Nine.

Canned tomatoes are a necessity when you live in a city like Vancouver. The winters are long, wet and dark. A friend and fellow Vancouverite once told me that until he was around 10 years old he believed that winter skies were gray. He thought that the sun went away and the blue skies were replaced with gray ones. From November until April most people go to work in the dark and come home in the dark; by the time light has squeezed through the heavy clouds, it is weak and thin, and it is often gone by 4PM. So by January or February, when it has been months since you have seen blue skies and you know it will be months more until you see them again, summer has taken on the haze of a dream. You want to believe it's true, but you can't quite be sure. On a wet winter day, opening a can of tomatoes and tasting the sun is worth more than you can imagine.My mom has a kitchen set up in her basement for just this purpose and is a canning Queen. So I carried myself off to her kitchen, where she and I canned both tomatoes and tomato sauce.Mamma makes basic tomato sauce the same way my grandmother did:
Chop onions, carrots, garlic and saute them in olive oil until
transparent
Add the crushed or chopped tomatoes and basil leaves, making sure
to continue to "break" the tomatoes against the side of the saucepan-
also important is not to bruise the basil leaves when drying or cutting
them
Cook until the liquid has evaporated and the vegetables are cooked through
Pass everything, including the tomato skins, through a vegetable mill
Roast in a baking pan or continue to cook over the stove until the sauce
has reduced by 1/3 or is thick and rich
Add some olive oil to the top (do not mix in) and allow to coolI left her home with not only my tomatoes, but lots of fresh spinach to prepare and freeze and a box full of mixed vegetables to clean, cut and freeze for use in minestrone. Seems like I'll be tasting summer for a long time.

Eight.

Mamma has recently had minor surgery on her knee and was told by her doctor to stay off her feet, keep her leg elevated and generally take as much time as is required to heal.

Anyone that knows my mother knows also that she can only view this prescription as cruel and unusual punishment. To sit and relax is torturous for her. To be told to be patient is almost an insult. Whenever I call to check on her I can hear her working at the stove or folding laundry. Reminding her that she is supposed to be taking time to heal is useless.

"Yes, yes, I'm relaxing. Do you think these tomatoes are going to can themselves"? is generally the response.

So, she continues to climb up and down the stairs, canning vegetables, watering the garden, feeding the chickens and caring for the house. When her knee becomes really sore she alternates between catching up on her e-mail, reading, or some sort of creative work with her hands.

Some time ago she begun embroidering a tablecloth and napkins. It was a project she originally started to pass the time while camping or relaxing in the evening, with no specific end-date in mind. Recently it became one more weapon in her arsenal to defeat the growing restlessness as she was forced to sit, leg propped up under pillows.

As soon as I walked into the dining room the other night I noticed the completed tablecloth, steamed and drying on the table.



My mom often told me stories about her own mother's ability to work with her hands. In addition to the necessary work of repairing the family's clothing, knitting socks, and turning collars, she had a creative eye that turned the ordinary into the beautiful. One of my mom's earliest memories is of having a hand-me-down gray winter coat transformed into a pretty new thing when my grandmother covered three acorn caps in brightly coloured wool and then fixed them to the lapel of the coat with a pin. To the little girl that my mother was it was a magical transformation that made her enter the classroom proudly. She talks about being given hand-me-downs from cousins and having them similarly changed into new and original items created especially for her by her mother's hands. I remember sitting as a little girl, listening to my mother transported back to her own childhood, and describing specific items of clothing she wore years earlier in detail.

I, of course, have similar memories. Of a forest green, wool pinafore dress my mother made for me in grade 3, with ruffles running down the front straps and brightly embroidered flowers dancing across the front. I felt like the prettiest girl in class. When I fell and put a hole in my favourite jeans I protested tearfully against a patch until she made me one of a bright red apple, complete with a curtained window and a front door, open to reveal a worm tipping his hat to the morning. At some point I went through the requisite tomboy phase and insisted I would no longer wear dresses; so, she made me a cowboy shirt and embroidered an entire native village on the back: teepees, a central fire with people gathered around it and someone using a blanket to make smoke signals with it. Somehow, the memory of this clothing and of standing on a stool, turning slowly while she critically viewed her work, is still capable of transporting me back into my childhood.

