Sunday Gravy

There were small distinctions between my grandmother’s sauce and my mother’s. The average person couldn't tell the difference if they tasted them side by side, but I could easily pick them out in a blind test. However, describing those differences would be no easier a feat than my mother describing, to me, the recipe itself.

It was more a list of ingredients than it was actual instructions. My grandmother didn’t measure, and neither did my mother. It was all in their hands and my mother saw no clear way to extract measurements from those hands and translate them to paper. Her answer to each one of my questions was a smile and a shrug, as if to say, “You just sort of feel it out.” I’d learn (and am still learning) that there’s an invisible fine print in between each line of their recipes, and one could spend a lifetime decrypting those hidden directions.

Typically on Christmas, pasta and sauce would be served as an appetizer before courses of meat and fish. It’s somewhat comical to think of an entire bowl of pasta as a warmup to the actual meal, but that’s the way we did it. I knew I’d be missing out on that experience this holiday. After logging 25,000 miles of roundtrip flights to New York for baptisms, memorial services, and everything in between, Adriana and I couldn’t bear the thought of getting on another airplane this year. And as a bit of despair set in, I looked for a way to ease the feeling.

The practice of making sauce serves as a doorway for me. Once all the ingredients are in and they slowly crawl to a boil, I lift the lid to stir and I’m pulled into the past. I travel through time like it’s an amusement park ride. I’m sitting at the round glass table near the casement windows of my grandmother’s kitchen in Queens. Then, swinging my legs from the tall wooden chair in my parents’ first house, football highlights blaring from the tube TV in the den. Lastly, I’m at my Aunt Josie’s house, sitting among all my aunts and uncles at a long living room table that’s been extended with multiple folding tables to seat 20+ people, surrounded by leather furniture covered in plastic in a white-tiled room where everyone talks louder than the person next to them. Josie’s sauce was always slightly sweeter than my grandmother’s and my mother’s.

On Christmas Eve I longed to be in all those places once again, so I hovered over my stove, a large spoon in hand, elbow-deep in a gigantic pot, stirring until the color and consistency looked right. Once finished, Adriana and I filled eight 28-ounce mason jars, then packaged each with a bag of imported Italian riccioli pasta, and spent Christmas Eve night delivering to family, friends, and neighbors.

We returned home later than expected and fell into the couch. In what’s become an annual tradition, The Great British Bake Show played in the background as Adriana received texts from family who weren’t home when we dropped by, now discovering the bag on their porch. Adriana needed a break this year. The prior months were a marathon of life and death, celebration and mourning. I knew she needed to hibernate this holiday, though I could also tell she was concerned I wasn’t getting what I needed. She knows that when I slip into malaise I need to take the focus off myself. So, I made sure to tell her all I wanted this year was to make something, to give something, and to partake in a ritual that ties us to those who can’t be here.

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Whatever and wherever you celebrate, I’m wishing you all the best.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a Happy New Year.