My Big Sunday Italian Family Meal

My family is Italian and this Sunday most of us got together for a Sunday family meal. Of course I could have written My Big Fat Italian Family Meal but no one is fat. Well, I might be a bit fluffy but the others are not. So, this Sunday a few members of my family got together to share a meal together. We will be sitting around the kitchen table and the overflow will be sitting at the folding table.

I am making my pasta sauce and my mother’s meatball recipe. I have to say that my meatballs are good…really, really good! My kids and friends love them and that is good enough for me. I learned how to make them from my mother and I have her secret ingredients…so eat your heart out, readers! Along with the pasta and meatballs, there will be sausage, a big salad, stuffed artichokes, and there will be crusty Italian bread (thanks to one daughter-in-law), to sop up the sauce. My other daughters-in-law are providing the desserts.

Rests assured that whatever food is left over will be taken home or I will keep some of the sauce and meatballs and dole a container out to a friend and use the others for another meal.

A family dinner isn’t always possible. We no longer fit comfortably around a table. Now it is two long tables and a small card table. The number of family members totals 38. But some of my kids will not be here to share this meal.

My cousin, Netta, from Utica gave me her mother’s large pasta bowl. The bowl has to be over 50-years- old. It’s a bowl that my aunt would use for her pasta dinners. My cousin handed me a few photos of our family sitting around the table eating. Included in the photos are my aunt, her two friends, my mother, and my grandmother. The picture had to be from the 50s. She made me promise to toast the family with – Salute to the Aiello family/from the village of Nicastro/ the provincial Catanzaro/Calabria, Italy. In all my preparation in trying to get the meal on the table, I at first forgot the salute. Mid-way, way I remembered it, and we toasted my family, clinking our water glasses together.

I am trying my hardest to have a family meal, once a month. So…we will see how that works. If it doesn’t then there is always the option of smaller family meals. I sigh when I think how it all used to be, but right now I wouldn’t change a thing!

Home and a Memory

The other day, my youngest daughter and her husband signed the papers for their new house. They took me over to see it. The For Sale sign was still standing on the lawn. As we walked through the house, my daughter and her husband talked about all the ideas they had to update it.

I listened to their plans and looked at the house and the enormous backyard and heard all their great ideas that they kept talking about. All the while I remembered the excitement of being young and the first house that I bought.

The house was a brick and wood two story colonial in a suburb of St. Louis, Kirkwood. Missouri. It was situated on a circular street, and the number was 50 Hill Drive. The house sat on a big rectangular looking lawn with over a dozen mature trays and flowering bushes.

Inside, standing in the hallway, I looked to my right and their was a living room with a fireplace and a screened in porch off of it. To the left was a dining room. Straight ahead was an eating room, with a number of windows looking out at the long patio and expansive back yard. To the right was the large kitchen, and pantry. To the right was a bathroom. Upstairs there were four bedrooms and two full baths.

Before me was the stairway. At that time, I had four little children, all under the age of five. (Who knew that I would add four more children to my growing brood)?

I looked at the stairway and saw my children running up and down them. I saw my baby daughter, grown and floating down the stairs in a wedding gown, with her trail billowing behind her. The boys were coming down, each in a Tux, ready for the prom. That was what sold me, all those dreams and the comfort of home.

I came back to the present when I heard my daughter say that the lady that they bought the house form cried and told them she had lived in ‘her’ home for all those years. My daughter and son felt sad for her and mu daughter admitted she cried with her.

At that moment, I understood exactly how the woman felt. Home and comfort are powerful memories.

12th Blog Follower

I know a lot of Bloggers who have a legion of followers. There number of followers can be in the hundreds and some are even in the thousands. On September 13^th, I logged on to my Blog and found that I now have 12 followers! Okay…that isn’t a legion, or ton or a multitude but it is 12, which makes it in the double digits! Twelve people who actually admit to following my Blog. I know a lot more people read my Blog because they comment about it on Facebook, but they are not listed as my followers.

But when I went in and saw my 12^th blog follower, I did a “whoopie,” and a high five with myself. My 12^th follower happens to be my oldest grandson, 13-year-old, Matthew. Actually, Matthew is also a Blogger. His Blog is NFL Bench Warmer News. He is not only a cool kid but his Blogs are interesting and well written. The Blogs are mainly about football but he also comments on other sports, and other interests.

Actually, Matthew is the one who has inspired me to add videos to my Blog. Hey, Matt…thanks for the inspiration. From one Blogger to another Blogger, thanks for being my 12^th Blog follower!

Chronological Order

In writing, there is s such a thing called chronological order. A writer starts from the beginning, and finishes the story in a logical order, until the end.

I love to read. A number of years ago, I started to read Michael Connelly’s books. After picking up his first book, I was hooked. Connelly used to write for the newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily covering the crime beat, before he started to write his books. He writes police thrillers, with his major character being LA Detective Harry Bosch. Connelly also writes a few books focusing on two different characters like Terry McCaleb, retired FBI profiler, or Mickey Haller, lawyer. Hieronymous Bosch (Harry Bosch) was named by his mother after the famous Dutch painter of the same name, born in the 15^th Century.

These are not your average thrillers. They are well written and always appear on the best seller book list. Actually, Connelly’s style is lyrical, with a comfortable style. He is definitely up there with other good writers.

