Christmas 2009
At this time of year as the ornaments come out and the cookies bake and we sing Christmas carols, I remember being a child and walking past other houses in town, admiring the decorations and trying to picture my life as an adult. In these fantasies I would always have a neat home, a meaningful occupation, a husband who smoked a tobacco pipe, and two polite, blond children. I would drape my dining room in red linens and have intimate dinner parties serving rib roasts, potatoes, crisp salads, and double-layer raspberry filled cakes.
My dream was to overcome the noisy Italian heritage I was saddled with, to have a quiet, dignified household where there were enough chairs for everyone to fit around a table, and nightly drama was limited to hunting for the TV remote. I longed to open a refrigerator door and not have my eyes tear up from the smell of sharp provolone or minced garlic, to taste red meat without the requisite pizziola, to enjoy baked goods without anisette, whiskey, or rum--like one of those gooey chocolate chip cookies you get from the mall. I wanted to be American. I wanted to eat American, shop American, live American. But it was never meant to be.
During my first year at college I arranged to have a huge Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment, beginning with a private Catholic mass said in one of the empty apartments on campus. About thirty guests were invited; it was a small party by my family’s standards. My Italian roommate and I stuffed and cooked a huge turkey, pasta, and Eggplant Parmigiana, forgetting the yams since they just wouldn’t fit in the oven. To this mix, we added the one thing no party would be complete without--my Aunt Nettie and her accordion. Although she didn’t perform the Italian songs I was used to, she did manage to get everyone singing.
My Italian-ness didn’t start with the need to invite and feed large groups of people. I bought my first Frank Sinatra album when I was a teenager and eventually added Dean Martin, Jerry Vale, Tony Bennett, and Louis Prima. I took sandwiches to people, cooked for my dates, and baked pound cake whenever someone died. I began to talk about food with a certain reverence. It wasn’t long before I owned a high capacity coffee urn and a 20 quart stockpot.
Perhaps I was genetically predisposed to crave pepperoni, rum cake, mussels in hot sauce with a crunchy semolina to dip. I don’t know. There must be a reason I can’t pass by a bin of broccoli rabe without having my mouth water as I picture it finishing in a pan of golden garlic, hot pepper, and olive oil. Even peppers and eggs, a dish we ate when there was nothing left before the weekly food-shopping trip, can seem like a gourmet meal when I’m hungry. And now that I have unlimited access to beef, it doesn’t seem so important to serve it plain.
Christmas is a great holiday to be Italian. Food is more importance than gifts. I remember my father enjoyed sewing the cheese stuffing into a thirty-pound bird while my mother went through a few dozen eggs before the macaroni recipe came out right, and since there was no counter space, they shared the kitchen table without becoming territorial.
Food took on an air of holiness around the holidays. The family I grew up in would argue about everything from the placement of tinsel on a tree to the delicate flipping of fresh manicotti onto wax paper, but everyone cooperated to make the holiday meal until the last mushroom was stuffed and ready for its layer of tomatoes. There was cigarette smoke, coffee pots that boiled over on the stove, and an immediate quiet that fell at 8PM when the lottery numbers were called on PBS, and everyone pulled out tickets. And if our economic world didn't change--which it never did, the noise level would resume, and we'd roll, baste, scoop, and drink.
Perhaps there is something in the blood of Italians that needs the sound of many people talking at once to be happy. Perhaps the sound of a Hoboken crooner occasionally calls us back to our inside voices, and reminds us how blessed we are to have an ear for music, an eye for art, and most importantly, a palate where we can consistently contribute to the health and happiness of our family and friends.
Fathers' Day and Eating Italian
I remember my Sicilian father tending to his garden, a beer can poised in a flower bed, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He would grow several kinds of tomatoes, zucchini the size of baseball bats, and the most perfectly shaped green peppers. Our front lawn was always impeccable. He would turn over the ground, deposit a coating of snow-white lime atop the Kentucky blue grass seed, and rope off the entire area with string, sticks, and rags, to deter any intruders. It offended him greatly when squirrels would steal his nearly ripe peppers, because they never ate them, they just batted them about the way a cat would a ball of yarn. If one had only taken a big bite and smiled, I’m sure my father would have happily tossed it a sausage.
