In the ever changing world of Ordinary Legacy I’m trying yet another way to send my message out. Holy video blog, I know, as if hearing the sound of my voice weren’t enough…
In my other ever changing endeavor to meditate, you know the one I began in January of last year, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all about the right equipment. Indulge me…
Hope your meditation practice is going well, have a good week.
My dearest friend has never said a word to me. I believe she would if only she could talk and I’ve asked her at times to please talk to me. This week, however, even if she could talk I think she wouldn’t.
Perhaps you’ve followed the recounting of Toti Nonna’s haircut on Instagram this week. Seems an ordinary enough task but as an old dog it really isn’t. It becomes a logistical endeavor complete with bribery, deceit, and contrition.
First, and here’s where I may have gone wrong, I wait as long as I can to begin the grooming planning. All through the winter her hair gets longer and wider and fluffier and woolier. She could actually be shorn for a sweater if I was that weird kind of Martha Stewart industrious.
Then we set the date, early in the month so that I can put her flea and tick repellent on afterward without it being washed off at the groomer. Then comes the deception, let’s go for a ride in the car for absolutely no reason. She knows what each ride is about like going to Fedex, I wave the Fedex envelopes, like going to Gramma’s I grab the bag of clean laundry and use a special shorter leash. So when we begin to go for a ride using the shorter leash and don’t wind up at Gramma’s I believe I’m not fooling her in the least but I carry on in my delusion.
Then the day comes and I grab the short leash and a “special” cookie, really who the hell am I kidding, and off we go to visit Aunt Sara at Petco. She will pee several times before we go in, even if there’s nothing left she will eeek out another drop. One time she even tried to poop as soon as we got inside the store, it didn’t work. We didn’t turn around. We weren’t even embarrassed because we go so early in the morning no one even saw us.
Sara comes out and coos and coddles her but she puts on the big shake. Every part of her body begins to tremble, it is unbelievably effective in ripping my heart out. And now I have to walk out the door and leave her there. She can throw a guilt producing pout over her shoulder like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Several hours later I get the call to come pick her up. Those several hours feel like an eternity, the quiet the settles over the house when she’s not around is deafening. No nails clicking on the wood floors, no barking at the FedEx guy, no snoring. I can’t work without snoring in the background. I can’t wait to go and get her.
She is beautiful. She looks so thin and healthy and young. All her gray muzzle is under her chin, it hasn’t crept up around her face yet. Her belly is grey and brindled. She doesn’t give a good God damn that I am happy to see her and making a fuss. GET ME OUT OF HERE.
Once in the car she pants all the way home. Once in the door she drinks a gallon of water. Once she checks the entire house to see that everything is alright she puts on the stink eye and goes to sleep. She is exhausted. She ain’t happy. She just ain’t having anything to do with me.
Somewhere in the middle of the night she will sneak up on the bed and curl up in the crook of my legs. All is forgiven in the wee hours but she is far from recovered. She will sleep the next two days away, do what she has to outside and come back quickly.
Today I grabbed the short leash to go to Gramma’s but she reserved her excitement until after I had the clean laundry bag in my hand to walk out the door. All is right with the world now that she is going to Gramma’s. Gramma thinks so too and while my dearest one still hasn’t said a word to me I’m pretty sure I’ve been forgiven. For the love of an old dog I would do anything.
Bless Andrea Scher and her Brave Blogging, we are dabbling in audio blog posts… if you didn’t know I notoriously struggle with the sound of my own voice. I really believe that I could write all about Easter Sunday yesterday but the words just wouldn’t give you the same feeling that an audio rendition might. So here goes…
The fact that spring has arrived has almost everything to do with my ability to shake off the loss of my hour, not your hour mind you but my hour. Everywhere I look there are tiny green shoots poking through the earth. Today may very well be the last time I wear the big red coat that scrapes and swishes making a racket as I walk each morning. Toti Nonna no longer has to wear the sweater or vest or raincoat. I can tell she’s thrilled at the prospect. It’s also the last time we’ll walk through the meadow at the green acres for fear of the tick infestation, I’m pretty sure she’s ok with that too.
