Italian Grandmother

Lying awake in bed at night, my thoughts often end up circling the same topic— food. These are not dreams about some delicacy or indulgence. I’m not calorie counting or thinking of new recipes to try or restaurants to visit. I’m consumed with something much more mundane. Fish crackers. Cheerios. I’m talking blueberries and waffles and chicken nuggets and grapes.

Each day, I have to account for breakfast, lunch, dinner— and then with a toddler— at least two snacks. Trying to balance out a healthy menu with convenience (and actual success) in feeding a toddler takes some thought. How many fruits or veggies are we eating per meal? How much protein per day? What about carbs? Calcium? Or sugar? Nobody told me being a mom involved quite so much math.

It’s 1 am now, but mentally, I’m walking through Costco, making a list of what we need to restock. Then, another list for Aldi. These are two very different lists. But I might be able to hit both of them while my son is at preschool. And if they don’t have it at Aldi, then I should get started on a Walmart pick up list, so I can time it just right, when I am already on that side of town. My weekly schedule revolves around food— the planning, the shopping, the preparing and the eating. And the clean up. Oh, the clean up.

The pressure of it all borders on suffocating. I pause and take a breath. Before things get away from me, what is in the fridge already? The deep freeze? Do we still have chicken things in there? Because if all else fails— chicken thighs. 

Meal planning has helped. Seeing each week laid out in advance gives my anxiety a much needed outlet. But still, food and feeding food to my people takes up an inordinate amount of space in my brain.

Why is that, I often wonder. I’ve lived an accomplished life, am well- traveled, and well-educated. Yet, more often than I’d like to admit, food dominates my self view— swelling with pride when my two year old eats his entire dinner, and tormenting me for hours, sometimes days, when he refuses to even take a bite.

This food obsessed voice is the same one that urges my husband, a grown man fully capable of feeding himself, that lunch is in the fridge, take it when you go. I started leaving it out on the counter, right under his keys, so he wouldn’t forget. When he returns home— how was your day? Did you eat lunch? There’s plenty of food for dinner, get seconds.

Even as I speak these words out loud, while they still hang in the air, I sense this is not really my voice— this is coming from someplace else. Someone else. It’s encoded much deeper, at the subconscious level. This voice is like busting out a silly dance move in the kitchen, only to realize you’ve seen your own mother do the same one, twenty years ago, in your childhood kitchen. 

Maybe there is part of this voice that is my mom’s, but it goes back further. Generations. The voice I hear coming out of my mouth in these moments, first belonged to another— my Nonnie. 

My Nonnie is an Italian grandmother. And what I mean by that is much more than a demographic descriptor. Of course, yes, she is both of Italian descent and a grandmother to seven, great-grandma to six and counting. But the name Nonnie carries more weight than that simple biography.

My Italian grandmother stands all of four foot eight, with a round face, olive skin and hands that have made infinite pots of sauce and countless meatballs. I can’t possibly think about her without thinking about food.

Every single Christmas, our family ate the same dish for years— stuffed shells. We dreamt of these pillowy, melt in your mouth cheese-stuffed pasta shells all year because they only happened once a year. My grandparents started preparing weeks in advance, and spent hours, with a tiny 4 inch fry pan, creating a hundred pasta shells by hand. Christmas Eve, or the day of Christmas, we would gather around the table and stuff the shells with a ricotta cheese mixture. My mouth is watering even as I think about it. 

Incredibly labor-intensive, the time has come to pass this tradition on to those of us with younger hands, but it hasn’t been easy. My mom and I attempted (once) to replicate them but could not quite catch the tenderness. I expect it will take many, many years to reach their level of mastery, only reinforcing the special relationship I have with the meal. 

My Nonnie is the kind of grandma who— to this day— will call me when bad weather is headed our way. She is the one who worries when I am too thin and tells me you look good when I can only fit into my most forgiving jeans. Memorably, at a large family wedding she introduced me, at 26 and unmarried, as her career girl— with a tinge of concern but also a whole lot of pride. She is the one who regularly reminded us, for the last twenty years, not to wait too long to get married or have children because she will not be around forever. She is the one who gasped and screamed when I surprised her one Christmas morning with my engagement ring.

All of these memories fill out the picture of a woman who loves her family, and loves to be with them and feed them above all else. But more than anything, even more than the handmade Christmas stuffed shells, my most enduring food association with my Nonnie will be much more mundane and uncelebrated— the humble lunch meat. 

