Text size:

'The Gerardi Family

'City Kids Play At Country Homes

The gang's all here. The Gerardi family during a recent party at Joan Gerardi's house in Ronkonkoma

Joan Gerardi, 33, is an actress living in Ronkonkoma. Her interest in documenting the family history intensified in 1996, when she lost a favorite cousin to cancer. "I realized how precious my family is to me," she writes.

MOST MEMBERS OF my family were born in Italy and immigrated to America, and some were born in and around Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We lived in railroad apartments, and I vaguely remember Friday night poker games and Saturday morning drives to Grandma's summer house in Hauppauge.

When my father was courting my mother, Lillian Bertolino, in the late '50s, every weekend they used to take the Northern State Parkway to the Hauppauge house. The men played poker under a shady tree while the women sunbathed and peeled the tomatoes for the sauce for dinner.

"Oh, what fun we had for people who had no money," Mom said a million times. Grandpa James worked three jobs -- pressing clothes in a factory, as a porter in a city park and shining shoes -- to feed his family's 11 mouths.

The country house I remember best was not the one in Hauppauge, but the one that belonged to my mother's older sister, ZiZi, which in Italian means "great-aunt."

In the mornings, I'd climb out of my bed and try to sneak down the stairs into the kitchen. ZiZi was up earlier than the birds. After breakfast, ZiZi would have hard Italian bread ready to grate into bread crumbs. I'd help her and we'd give the rest of it to the birds, who were always waiting outside.

ZiZi has since sold the house and lives in Oakdale. "Us kids" have now grown into adults. Some of us have families and careers of our own.

We never thought we'd be the big kids so quickly. At a recent graduation party, we sat at a table, my cousins and I, and we ate and laughed and drank. The new kids were running around -- laughing, smiling, eating, drinking and absorbing new memories.