There’s no time to wallow in lost hours there are things to be done. The strips of insulation must come off so windows can be opened. The deck is swept and the furniture is in place. The old Adirondack chair has gone to dilapidated chair heaven. The garden needs to be uncovered and Easter is coming.
Easter is a big deal in Italian families, it’s a big deal for all Roman Catholics but the Italian people are in high gear in the kitchen. I am lucky enough to host Easter at my house, you’re shocked I know, and the cooking is traditional and reminiscent. It’s a food tradition frenzy beginning with my Gramma’s Easter bread. I don’t know that all families make this bread, I have a feeling this was her normal bread kicked up a notch with black pepper and the blessed palm from Palm Sunday.
The Palm is historically a problem for me. I no longer go to mass especially when the twice a year Catholics come out, as my mother would say, so I have to rely on someone else to bring me the palm for the bread. My sister and her husband used to go to mass but since he left us she no longer feels comfortable going on her own. So now it’s up to my cousin Nancy to keep me from stealing it from the church decorations like I was forced to one year. I know, I’m not sure the theft negated the blessing but everyone seemed fine throughout that year. God love her she came through this year to keep me from going straight to hell. I always say God ain’t mad at me but that might have crossed the line…just sayin.
So now it’s back to Aunt Millie’s recipe box and pulling everything out and getting going. I use Aunt Millie’s recipe, if you can call it that, because this bread has a long ago special memory for me. The recipe is in my handwriting from when I was first married. I remember taking the notes as she was making the bread because only she could make the bread (they are such a pain in the ass that way) but she talked all the way through it so I couldn’t get in that much trouble getting it all down. When I look at the card now I think if ever I gave this to someone they’d just look at it and scratch their head but when I look at it I’m back in her tiny kitchen on 47th in Astoria. So if you want to learn from me I guess you’ll have to take your own notes too.
There aren’t many ingredients but it requires time. During each rise there were stories, whether she made the bread at her house or at our house there were stories. Her and my mother would argue (about everything) how Mama never made it that way, or Mama used to do it this way. Mama didn’t use that much pepper. You get the picture…my mother thinks mine tastes just like Mama’s. I only this year told her I use Aunt Millie’s recipe….oh. See, what you don’t know doesn’t bother you as they both used to say.
The smell of the bread baking is incredibly nostalgic, it swells my heart, makes me yearn sometime for those days, and worries me that it will disappear one day for good. Sigh… Along those lines I send a loaf to my cousin Jack in South Carolina. He is so damn grateful and we have a wonderful chat each year about this being the best one yet and it tastes just like Gramma’s…ok we’ll just leave it at Aunt Millie learned from her mother.
My mother and I split the other loaf and we enjoy it right out of the oven with butter. Then the rest of the days we toast it with butter. The taste is completely different when it’s toasted, the pepper is more pungent and the crust is even crispier. The butter must melt down your chin or you’ve done it wrong. The smell of this bread toasting brings me back again to Astoria and Aunt Millie’s little apartment. I stayed there once and we had toasted bread for dinner and toasted bread for breakfast and went into the city to see the Sound of Music when it opened at Radio City Music Hall. Almost fifty years later I remember every smell and every taste and every detail. That is the power of food memories and traditions.
And so my cousin’s bread will arrive on Wednesday and we will have our annual chat about the old days and how happy we are that we’ve lived it and loved it and “if God spares us” (as every Italian in the world says before they talk about the future) we will chat again next year.
Next week as we gather around my table there will be other Italian food traditions on it and there will be my tiny little family and my extended family of favorite Jews. Our feast will be all encompassing and we will tell stories of Easter and Passover and family and friends. It will be spring on Stowe Lane officially.
Buona Pasqua