Because my grandparents and I liked to cook and were proficient at it, we often talked about food when we were together, happily cooking up something on small stoves in smaller apartments, but always glad to be together. Food was something we shopped for almost every day, for economy's sake and freshness, because anyone who's carried groceries up four flights of stairs knows that over-shopping is a curse in of itself. Besides, when you pass by a store every day, what's the point? There isn't any reason to hoard when there's plenty!
They lived through economic recessions far worse than anything their children went through, and it made them softer for it. Not for me, though, because I kept pace with them intellectually, which was freeing for all of us. There were no excruciating back-and-forths with a table of fat psychos more interested in checking out mentally and/or stressing out intentionally to create friction they could get high from. Ick...go away! We got into the real stuff of life, enjoying it pleasurably in a way that the inept among us would never do be able to do. We respected their illnesses as separate from us and our reality, without giving in to their crazy demands or insane schedules.
Eating for us was part of G-d's inheritance to us, as the good life we deserved as His Most Faithful. We savored the dishes we made excellently without showing off about it, because it was a part of our everyday lives, and because crazies are often deeply insecure and ravenously envious about a prowess and excellence they can never really participate in. Even as we spread our gifts evenly among them, they greedily wanted ever more from us, in response to our daily productivity. Still, the margins can be great places to live in, especially when drama queens display the same drab colors over and over again.
Our disordered family were easy to checkout on mentally-speaking, fast-paced as our real lives were in the very large world that is the greater New York City area. Like me and my brothers, my grandparents lived real lives, working really difficult jobs with a long list of great experiences to show for it. We laughed easily and often, passing the fruits of our labors among our small social group within a group, going over the heads of our sick family and friends.
One Easter when I was little, my grandmother and I sat at her dining room table listening to her youngest prattle on and on about shopping and bunny rabbits, like the nervously immature girl she is. She lived with them all of her life, until they died. She had a pseudo-lesbian relationship with another sick woman from the old neighborhood she called her "best friend", but really, they were simply two sick women living with their parents long-term, because it was either that or an expensive mental institution. It was sad and tortuous to be around them, because they spoke repetitive nonsense to each other, in the similar way that compulsives do. She called my mom's sister her "Bunny", which made her hoard rabbit statues in response to her gay friend's devotion, relishing trips to the local mall like you and I look forward to riding the surf at the beach in summertime.
Yeah...we ignored them...a lot. For my beneficial and habitual blocking out of their inanity, I was rewarded with actual stories by my grandmother about her wild Depression-Era childhood, when her ability to survive might be the only thing that pulled her through the day. I could relate. My own parents (her daughter) were dangerous like her parents. We understood each other well. Back then, butcher shops were on the street, barking out their wares for your close inspection, because every penny counted. If you made a poor decision with your one purchase, you might not make it through the week with a decent meal, because your parents rode you about that, too.
On the week leading up to Easter, her mother purchased a live rabbit for their Sunday bolognese sauce, and barring an indoor cage for her to keep it in, she stored it in the tub for the few days until the big holiday weekend. My grandmother loved the little creature, rare as pets were for poor immigrant families recently arrived. Tenement living was rough, and space was scarce. Families often shared a bathroom on every floor, and baths meant you lugged buckets of hot water up some flights of stairs. If you've never done it, then you don't know to what lengths you'll go to keep yourself neat and clean. She loved the cute furry thing as a welcome diversion she could entertain herself with, after schoolwork and her chores were done.
On Sunday, she was delighted to eat her mama's handmade macaroni (that she cut on a bed covered with a white sheet, in great lengths) topped with a sumptuous red sauce, because meat (expensive as it is) was a rare treat for them, too. Sometime during the day, though, she went into the bathroom to peek at the bunny rabbit in the bathtub. But...what?! It was gone! Quickly, she ran back to the kitchen to tell her mama that the bunny had escaped. Oh no! "Haha...oh no, no, my dear little one," my great-grandmother Rosa laughed, "she was in the pot!" Slowly but surely my grandmother realized the price of her great Sunday dinner. Ohhh...
"Were you upset?" I asked my own dear Italian grandmama. "Oh, no!" My grandma smiled back at me! "I loved my mother's cooking! It was delicious!" It was as true then as it is for me, today. Nothing beats home cooking. Absolutely nothing. And I still love cooking Italian-American food as much as we still enjoy eating it, because the recipes we make for each other in gladness is the true wealth that we inherit, as a real manifestation of His Love for us all. That's what Easter, rabbits, and family mean to me. "Mangia! Mangia! Mangia!"
Per Angelina , proprietario di Angel di Dio.
