Candies in a dish shaped like a leaf. Caramels with creamed sugar in the center, the kind somebody continues to make today, though not sold at every counter. One in the mouth would declare Sunday night, and each week when we had gone as a family to share dinner with my grandparents.
Me. Brother, three years junior. Mother, so young. Father, so often butting heads with hisdad yet just nearly too unfortunate to afford his own steady table. Also, feeling the weight of tradition given the way going back to the old country before us. Though I would pass through a gauntlet of kisses from relatives with bristly and makeup caked cheeks, it was not long before the quiet of the back bedroom led to one episode of M*A*S*H and one Soap. Both theme songs, slightly different year after year somehow – though then I did not know how – made me feel safer there surrounded by mothball and floral perfumes.
It gave me a certain peace between fights with my sibling, where meanwhile I was too green to quite get the messages of that entertainment, despite the obvious slapstick laughs which I so savored and think now that colored the fond recollections of my claimed space. However, at the long table, all of us seated except for Grandma, there was pasta with sauce of the brightest red tomatoes, maybe from a can in retrospect and maybe not since I make my own from scratch when I can, and enough cheese that it drew raised eyebrows and surprise at my piles.
How fast had I eaten so that I could get away once more? Even though looking back it is magic elusive. Yet the questions were often simple and leading. Just talk. Just to hear me, and where was my head. So many responses during which I focused on the lace tablecloth, fidgeting with my hands, snatching occasional black olives from the dish at the center, or gazing down upon my swinging shoes. โBaseball, I guess.โ I could have said anything because it was not the answer which was important.
After being passed a pizzelle or salt stick bought from the Strip District, the adults would argue, and like that television show in black and white, I was beneath the truth of the words though shocked at being given the window beyond my age.
โJimmy Hoffa!โ came an angry voice, answered quickly by the rest under duress.
I distinctly remember feeling anxious, nudging the volume up to keep the disagreement at an indecipherable murmur. But they were leaving the dining room, part of the kitchen and far too cramped, and in the next room they began to assemble, and I heard the television there sing out The Wild Wild West, not my taste. Not really paying attention to anything else, I dove into the art paper and colored pencils. I do not remember what it was I liked to draw, but I drew for
countless hours, lost in a fantasy dream which would one day manifest as a professional writer, while sporadic skirmishes and pleasantries resounded past the wedged-open door. Once in a while I would look up into the body length mirror on the back of it and wonder who that was and what he was doing. Then when Lawrence Welkโs music played, I knew it was getting close to the end of the night.
For many years I considered why my grandfather would yell the name of a union leader from the fifties, and when I began to pay dues to the Teamsters, my first job under the union, I asked Dad what they used to fight about. โYour grandfather didnโt want me following in his footsteps,โ said Dad. He left it at that.
I thought back to those Sundays and wished I could go back, just once. Wish I can go back. It just was not enough, nor could it ever be. They are mostly gone now, have been for decades, though the table is still there in the care of a long-lived uncle. But every time I hear those first notes of the later elevator music-style theme of a series about the Korean Conflict, I am transported through time to my youth. When I pretended, I was interested in making gnocchi and pizza from frozen bread and canned mushrooms, raviolis with that same tomato sauce, wishing I were outside playing baseball by myself, bouncing the ball off a brick wall, scraping the skin, because my little brother was a jerk. Like those caramels, grated potato, ricotta cheese, salt, and pepper, squished together with egg and a dash of olive oil. Yes, thatโs my 1980. Everyone has their own past, but this one is mine, and forever I shall cherish those sounds and smells bridging me there.
Mord McGhee is the author ofย Ironbloodย (Golden Storyline Books UK 2023) which is nominated for the Maya Angelou Book Award, as well as other works. Mordmcghee.com for more information.
