Sauce Runs Through My Veins

“Manga, manga!” she’d start to yell whenever my brother and I would commence in chatting at the dinner table. My full-blooded Italian grandmother insisted that eating was more important than talking. You could set an egg timer for five minutes, and by the time you walked into my grandmother’s house until that egg timer buzzed, she would have asked you three times already if you want anything to eat. And eventually, a five-course meal would materialize below the napkin that somehow made its way around your neck.

The best part about my grandma’s food obsession was the intricate attention to detail she gave to her spaghetti sauce. I remember watching her cook as a curious child. I observed her like a doctor observes study subjects through a two-way mirror. I noted her process: She’d start by placing a large saucepan on the stovetop, turning the dial to low. Then, like a ballerina, she’d float over to the counter and begin to chop the onion and garlic with steady hands and smooth slices. Her elegance never faltered as she tossed the freshly cut ingredients into the pan, which would sizzle and fragrant the air upon contact with the hot, oiled metal surface. Then she’d mosey over to the sink, turn on the faucet, and scrub her hands clean. Just as I’d tiptoe and peek into the pot, a slab of bloody pork smacked the bottom. “Pork gives the sauce its flavor,” she’d say. Again, running water and the scraping of the sponge’s bristles against my grandma’s tanned skin would sound. Then came the spices and the tomatoes, which she’d hand-strain twice through. The faucet could be heard again. Then her secret (and my favorite) ingredient: a sprinkle of sugar. As the sauce bubbled its way into perfection, she’d start rolling the meatballs (a whole different complex process) and throw them into the skillet, letting them sizzle and pop to perfection. She’d give me a bowl with a meatball, some sauce, and a piece of bread to hold me over.

My father used to do the same when he was a kid. He’d stand by her apron-side, paying close attention to both her movements and ingredients. And I’m sure my grandmother had experienced these moments with her mother, as well. But the sauce involved more than the process of construction and digestion. It glued my family together. Every Sunday, my dad would attend 8:30 a.m. mass at St. Francis Church, conveniently across the street from his Grandma Gringeri’s house. Once mass ended, he and his folks would head over there for spaghetti and meatballs. She’d give him a bowl with a meatball, some sauce, and a piece of bread to hold him over.

Food was always paired with a variety of stories from the past. How my great grandparents fell in love and voyaged to America to share their lives with one another and get married. How my grandmother, donned “The Queen” by her brothers and sisters, pursued her passion for luxuries and class as a child, regardless of her 10 other siblings. How good of a man (and a barber, apparently) my Grandpa Rocco, who everybody called “Roxy,” was and how much he would have spoiled me if he had survived the stroke that killed him. And love, I cannot forget about the love, also known as the incessant stinging on my cheek from being pinched by every relative over the age of 50 that walked through the door expecting sauce on Sundays, full of exclamations of how big I was getting and how beautiful I was becoming.

As I myself make the sauces, the meatballs, the pasta that brought my family together over all those years, I continue not only the traditions of family, but the traditions of a long lost past I can only dream about. The sweet aroma of the tomatoes, the sound of the meatballs sweltering in the olive oil, and the sensational combination of flavors brings me back to Sicily when my great great grandmother would make the same meal for her family. And perhaps someday, I will do the same for my child. Let her study my every move with the concoction of my family’s generational tomato sauce recipe. And while she waits patiently for dinner, I’ll give her a bowl with a meatball, some sauce, and a piece of bread to hold her over.