernard and Anna planted or hunted everything they ate. They were the role models for my parents, who did the same thing after moving us from New York City to the same part of Pennsylvania a few years later.

Bernard knew food. Going to their home for dinner meant eating something like freshly shot peacock or venison and vegetables from the garden, but there was always something like Crêpes Suzette for dessert to remind you that he knew his haute cuisine.

Uncle Bernard in his favorite place: his vegetable garden in Shohola, Pennsylvania

Anyway, my small story about Uncle Bernard has to do with helping him plant a tree. It was an apricot tree. I would imagine at this time he was around 83 or so. The tree was literally a stick. I asked him when it would start producing fruit. He scratched his head, and in his beautiful northern Italian accent, said, “oh, I’m not sure, my darling. Maybe five years, maybe more.”

He must have seen the astonished look on my face that said he’d probably be pushing up daisies by then, because he laughed and with a twinkle in his eye, said, “Darling, when the first apricots come in, you and I will eat them together.”

I never forgot that. Imagine planting something at that age knowing it won’t bear fruit for years and fully expecting to be around to eat it. That’s tenacity.

The older I get, the more I hear the notion of hope in those words of Uncle Bernard. Hope that the fruits of whatever we’re planting today will come back and nourish us down the road. If something happens in between, so be it, but we must hope to reap the fruits of our labor.

I strive to be tenacious like Uncle Bernard. To look stridently into the future and know I can create from it what I want and need. I love the idea of planting our own food; we’ve been doing it for years both in Italy and in Germany.

And I want to do it in style. Bernard did; why can’t I?

But there’s more. I want to create beauty and I want to share it. As long as we have enough to eat and a roof over our heads, this is how I want to live. Creating and doing and giving and writing. Until I’m pushing up daisies myself.

By the way, Uncle Bernard lived well into his mid 90s and did indeed live to see his apricot tree bear fruit. I regret that my life had become too busy and self absorbed by that time to have shared that experience with him.

But I have my memory of this beautiful man and his message of hope.

Love,

Diana Louis Bernadette Strinati Baur