The Story of Cecil and "Frusco" part 2

The image on the right of the blog is Aunt Cecil's masterpiece; it's her painting of the singer, Jenny Lind. This portrait hung on my grandparents' living room wall for 40 years. More than anything else, Cecil is known for this beautiful portrait.

Great Aunt Cecil's story is complex; there is a background, there are many characters, there are clashes of personalities, there is a big helping of humor--fortunately!! It's a story that's much easier to tell than to write. But when has that stopped me?

Our lives in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s proceeded in a straight forward, practical, and prudent manner. They were played out against the background of the Cathedral of Learning and the steel mills, symbols of work, production, and higher learning. We as children had hours to fill with creative play; but the course we followed, attending school nine months of the year, standing in lines, waiting to be called upon in class, listening to the sound of the bell--we were being socialized, brought into the main stream of the society in which we lived. Our fathers and mothers did the same. The fathers went to work, brought home their paychecks, bills were paid on time. They wore dark suits and white shirts. Our mothers bought food, made balanced meals, ironed our dresses and shirts, made Halloween costumes. Shabbos was celebrated on Friday nights with our grandparents where you ate the delicious roasted chicken with a "fleischig" knife and fork. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings...

Then Cecil and Frusco would come to Pittsburgh to visit, exactly like two outrageously colored birds that flew, highlighted by our background of grey smoke from the mills and the white paper we used in school to write on.

They had no children and never got married. They went on cruises across the oceans where they drank wine, met interesting people, and sat in the sun. They lived half the year on the isle of Capri, where they had neighbors who spoke Italian and had names like Gabrielle and Gabriella. Then, in Manhattan, Cecil painted her pictures, Frusco made frames for them, and they didn't own a refrigerator because they believed that people should eat fresh food every day. They spoke loudly and in public; they would tell you things, crazy things about your health and what you should eat if you have a cold, flu, or if you're constipated.

When they visited they never stayed in a hotel which I always thought was strange. They stayed with my grandparents in their big house on Burchfield Street where the sparks would fly, arguments would break out, and big family dinners would usually be dominated by Cecil and her Frusco, proclaiming their views on art, raising children, and politics while the adults simmered quietly. Nobody even tried to argue with them. They had a way of raising themselves above other peoples' opinions. Annoying? Yes. Irritating? Yes. Refreshing? Oh yes, especially if you were a child and loved watching Cecil and Frusco take on the world and shatter, temporarily, the prudent, gray-and-white existence in which we lived.