Free Crazy in the Kitchen by Louise DeSalvo

wear finery like this again. But the three-piece
     suit is my grandfather's, and he wears it throughout his life. A man who works with his hands needs only one suit. To wear
     to weddings, christenings, funerals (those of others, and his own). More than one suit would be an extravagance.
    And this man, who leads a hardscrabble life in this richest of countries (whose streets, he was told, were paved with gold,
     who tallies at day's end how little he's earned, how much he owes), has no need of more than one suit, carefully purchased,
     so that it does not look like a wedding suit but like a good suit. A suit a man can wear with pride, though in wearing it,
     he feels like an imposter. Feels like the bosses he despises, not like the laborer he is and the workers he respects.
    My grandfather wears this suit eight times in his lifetime. At his first wedding. My mother's christening. His first wife's
     funeral. His second wedding. My mother's wedding, when he walks her down the aisle with pride, with joy, for he likes the
     man she is marrying; he gets drunk at her reception, he is so happy. (Drunk as he is, he is careful of his suit. He is always
     careful of his suit.) And he wears this suit on the day when he becomes a citizen of the United States.
    When his daughter marries, my grandfather tells her that he will wear this suit, though it now looks old-fashioned, when her
     children are christened, when they graduate from college, when they marry— his grandchildren who will go to college, distinguish
     themselves, fulfill his dreams, marry well, make his work worthwhile. (He wears his suit to their christenings. But he is
     dead long before they graduate, long before they marry.)
    He wears his suit, too, for his wake and his burial. But this time, it smells of mothballs, for his wife has not had the time
     to air it.
    Because he was buried in his suit, there was no good suit in the box of my grandfather's belongings. No good shirt, good socks,
     good tie, for he was buried in them as well. Just one pair of everyday trousers. No everyday shirt (he wore the top of his
     long underwear in the house).
    Toward the end of his life, my grandfather would try the suit on to make sure that it still fit (he was not getting fat, but
     was becoming bloated, retaining water for a reason he never discovered, for he never went to a doctor, not once). He tried
     the suit on because he didn't want his wife or daughter to waste money on a burial suit, and he didn't want the undertaker
     to slit the jacket of his suit up the back, slit the trousers to accommodate his girth, the way the undertaker had to for
     a friend. My grandfather didn't want to imagine himself going to the other side in a damaged suit. That would have made a
     bad impression, would have brought disgrace to his family. Even in death, la bella figura.
    And yes, the suit still fit, he would discover whenever he tried it on, though it was a bit tight, especially in the thighs.
     And, as he pulled in his stomach and fastened the buttons of his trousers, he relaxed, knowing that this suit could still
     be put to good use.
    If my grandfather had been a nostalgic man, there would have been a small bag of soil in the box, Pugliese soil, stowed in
     his luggage and brought with him to America so that he could be buried with it. But there was no bag of soil. No nostalgia
     for the old country. Yes, he missed his parents (dead), his relatives (most of them dead), his friends (because he couldn't
     write, he had never been in touch with them). But he did not miss the place he left. "I spit on that place," he said. He was
     better off, he knew, in America.
    In that cardboard box of my grandfather's possessions, there was this, too:
    One pass, No. E 9155, good for riding any Lackawanna train between all stations, good from January 1st, 1948 through December
     31st, 1949 (except for trains 3 and 6), in the name of Mr. S. Calabrese, Retired Laborer, signed on the back, in the hand
     that