My father enjoyed cooking whatever he planted. He would assume control over the kitchen on Saturdays, generally after the heavier housecleaning had been completed. He preferred to cook for large groups, and whatever dish he made always began with a tomato base. In fact, he’d pizziola most every steak, add zucchini and tomatoes to eggs, and even smother hot dogs with tomatoes and potatoes. He refused to eat anything white, anything made with butter instead of olive oil, anything suggesting the slightest touch of mayonnaise or cream—except of course for cheese. He recognized cheese as an Italian staple.
Like most cooks, he had his own specialties. He baked ziti for the volunteer fire department, sewed up our thirty pound Thanksgiving turkeys with ricotta stuffing, and insisted upon making pasta over an outdoor fire during our occasional summer Sundays at the beach. We did try and convince my father that we could eat hamburgers like Americans, that he didn’t need to try to boil water with charcoal, but he was a traditionalist to the core. With our big pot, a can of lighter fluid, and a good amount of Sicilian pride, he was able to serve spaghetti at a public lake.
If by some chance there was no large group needing massive amounts of pasta, my father would use his Saturday afternoons to cook up “Italian delicacies.” This was the phrase he gave to tripe, kidneys, and other animal parts that would never be presented on a bun with ketchup, but rather served up in some heated marinara sauce. One Saturday afternoon, my father decided to bake some sort of imported cheese which found its way to our house. The stench was nothing less than horrendous, an aromatic blend of vomit and feet, which either my father didn’t notice or wouldn’t acknowledge. Even my mother, who could eat her weight in hot mussels without having stomach issues, was soon gasping for air behind cupped hands, and putting curses on the foul wedge. My father insisted the cheese would be well worth the smell, but some of us were already dry heaving, despite the open windows. Insulted, he took the cheese out of the oven, out of the house, and tossed it into the trash, where squirrels could be seen climbing over each other to get the heck away from it.
After a brief intermission, my father went back to cooking and never stopped until he died in his own bed, just like he planned. There were certain pots he used when he cooked our holiday meals, and my siblings and I wanted them more than his old watches or cigarette lighters. One sighting of a chipped, enamel round pan could restore his image as he stood emitting a cloud of smoke, mixing the cheese filling for lasagna or his oil and vinegar salad. More than the recipes which we all change at will, the pots, pans, and gardening tools bring him back in all his Sicilian glory, cigarettes, beer, obscenely large zucchini, tomatoes, and sometimes even cheese.
Emptier Nest
I always assumed I’d encounter Empty Nest when my children physically left home. But the truth of it is, it happens way before then. There are glimpses of it throughout middle school when they make it clear your company is no longer required. And in high school, though they surely expect that you’ll attend their activities, the number of Saturdays you have together dwindles, and you’re pretty much watching their backs as they walk out the door.
I personally think this is a good thing, a sign of parental success. After all, didn’t we all pity the mother whose child had to be ripped from her leg when school started?
When my kids walked into pre-school without glancing back I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment. That lasted until I got into my car. I was then transformed into a crazy woman as I drove around the block again and again looking for any sign of trouble, crouching down behind the wheel, behind shrubs hoping they wouldn’t see me spying on them, praying other children would be kind to them. By the time I recognized my own hysteria, tears were falling so furiously I had to run to my car and park on a quiet street until I could drive myself home.
Every Labor Day brought the same melancholy feeling—that first day of school was coming and I had to give my children back to the world. When they were old enough to ask me not to walk them to school, I would sniffle privately at home, trying not to notice the extreme quiet settling around me. To cheer myself up I would think of the most trying days of summer. A sibling fight. A ruined dinner. Behavior that made you understand how teenagers acquired their reputations. But then my screen saver would kick in and there they were, smiling, beautiful, young.
This June, my second daughter will be graduating high school; next year, my son will do the same. I am happy for them, and yet I’ve begun to notice my heart is on a hair-trigger. I drive down the street and see pre-teen girls walking with that awkward gait, boys bouncing basketballs, traveling in a pack. Suddenly, I’m crying like it’s the first day of school. And it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. The chairs around my dinner table are empty more and more often. No one needs a ride. There are no fights for the living room TV. Though they still sleep here they have already mentally moved on. I have too. Rationally, that is. But my heart…
When I write novels I generally find the ending in the beginning of the book, so I’ve tried going back to where I was before I became a mother. Who was I twenty-six years ago? What did I want? Are there dreams of my own to dust off? In a quiet house I can probably find them--once I get used to the silence.
In my mind, balls bounce, babies cry, past triumphs and disappointments flash and disappear in my memory. My children are ready to move into the world. I’m sure of it. Mentally I cheer. There are so many projects I could do now. But before I jump in, I put on a video of a long ago Christmas and watch them play. I should do something else but my heart knows nothing will ever compare. And unlike my kids, I’m not quite ready to move on.
