by Michelle Morra
Shortly after Grace Morra was born, the First World War started. Her mother would often joke, "When you arrived the whole world blew up."
Raised in Toronto, Grace was one of seven children of Domenico and Virginia. Grace had a strong work ethic, up before dawn to practise piano. She studied, helped with chores and learned her father's trade of dressmaking. In her teens she was off to New York to intern as a dressmaker. There she worked hard during the day, but at night would bowl until the wee hours with her cousins.
Meanwhile, a boy she knew back home had designs on our designer. A gentle, charming trumpet player and photographer, Rocco Morra won her over. They were married in 1938.
As a Depression-era mother and wife, Grace did what needed doing. Dressmaking for local women. Hearty meals when there was money; fried onions for dinner on the few occasions when there was none. Grace and Rocco were the proud parents of Robert and Richard, both of whom grew to be educated, family-focused, hard-working men.
Rocco died of a heart attack in 1974. Grace continued dressmaking well into her 70s. As a homemaker she made an art of food, right down to tiny pinwheel sandwiches and watermelon-rind pickles. A woman of proud Calabrian stock, she excelled at cannoli, pasta and meatballs but especially loved more delicate flavours - citrus, cucumber, mint. I know that when she stuck a piece of fresh-picked mint in my mouth she was sharing something special because when I did the same for her at the seniors' residence where she spent her last years - fed her mint from my own garden - she closed her eyes and was transported.
Grace was a petite, brown-eyed girl who would flash the same dynamite, red-lipsticked smile in generations of photographs. Even at 95, her complexion had a soft pink glow. But aside from her femininity and looks Grace had a tomboyish side and a sense of humour that grew a little more abrasive with every decade. In her 80s she would greet people of any age with, "Ya rotten kid!" In her 90s, she couldn't quite regulate her volume when making comments like, "Look at how tall he is. You'd need a ladder to get up there, and then it wouldn't even be worth it."
In her last year or two she softened. To my delight the new Grace was more affectionate than any of her previous incarnations. " Figlia bella," she would say, cupping my face in her hands. "I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you. It's been years!"
"Actually Grandma, I saw you three weeks ago," I would remind her.
"Oh," she would say, poking herself in the forehead: "Nobody home!" Again she would laugh, this time at herself.
Michelle Morra is Grace's granddaughter.
Published in The Globe and Mail