Family and Meatballs

My mother and I just left the grocery store, both of us laden down with heavy bags bulging with food. It’s Sunday after church, the day of cooking, not of rest in my family. As my mother and I walk through the parking lot, she is chattering about this week’s menu, latest recipes she saw in magazines, and wondering how we are going to get everything cooked before dinner. My mom comes from a huge Italian family, Sicilian if one wants to get technical. The one thing Sicilian’s are serious about is their seafood and pasta. Tonight, we are making pasta. The sauce has been simmering in a crock-pot since five this morning. My mother’s pasta production is a day- long event always. The smell of sage and oregano hits me as I enter the house from the front door. I pull out the periwinkle blue mixing bowl from our white washed cupboards, while mom has already begun to mix the base for the actual pasta. I have a different job however. Since I was about six I have always been the one in my family to mix the meatballs. My Grams taught me the art of meatballs one fall in Bristol, Pennsylvania. That day was a long day of museums and shopping. My family came home and we made clam linguini and manicotti with spicy sausage and meatballs. My Granma Jenco and I went to the corner butcher store to buy the meat and freshly made sausage. In the South, we southerners have Winn Dixie. In the North people shop at corner stores. At corners stores, the sausages are made fresh every morning, one knows the butchers name, and he knows your families order according to the day of the week it is. Our butcher, at Mike’s Corner-store, is named Anthony. Anthony wrapped up our meat and we walked home and made our food. After that visit I convinced my mom, or Maj is what I call her, to let me make meatballs. Following Grams recipe, I put the ground beef into the bowl. I crack to eggs in bowl and with a flare add breadcrumbs. I begin to hurriedly mush the eggs and crumbs into the frigid meat. At this point I stick my hands into hot water because they are numb and on the verge of frostbite. After the stinging pain calmed by the warm water, I add the spices. I tear up bay leaves. Grams said to never chop because it bruises the flavor. From the cupboard I pull down oregano, sage, and rosemary. I add those as well. Mom has begun to roll out the dough already on table. Pretty soon Maj will begin to cut an pinch the pasta together, and boil them with a big gush of steam as they hit the boiling water. I begin to brown a little onions and garlic in some olive oil. The when everything is nice and brow I throw those into and mix everything up again, my hands freezing in the process.Once everything is mixed it is time to roll that perfectly seasoned meat up. These meatballs are no cafeteria ones either, these bad boys are the real deal, huge, balls of meat. I can’t cook them all the way through in a pan either, because I will burn the outside and the inside will still be bleeding. So what do I do? I brown them bad boys up and throw them in the crock pot I have going. Then, we wait. Wait. Wait. Wait while playing some good old-fashioned rummy at the kitchen table. My family, I am convinced, are descended from elite- super rummy players. Rummy is a serious game, not to be taking lightly in my family. We will play and joke around, but when it comes down to two cards in your hand, WATCH OUT!! We are brutal. I’m the sneakiest of course, I learned how to be from Gramps before I knew how to play war or go fish. Gramps taught me how to cheat and peak, and of course he is the only person I have never beat him. One day I will though. My most memorable game was when my family and I were at Myrtle Beach. Then sun was setting, we had been crabbing all day, I was very sick of seafood and luckily we all decided on Chinese that night. I do not remember this night particularly because of the game but most because of the events that took place during this game. My Grams, Gramps, two uncles, four cousins, my Maj, and I are sitting around playing and eating Mongolian beef. Grams starts coughing, cards fly everywhere and her face turns red! She had swallowed a red pepper and choked on it. Best rummy memory ever. Not because my Grams almost died, but watching my family react to what was going on. My cousin Renee’ went to go it water, she was shouting all kinds of obscenities. My granddad just stood back because he didn’t know what to do. My uncles fought over who would relieve her with the Heimlich maneuver. My Grams amidst the choking was laughing and I was right there with her. Of course Maj did not think it was funny. It almost gave my mother a heart-attack. Nothing is ever funny to Maj though. Food and cards sums up most of what my family does twenty three hours out of the day when we are all together. We eat when we are happy or sad or even when writing English papers. Pasta is a pastime that my whole family shares. And who knows, maybe one day I will be the one teaching my granddaughter the right and only way to make meatballs.