My immigrant grandmother, Desolina, sewed pom-poms—little ones for curtains, slippers, and shawls, and big ones for winter hats. On a special table she made about a thousand pom-poms per week. In the 1940s, her work brought in $20, half of my grandfather’s salary as a stonemason.
These pom-poms served an additional purpose. Late one Christmas Eve a neighbor showed up at their apartment with a tree being she’d gotten for free from a vendor who'd been selling them on Ninth Avenue. He was giving them away before burning the rest. Desolina, who answered door, didn’t know what to do with the small, scrawny pine, but took it anyway.
My grandfather came out from the bedroom.
“Un albero di Natale,” Desolina said. “A Christmas tree.” She shrugged. It wasn’t their custom to have a tree.
“Now we have to decorate it,” he said.
She threw up her hands, as if to say, “With what?”
My father, who was twelve, pointed to the pom-pom table, where his mother’s materials lay.
Desolina shrugged, as if to say, “Why not?’
She sat down. She worked quickly. In no time she had made two dozen pom-poms–red, blue, yellow, and white–that my father and grandfather hung on the tree with small loops from the string. They sat around the tree and waited until midnight, when they bid each other a “Buon Natale.”
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