Monday, June 17, 2024
/public-file/1030/Ultra/Image_jpg.jpg
My first memory of Joan McMullen Maenza was in Brooklyn, in the mid to late 1950s.
My mother, Jeanne, was the older and only sister of Tommy Maenza, one of the two identical Maenza twins. My parents split up when I was a baby and my mom, who from the age of 10 had raised her four brothers following their mother’s tragic death at the age of 35, moved back to Brooklyn with me in tow. We lived in Bushwick in the apartment above her beauty salon. The twins, Tommy and Freddy, lived with us off and on till they each got married. They were my babysitters and treated me like a little princess – entertaining me with drawings and their beautiful singing voices, their constant and very silly sense of humor, and loved showing me off to their friends. At that time, they bore a striking resemblance to the young Elvis Presley, which in that era was as cool as it gets.
I remember when Tommy brought his girlfriend Joan to meet my mother for the first time. I thought she was a movie star. She was very tall, slender with porcelain skin and huge blue long-lashed Bambi eyes and a perfect smile. She was a combination of girlishly shy and Brooklyn- bold. I think she must have been around 18, and Tommy was in his early 20s. Though the Maenzas were also Brooklynites, Joan’s accent, from much further East in the borough, was something else. I remember her pronouncing “oil” like “earl” and she used memorable expressions I’d never heard before, like describing someone who wore very showy outfits: “She turned up like Ass’s pet horse” or if someone was being a know-it-all, “He thinks who the hell he is!”
Once Joan and Tommy became engaged, I spent a lot of time with Joan and her pretty sisters, Margie, Jacqueline, and the youngest, Genevieve. Until my mother remarried and gave me a baby sister, I was an only child and so having these “big girls” include me and fuss over me, was beyond delightful. Their mother, the very sweet, hard-working widow, Mrs. McMullen, was so generous to me, I fantasized that this was my other family.
It was fascinating to me to see how “girl families” operated. I’d only known family as my mother and all her brothers. Now I observed how the McMullen sisters bickered, defended each other, fought over clothes, helped each other with hair and makeup, pushed each other out of the way to primp at their skirted kidney-shaped dressing table. Each of them could certainly hold their own, but maybe Joan more than the others. She seemed very sure of herself, which in someone that young would bode well for her future.
At their wedding Joan looked radiant and very, very much in love with her handsome husband. She chatted with everyone at the modest reception and encouraged Tommy, an incredibly nimble dancer for someone of his size, to spin me around the room to the music, which he did, with me standing on his shoes so I never touched the ground.
Joan always loved children and with the births of her own beautiful daughters Karen and Donna, and then baby Thomas, she took to the mother role instinctively and with an unsentimental heart, full of love and pragmatism.
Over the years, though I moved to Europe for two decades, I loved visiting my aunts, uncles, and cousins whenever possible. Eventually I moved back to the U.S with my own family and they too fell in love with the Maenzas, including the “Irish aunts”, Joan and (Freddy’s wife) Margie. The gatherings were always boisterous and fun. Barbecues on Lindbergh St. in Massapequa Park were noisy, warm and playful events. Tommy did the cooking and loved to say, “I'm the boss and my wife is nothing, so that makes me boss over nothing.” Joan would just shake her head and roll her eyes. Their love language was teasing and wise cracks, and the bond of love and affection between them was always, always apparent. Their easy going, open-hearted generosity to family and friends was something they shared, along with so many other traits.
I’m sorry I didn’t see more of my Aunt Joan after Tommy passed away. The demands of grown-up life often don’t leave enough space to make time for all the people you love. I know that she was devoted to her family, proud of her children and grandchildren. She also maintained a social life in the community before moving to Florida with Karen, and then into a nursing home where no doubt, she was the life of the party.
With enduring love from her oldest niece,
Elizabeth Taylor-Mead
Jerusalem Avenue | Massapequa, NY 11758 | Phone: (516) 541-8070 | Fax: (516) 541-6186