After reading my first book, I read the rest of his books, one after the other. I didn’t bother to read them in their chronological order until halfway through my reading selection. The books have been published from 1992, until 2014. Since 2001, Connelly has published a book a year.

I miss Harry Bosch and now, I have to wait a year between books! So, I decided that since I miss Harry Bosch, and Connelly’s writing, I would read his books over again, starting in their chronological order.

Right now, I am reading his third book. Just in case you’re interested, try reading Michael Connelly’s books in their chronological order:

The Black Echo (1992)

The Black Ice (1993)

The Concrete Blonde (1994)

The Last Coyote (1995)

The Poet (1996) Featuring Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling

Trunk Music (1997)

Blood Work (1998) Featuring Terry McCaleb

Angels Flight (1999)

Void Mood (2000) (Featuring Cassie Black)

A Darkness More Than Night (2001) Featuring Bosch, McCaleb, McEvoy

City of Bones (2002)

Chasing the Dime (2002) Featuring Henry Pierce

Lost Light (2003)

The Narrows (2004)

The Closers (2005)

The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) Featuring Mickey Haller and Bosch

Echo Park (2006)

The Overbrook (2007)

The Brass Verdict (2008)

The Scarecrow (2009)

Nine Dragons (2009)

The Reversal (2010)

The Fifth Witness (2011)

The Drop (2011)

The Black Box (2012)

The Gods of Guilt (2013)

The Burning Room (November, 2014)

The Names by Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone

Or cried out behind a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled into the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names in the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.


*This poem is dedicated to the victims of September 11 and to their survivors. 

Billy Collins

Proust Like

There are certain tools I use when I write – pencil, pen, notebook and the computer. The one technique that finds its way into my writing is a memory or a thought or something that evokes and opens up my writing. I use the memory as well as the flash back method.

A few years ago, when I was attending Chatham College for my master’s degree in writing, I wrote a non-fiction piece about myself. It was a piece about a mom reading the want ads and realizing she has done most of the jobs advertised. In the piece, I circled the jobs that I could do, like School Bus Driver, Nanny, Social Worker, Nurse, Cleaning Woman, Secretary and more. Each occupation hit high on my memory of those jobs that I accomplished while being a mother of nine children.

The article was written in tongue and cheek humor. The bottom line was, no matter how many children I had and all those jobs that I did, I wasn’t qualified to get that job. I didn’t have an employer or rather I didn’t come with the recommendations that were needed for the job.

After sending my story out to a number of magazines and newspapers, a year later, The Pittsburgh Press picked up my story and published it. The day after it appeared, I went to one of my classes, where the Professor pulled out my story and congratulated me on my ‘Proust like’ writing.

I did a double take realizing he had compared me to Marcel Proust, a famous French novelist. Proust is remembered for writing his memory of a Madeleine, a small sponge cake from his monumental novel, Remembrance of Things Past. The novel was published in seven parts between the years of 1913 – 1921.

Now, here in present day, I had been compared to Proust. That was a high compliment and one that still keeps me writing!

Place to Live

There were times while on vacation, that I would fall in love with that town and wished that I lived there. Some of those places were Sausalito, San Francisco, Gettysburg, Avalon and Cooperstown. Eventually, I would realize that what made them special was that I only visited them once and others a few more times. Now, I have narrowed it down to one place –Cooperstown.

If I didn’t have a family or all my children, I would really love to live in Cooperstown, New York. Cooperstown is a village and is bordered on one side by Otsego Lake or the Glimmerglass as referred to by the author, James Fenimore Cooper, in his Leatherstocking Tales.

Cooperstown is famous for the Baseball Hall of Fame, which I have visited a few times. I love the Hall of Fame, where you pay once, have your hand stamped, and you can actually re-enter the Hall of Fame as many times as you want for the day. If you are a baseball fanatic, Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame is the place to visit. I am humbled when I walk through the exhibits and see all the memorabilia and all those famous plaques of the men who played the game. Yes, I do have a few favorite players like Lou Gehrig, Sandy Koufax and Roberto Clemente.

To me the town of Cooperstown is magical. On the main street there are memorabilia shops, gift stores, and some delightful eateries. The homes in Cooperstown are mostly large Victorian ones with beautiful flower gardens. And of course there is the Otsego Resort and Hotel near the lake. It is a beautiful place to just walk around the ground or eat a meal there. It is a bit pricey but someday, I am going to throw caution to the wind and indulge myself by staying at the Otsego.

My last trip to Cooperstown, I included a visit to the Farmers Museum and the James Fenimore Cooper Museum. I could have passed on the Farmers Museum but not on the other museum. The James Fenimore Cooper Museum is another treasure in Cooperstown. The building overlooks the lake. The interior is beautiful with gorgeous old wood floors.  They were beautiful polished wood planks. The walls were painted different hues of blue, which seemed to show case the pictures that were on display. The Museum has a number of papers and items belonging to the author, James Fenimore Cooper. I was amazed at how small Cooper wrote but I was also impressed with the beauty of his cursive writing. The day I visited I found a special exhibit for Winslow Homer. The room itself was painted a nautical blue which only enhanced this exhibit of Homer’s works.

We bought lunch and shared it on the outside patio, which overlooked the lake. The patio was surrounded by lush foliage and gorgeous flowers. Everything seemed to be so healthy…the huge ferns everywhere were a deep green, along with the deep red geraniums, tall blue lavender, and large hydrangeas of various colors. Maybe it is because it was Cooperstown but everything seemed better, larger and richer.