On cool nights like the last, I cover myself in my Gram’s afghan. My grandmother, Jennie Lozupone Galeano, was an expert seamstress who at one time made suits for Franklin Roosevelt and robes for the justices of the Supreme Court. She was always making suits for her grandsons and dresses for her granddaughter’s First Communions. In her later years, she lived to be 97, her eyesight worsened and she shifted from fine stitchery to knitting. This was her first afghan and as her first grandson, I was the beneficiary.
Despite living in this country since she was six years old, she continued throughout her life to have trouble with certain English words. One of those words was “afghan.” So, when the time came for her to present me with this gift as I was leaving for college, she handed it to me saying, “Robbie, I want you to have this ‘african’ to keep you warm in the winter.”
Now, almost sixty years later, this knitted, wool african, dog holes not withstanding, continues to warm me on cold nights. And as I prepare for a trip back to her home town in Puglia, Italy, it’s the sound of her voice that will calm me as I walk through the streets that she last walked 117 years ago.
Jennie Lozupone Galeano, Silver Spring, Maryland, 1992.