As a child, we lived about two and a half hours north of my grandparents, and I recall many a road trip, with my mom on the fancy car phone, letting them know we had crossed into Illinois, the almost halfway point. The conversation always concluded with the warning, nay, the threat, that we were not to eat on the way because she would have lunch for us when we arrived. 

It was always the same spread with a few variations— turkey, ham, at least one kind of salami and good provolone (because we were Italian, don’t forget) awaited our crew upon arrival. If we weren’t hungry, it didn’t matter. We were to eat, and keep eating until we backed out of their driveway to return north a few days later.

Once, when I was newly married and living on the East Coast, my husband and I flew into Chicago for a weekend visit. We had a packed schedule and wanted to make the most of every meal, so we stopped on our way from the airport to my grandparent’s home for a Chicago classic— Italian beef sandwich, dipped.

The reception was welcoming of course, but slightly icy, for we had committed the cardinal sin. The first words out of Nonnie’s mouth after hello were pointed— you ate already? At the time, I was annoyed. It seems such a small thing! No matter we were so hungry from a long, delayed day of travel, no matter we craved Chicago delicacies all year, no matter they were just saving us some left over, by-now-cold pizza, no matter any of it— this mattered to them. I didn’t understand it then.

But here I am, standing in front of my fridge, fuming that my husband forgot his lunch of leftovers again. And debating driving the 13 minutes to his work to drop it off, because he’s likely going to grab a Cliff bar instead. The horror, that is not enough to sustain a person all day!

My Nonnie’s instinct is that to feed is to love. And to accept the food is to acknowledge her love. And well, lying in bed running through possible dinner options like some run through football plays the night before a big game— I must own the instinct is mine, too. To feed my humans is to love them. 

I know, without a doubt, that I am not alone in this. I’ve had too many conversations to count with mom friends about feeding, from newborn nursing schedules, to toddler picky eating, to food allergies and aversions. Moms see it all and think about it all and worry about it all— that is our burden and our privilege.

And I have come to learn, pretty early on in the high stakes games of both feeding and parenting that you give whatever you can, you love with all you have— and you do it whether they accept it or acknowledge it or eat it. And then you trust and pray what you are doing is getting through and sinking in, even when you can’t say for certain it is.

Now, for the first time in my adult life, I live within a thirty minute drive from my grandparents. They no longer live in the South Chicago suburb split level of those weekend visits— blue carpet and linoleum floors. Today they live with my aunt and uncle— eating in another’s kitchen, at another table, with different grocery stores and different stove burners and navigating different bodies and capacities as a result of age. But still, without fail, every time I start packing up the diaper bag and toddler toys to end our visit, she gives me some version of the same request— can’t you stay for lunch? We’ve got lunch meat.

More often than not, I have to decline. I hate to do it, but I have traffic and nap time and bedtime routines to consider. I drive home, sometimes wondering, does she know I love her, and feel loved, if I don’t eat? 

I think so, at least I hope so. Because the love she’s given all these years— both through food and otherwise— has influenced me in profound ways. Namely, in this season, I am learning to see the responsibilities that come with feeding a family are precious ones, nothing less than the high calling to nourish and nurture. 

As a parent, there is a lot I can’t fix, and won’t ever be able to control in this world. Oh how I wish I could! But the good news is, I can make dinner. I can feed a belly. I can give what I have— be it fish crackers or chicken thighs or spaghetti and meatballs. This is not a small thing, and I am grateful that to my Nonnie, it never was.

To give of myself, every day, multiple times a day— planning, shopping, preparing and cleaning up after food— it is a chance to love. A chance to serve and give so that another will grow, mature and become who they were created to be and do what they are made to do. I have received this selfless act of love, over and over and one million times over. Is there a greater gift than being able to fulfill this role, now, for my own son? 

Funny thing is, I don’t actually care for lunch meat that much. Never have. When I worked in an office, I would just as soon pack some odd leftovers to reheat for lunch than make up a sandwich. But now, I find myself grabbing some shaved lunch meat each time I’m at the store. I recall all the child nutrition books I’ve read, the Instagram influencers I follow and I can’t help but think about sodium levels— what are nitrates, anyway? But the turkey keeps ending up in my cart, just in case.