Growing Up Italian

Growing up Italian is something everyone must experience....be it for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks or a few months....I can't think of any experience that could either be more fun or more torture!  Our lives revolved around 2 things:  cleaning and eating (in fact our mothers' hobby was cleaning and you wonder why I am OCD about having everything in its' place and a place for everything!).  We never went on vacations, there was always something else to clean.  (Although I dreamed of laying on a beach during my pre-teen and teen years, I never saw an ocean until 1980 when I journeyed to North Carolina to be a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding.  I was in total awe of the power and magnificence that massive body of water conveyed.)

Rather than talk about cleaning, I want to focus on our other hobby:  eating.....ahhh eating....I think Italians invented the term 'Comfort Food'.....we ate when we were happy; when we were sad; when someone got married, baptized or died.  In fact some of my happiest memories growing up revolve around Mom's, Grandma's, Aunt Mary's, Aunt Janet's or Aunt Jane's kitchen table (or the dining room table when you got old enough).  Holidays were unbelievably special, with my favorite being Christmas Eve.  Being Catholic meant no meat on Christmas Eve and what our mothers could do with simple fish would make Emeril or Wolfgang or even Paula absolutely green with envy....we ate calamari long before it was 'fashionable'; only the way we ate it was in tomato sauce poured over pasta (never spaghetti)....and trust me, everything we ate was drowned in tomato sauce!  I learned how to 'clean' fish in my mother's kitchen.  Even if the fish they bought was already cleaned, that was just not good enough for our Italian mamas....

For Christmas, our mother's began to bake cookies, pies, fruit cakes well before Thanksgiving and then lovingly placed in Tupperware containers and put in the freezer. God forbid that you touched one crumb of a baked good before the 'official' cookie tray was 'put together', covered with Saran Wrap and Aluminum foil.

Twice a week we always had pasta: Thursdays and Sundays.  The only variation was what type of meat was in the sauce: meatballs, ground meat, cubed beef or sausage.....and what depended on which you got was how much time your mother had to make dinner after she had spent a day cleaning.....

As my generation grew up we married and moved away, coming home to visit once in a while.  Our children never got to experience the childhood that we did.  I am sad when I think that those days are long gone and as our parents age and die these traditions die with them....

But I can always travel back in time and in my mind re-visit all those good memories of Growing Up Italian.

P.S.  I lovingly dedicate this piece to my Mama, my Daddy and all the Grandparents and Great-Grandparents who have gone on to heaven and watch over and protect us as our Special Angels....