I was once asked if all my family does at gatherings is talk over each other and eat? And as I sat there trying to put into words what my family actually does at gatherings, I realized what we do is in fact talk over each other and eat. I’m not sure whether it irritated me more that I couldn’t come up with a better answer, or that as an Italian family we conform to what society has painted Italians to look like.
Yes, we are loud, we talk with our hands, we swear a little too much, and like to eat until it’s painful to breathe, but all of that has a much deeper meaning than people realize. Behind all of the food, all of the obnoxious voices, lies something much more valuable.
When I was younger I used to wonder why it was that we always ate pasta on Sundays.
My parents would tell me “We’re Italian, on Sunday’s we go to Nonni’s and eat lunch,” and I would shrug it off because they’re my parents, so I had to do as told.
I would sit at my unofficial assigned seat at Nonni’s table, eat my pasta, and be a part of the tradition I didn’t quiet get. The next day I would come home from school and ask what was for dinner. The answer? You get one guess…
Pasta.
Pasta mom made, pasta dad made, left over pasta from Nonni’s the night before. The pasta was never ending, it was sitting in the fridge to be eaten every single day. It’s pasta and sauce, it just some eggs and flour thrown into a bowl and rolled into whatever shape you want them and topped off with some tomatoes, and I didn’t get it.
It’s just pasta, what’s so significant about pasta? Little did I know it wasn’t the pasta itself that was significant, it was everything the pasta represented.
One Nonni, three children, three in-laws, and ten grandchildren were together every Sunday because of something as simple as pasta. It wasn’t until I started to get a little older that I realized it wasn’t because we were sticklers for tradition and needed pasta every Sunday, it was because every Sunday the tradition of eating pasta gave us an excuse to all be together.
No matter what was going on we always found time for Sunday lunch. It was the unwritten rule, the one sure thing, the thing that made your week go by faster than you can blink because you knew on Sunday you would get to see your cousins.
Pasta is just something that creates a way for a family to bond. I have had some of the best moments with my family over delicious meals filled with gnocchi and Nonni’s sauce, and I for one wouldn’t change a thing about it.
As for the obnoxious hand gestures and deafening voices, well what can I say? With a family like mine you have to yell every time you talk if you ever want to be heard.
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