Frank Di Piero was born in Chicago and is 100% Italian origin. He has traveled to Italy many times and attended two study abroad programs in Italy, one in Roma and one in Firenze. He is the former President of The Harlem Avenue Italian & American Business Association and was on the committee to start an Italian American Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago. He is a Director of Casa Italia, and LITTLE ITALY Cenetta. He is a volunteer at Casa Italia Library and the Italian Cultural Center.

“Edward, you have hands like Papa’s,” Aunt Della blurted. I am sure she meant it as a compliment because she loved her father and respected how hard he worked for his family, but I would never have the hands of a man who did manual labor as he did.

Papa was my grandfather. His hands were heavy, gnarly and calloused. At ten, mine were soft, clean with trimmed nails, and, except for a small knob on the farthest digit of my second finger where I choked the pen to write, had no calluses.

Perhaps Grandpa’s hands were trying to tell me something of what I might or should be one day, as his were the hands of work, hard work…crooked, grubby, dirt under the nails, bruised with cuts, and with brown spots on the back resembling the map of Europe.

I watched him make cement one day as he was preparing to patch a square under our grape arbor. As I watched him stirring the cement---sand, water, stones---mixing, testing, eventually pouring…I was transfixed because I knew this slurry would toughen to indestructibility. And I knew that just before it hardened, he might let me scratch my name in his masterpiece.

I looked in his toolbox; a leather bag, cracking and crusted with dust, hardened plaster and cement. Grandpa was a cement worker in the days of the depression, given a chance to work by President Roosevelt’s WPA. In the toolbox were a hammer, a trowel and a spade to smooth, set and define cement.

“Grandpa, how do you know how to do all this stuff… make cement, build a shed, plant a garden, bury a tree?”

He turned his head and looked up from his kneeling position. “I learnawhat I haffa ta. I makea what I hafta makea to helpa the family. You no wanna do this, Ed-a-wood. You wanna go ta the skool.” He put down his tools and turned his hands up. His palms were as tough as the cement he was making. His fingers were bent, his palms scarred. Traces of cement had seeped into the cracks.

“Thisa is from harda work Ed-a-wood. I like-a to do. Mah, you. You must-a stay inna the skool. Giva me your hand.” He took my hand, spread my fingers and pushed it into the wet cement that was cold and almost firm even on this warm day. He held it there for a moment. He released it. My hand was imprinted into the cement that, when dry, would be there forever on a slab in the rear yard under the grapevine. My palm was covered in gray and looked a little like grandfather’s.

The cement slab was the only section under the arbor with no grape stains and, the only one with a handprint, mine. Under it was scratched, “Edward, 1949.”

“Thanks, Grandpa.”

The other day, I looked at my hands. They were still soft, smooth, a reflection of a lifetime in one school or another. I turned them over and looked at the backs. Prominent veins, spots and wrinkles now crept into what once were smooth and unblemished. They bruise easily and the bruises turn brown and stay. My knuckles seem bigger.

Well now, at least on the dorsal sides, I have hands like Papa’s, not gnarled or crooked, just exposed and aged.

I would love to go back to the yard to see if my handprint is still there.