Surprise pregnancy
Babies were as much a part of my Italian upbringing as funerals. It was possible to hand off a baby during the anti-pasta, and never see it again until pastry time. So I never really plotted to have a baby. There was always a cousin’s child I could hold for a course or two, and subsequently send down to the far end of the table.
I did not go gently into motherhood. I took my first pregnancy test in 1982--this was back in the day when you had to wait two hours to read your results. If you were pregnant, a doughnut shape would appear on a stick that remained submerged in liquid. You could only use your first morning’s urine to test, which meant you had to purchase the test the day before and ponder your fate from the time you left the drug store.
I had a job at NBC and was counting on a career. I loved commuting to New York, and had just interviewed for a job in Daytime Programming. I had already written my novel JITTERS dealing with women’s loss of identity in marriage. On my off hours I was working on a sketches, plays, even song parodies knowing I was just floors away from “Saturday Night Live.” I was certain it was only a matter of time before I was discovered.
The morning I prepared the pregnancy test I put in a tape of the Wizard of Oz, and sat on my sofa hoping to fall back asleep. I couldn’t read. I could barely breathe. I had lost the ability to concentrate on anything but Stephen King, and he had already given me a nightmare.
When Dorothy woke up from her nightmare, I came face to face with that perfectly rounded doughnut. I remember the shock was physical. I didn’t think pregnancy was improbable. I thought it was impossible! How could anything survive my lifestyle of late-nights and chocolate-chip cookie binges? I was twenty-seven. If there was a biological clock ticking I was deaf to it.
Horrible thoughts bombarded me as I lifted the cup with the doughnut closer to my face. I saw visions of my sister in a smocked shirt and elastic pants rushing toward the bathroom. I watched my body regain the fifty excess pounds I’d finally lost in high school. It was as if I could hear steel doors slamming shut and a Stephen King story of my own beginning.
I remained terrified even as I shared the news with a smile, but it didn’t really hit me until a few weeks later when I nearly lost the baby. I was diagnosed with placenta previa and told I needed complete bed rest. So instead of staying on the job for another twenty weeks, I was instantly disabled, left to lay around or risk the life of my child.
The same day I received that diagnosis, I was offered the job in network programming. Instead of accepting it, like my pre-pregnant, rational, career-oriented self would have, I thought about it from my manager’s perspective and declined it. I remember his confused response as he asked if I was coming back to work after the pregnancy. I could only answer I wasn’t sure. And the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to leave my child for someone else to raise.
I managed to stay at home for a while with two of my children while they were babies, and the one who went into day care at seven weeks old did fine too. I never went back to NBC. I figured the hours were too unpredictable.
It turns out I was pretty good at predicting my reaction to motherhood. You do step back for the greater good, put your own dreams aside. The thing is, the other stuff just doesn't seem as important as nurturing the dreams of your children.
Pregnancy was never easy for me. Parenting was even more difficult. I could never “balance” motherhood and career, but I did write--sometimes at four in the morning. I can’t honestly say which calling was stronger. But I figure I got the story right, my story anyway. It was filled with laughter, tears, never-ending drama, and unconditional love. It broke my heart and brought me overwhelming joy. It took me to concerts, football games, awards ceremonies, and emergency rooms.
Twenty-six years ago motherhood sneaked up on me. I thank God it did.
My First Rejection Letter
When my first book was rejected in 1977 I took it very personally. To add insult to injury, my manuscript had been relegated to the children’s book department and rejected from there. The letter arrived in mid December as I was holding my breath for that Christmas miracle. I sulked through the holidays, stunned.
I didn’t immediately begin writing another book. I was in denial. Had I gotten someone else’s letter? This was before the computer age, before cutting and pasting and mail merging. I knew from experience, typewriters were pretty reliable. You had to roll in the paper, and the keys would strike a ribbon and instantly print words. I had to acknowledge that the letter was addressed to me and made specific reference to the humor in my work. The editor even requested my other projects—for young adults! Was my life’s work to be writing for adolescents? Weren’t they just one step below artists on the humanity scale? More importantly, wasn’t I just one of them a few years before, and an eclectic one at that?
