I grew up sharing my birthday with my Grandfather, who since I was little I called Grampi.

Every summer we would go to Syracuse to spend a couple of months with the family and I remember those days just like they were yesterday.  A lot of fond memories in the good Ol’ Cuse.

What prompted me to write about Grampi, is that he passed away last night, it’s a mixture of sadness and happiness. Sadness of course because he was loved dearly, happy because he was suffering and not in good health at all.

I wanted to write about Grampi as a way to make me just remember the good times and share some of the special moments I spent with him… so my ramblings start here.

One of my favorite memories: August Birthdays!!!

Mom and Tata (my grandmother) making Ice-box cake (a family birthday tradition).  I loved making whip cream and liking the bowl, then I got to decorate the cake with the walnuts and the cherries. Because I was the bday girl there was also a special ice-cream cake for me with the theme I chose (Strawberry shortcake is the one I remember the most)!  While we were making the cake, flowers always arrived at the house, Aunt Sue, the florist, always made sure to make me the most beautiful of arrangements, my favorite were the mini roses or mixture of bright flowers with lilies. We would make a huge banner to name: Grampi, me, mom, aunt Kathy, and Tata and the living room was FULL of presents, imagine Christmas with a family of 6-7 kids, yep that’s what the living room looked like, and it was so much fun to have everyone there together, hours and hours of opening presents, who wouldn’t like that! I must say that since we only came once a year, there were presents in there for the rest of the family too from Spain, so everyone was opening presents – Like Christmas in August!

Another of my favorites: Sunday meals

My grandparents worked a lot, so the weekends was the time to see them. Out of all the delicious meals I ate in Syracuse, my favorite was Sunday cooking with Grampi, especially when he made what he called “Family Steak”,  we would go down into the “spooky basement” and go in the back where there was a kitchen, I would help him get all the herbs on the steak, put the potatoes, the onions and the carrots around the dish (in a nice pattern of course), then we would go down every so often to check on it. It was my special alone time with Grampi, he always made me laugh, he was so funny and silly. Maybe that’s where we got it from? I adored spending time with him since it was so rare.  He used to tell me stories, and I never knew if they were real or if he was just kidding?

Another fond moment: Syracuse Gauge

My grandparents owned Syracuse Gauge, and I loved going over to visit them! I would always run to say hi to Tata, the women in the office always gave me candies and would ask me about Spain, and the next stop was always run to see if I could find Grampi in his office.  He had the coolest office! The big leather brown couch I’d sit in, all the gauges everywhere, and the best part all the knickknacks he had around. He had pictures of all of us, lots of fishing things and sayings on the wall… my ultimate favorite “Dad’s rules” nicely framed:

Rule #1 – Dad is always right

Rule #2 – If he isn’t, refer to Rule #1

The other one I liked was: “Make sure you always sleep 8 hours and work 8 hours, just ensure it’s not the same 8 hours!”

That and the mug that said: Don’t get mad, get even!

That kind of humor, yep that was exactly what my Grampi was about, and I loved every second of it!

The bag of Money
All year Grampi would save his change and put it into a big plastic zip-lock bag and give it to me either at Christmas or for my bday depending on when we’d go. I loved getting those paper rolls from the bank and rolling up all my change in them. It was fun, of course followed by a visit to Toys R US 🙂

Other little things:

– Tall glass of milk with ice-cubes >>> “Gotta have icy cold milk”

– Making banana splits >>> and singing “I”m chiquita banana and I’m here to say…”

– Saying the lawn needed some water so we could run through the sprinklers (this always achieved some giggles from Tata).

– Having a bowl of rice krispies on Sunday Mornings while we read the paper, he had the cartoon section in front of my chair waiting just for me

– calling me “chichi bean Gonzales” and Cristibell

– stories that started with “I remember when you were a little itty bitty baby on Kasson Road…”

– Phone conversations “Cristi, want me to send you some snow? we have lots!”

– The constant reminder of “things always happen for a reason”

And my favorite when I graduated from college:

“You are our very 1st grandkid, the only lady, you are smart and beautiful like your mama, we are so proud of you, don’t forget to dream, dream big, because you were meant to do great things”

There are many other things, but those are my fondest of them all.