I had been commuting to a job in a New York advertising agency, and despite the excitement of working in a high rise, I felt the strain of the long days on my social and writing life. It was my first job out of college, and I grabbed it with both hands, happy to be employed in any communications’ field. I had only been working for three months, but I wanted what anyone wanted in corporate New York, an office, then an office with a window, then a corner office with a view. It was a small company with at least two other aspiring writers working there, two writers with families and mortgages who were now excited to be producing single sentence copy and vying for editorship of our company newsletter. I could no longer view my job as a roadblock to my writing vocation. I had to see it for what it was--ultimate death.
I stayed in mourning over that rejection letter until the spring, and then decided on a course of action. I would quit my conventional job. I would accept only temporary and freelance work, hopefully enough to pay my rent. I would read every best seller I could find with a modicum of voice, and eventually I would write another book, this time for grown ups.
Boy was it hard to stay unemployed when you knew how to type. It was especially difficult when you knew how to type numbers. My student work assignment had been typing logs for the college radio station, so when I found out I could make an extra dollar an hour doing “technical” typing on the freelance circuit, I jumped at it. I was offered permanent employment at Lowenstein’s, where I conscientiously typed contracts for fabric imports. When I turned the position down I had to vacate the chair. I was offered a position in the typing pool at Elizabeth Arden, where there was a life of free lunch and perfume samples. But I determinedly went on my way. One morning, I was typing contracts in the purchasing department at NBC, and the temptation to stay there was so great, I called out sick during lunch. Several years later, after more rejections slips, I would hold my breath for a lowly clerk’s position at NBC, but I wasn’t ready to cry peacock yet.
Of the stack of rejections I have received over the years, that 1977 letter would remain the most significant, if not the most positive rejection of my collection. It addressed me by name, it referenced my story, it complimented me on my humor, and it asked me for more material. Perhaps if I had received one of the form rejections I later encountered, I would have stayed safe and employed in the Greybar building. My first rejection letter may not have been the career launch I was hoping for, but between the lines, it did whisper, “Keep going.” For me, that was enough.
(Portions of this first book "FITTING IN" are on the "New Year's Eve" and "Nunmares" Links above)
MOTHERS' DAY
As we approach Mother’s Day I recall the agony of trying to choose an appropriate gift for my departed mother. My mother was difficult to please, and this was never so evident as when she opened my gifts. Unlike the more Americanized mothers, mine was Italian and quick to express her feelings.
One year I bought silk flowers in a small glass vase, because I knew real ones would never be welcome. Within an hour, my father phoned my apartment to ask me how much the gift cost. The entire arrangement was twenty-five dollars, but apparently the vase was tagged three dollars; my mother had looked underneath the gift and was immediately insulted. My father tried to convince her that I didn’t undervalue her.
I learned the hard way, cheap or expensive didn’t matter. I failed at it all. Perfume, clothes, jewelry, no matter how carefully I tried to pick out the perfect present, she would exhibit some sign of disappointment, be it the soft sigh, the forced thank you, or even the more direct “What the hell did you buy this for?” Yet for a non-event I could show up with a donut and she’d be happy for the thought. In fact, any used item was even more appreciated.
One Christmas I bought a ruby necklace, spending four times my budgeted allotment. It would be worth every penny to have my gift appreciated. Ruby was her birthstone, so I couldn’t imagine her not loving the extra care I took to pick it out. My mistake. From the moment she dangled it from her hand, I knew she hated it. I could feel my heart itself swaying back and forth with the necklace, as she rocked it in disbelief. But in case I didn’t pick up on the clue, she twisted her mouth and reminded me she had asked for a battery operated TV. Still, I didn’t admit defeat.
My mother had amassed a collection of home-recorded tapes from the food network. I stumbled upon a New York Times award-winning recipe tape. I thought for sure this was a no-brainer. I wasn’t going to give her something I thought she needed. I was going to give her something I knew she liked. Wrong again. In fact, she could not understand why I would pay money for something she could get for free off the food channel. A discussion ensued, and my father, uncle, and aunt came to my defense. I don’t think I said much that night, except to myself, vowing never again to do more than write a check or place cash in an envelope.
That was not the last gift I gave my mother, though it was the last one I gave her while she was alive. When she died I gave the undertaker a pair of my shoes that had been in and out of high rises in New York City, places I suspected she would have enjoyed if she had been born a generation later and given the opportunities I was lucky enough to have. Whatever she disliked about my life no longer mattered. Her negative comments about my gifts just gave me something else to hold onto, one more precious memory of her. But I’d like to think she liked the shoes. I’d like to think that one gift said it all.