Seven.

It has been a busy summer for Matt and I, as they so often are. Living in a city like Vancouver where more than half the year it is raining means that us residents emerge from our hermitages in the spring, mole-like and blinking in the sun. When we finally believe that summer is truly here we move into action - dusting off tents and BBQs, planning picnics at the beach and trips to Vancouver Island or the Sunshine Coast and hosting friends and family that have learned that the only time to visit this city is the summertime. Combine that with a fearful influx of work for both Matt and I and it has been positively hectic around here.

So we have been busy. I didn't realize how busy until I went to my nephew's birthday party the other evening. As soon as we arrived and I stepped into my sister's home I felt as if I were taking my first deep breath in a while. She and her family live in Coquitlam in a two story, family-style home. My sister complains that she wants a new house, something modern and designed by her and I can never quite explain to her how cozy and wonderful her home feels to me. Talking it over with my mom the next day we agreed it was because the moment you cross the threshold you understand that you are in a happy home. It's like you pass through the doorway into another dimension and you just feel it in your gut. It's a family home, yes, the driveway has skateboards and scooters and bikes strayed across it, but it also reflects my sister and her husband. He is a photographer and his wonderful images are hung all over the house. The interior is prettily painted and decorated and the garden is gorgeous.

We ate on the side deck, under a criss-crossing of little white lights. And as I stepped out of the kitchen onto the deck, I took in with a glance my family talking and laughing together, nieces and nephews running around and between adults and my step-father and brother-in-law at the BBQ. My mother, the matriarch, was dressed beautifully, as usual, in a pink knit sleeveless top and colourful full skirt, hair bobbed and styled tastefully, feet crossed at the ankles and her head inclined slightly toward my brother-in-law's sister, smiling and nodding as she listened. And when I looked at her I saw, as I always do when she is sitting quietly talking with someone, how she seems to draw the very light to her.

At this moment, all was as it should be and I took my first deep, long breath in a while, smiled, and then jumped into the fray.

Six.

I remember my grandmother roasting a goose and then dressing gnocci with the drippings and parmigiano cheese. I was 13 when she made this for lunch one day and I remember the smell and the flavour of that meal as it it were yesterday. It is the standard that I have held all other meals to since. The goose was one that she had raised herself and she rolled the gnocci while it was roasting in the oven. She grated the cheese, which she always kept at room temperature and never in the fridge, just before we ate. Each flavour in the meal presented itself proudly and then stepped back to allow another one to take centre stage. There was no confusion, no jumble of spices. Everything she put in that meal was grown or raised by her and she didn't smother anything or try to make it something it wasn't. The meal was simple, fresh and outstanding.

For years as a young adult I always ordered gnocci if I went to a restaurant that served them but I no longer do. I have never found any that have even come close to my grandmother's and they only remind me that I will never taste anything like that meal again. My mom's are soft, light and delicious; she serves them with roasted rabbit stew. In the summer she makes gnocci with butternut squash instead of potatoes and serves them with pesto. But they are different. I make them often but they are different again, each person's gnocci are unique to them, and I know one day I will pine for my mother's as much as I pine for my grandmother's today.

Five.

How can you tell an Italian lives somewhere? There are always geraniums, a fig tree and at least a few tomato plants.


When friends decided to get rid of this fountain we thought it would fit in our garden perfectly. It doesn't quite mask the sound of Commercial Drive traffic and delivery trucks backing up - beep, beep, beep - but it does offer the illusion of serenity in the city.



3 Little Eggs


Matt and I found this nest abandoned one day when we were working on the river. Matt said he'd noticed it empty months ago so we knew we weren't stealing someone's home when we decided to take it. I painted three small rocks to put in it and it lays cradled in our flowering currant tree.

Now if only the crows would leave the painted rocks alone.

Four.

My grandmother planted begonias around a pond in her yard every year. She liked that they flowered all summer long and bloomed in the shade. So in the Spring I plant begonias and red geraniums by the front door. Every time I glance at them as I walk in or out of the front door, I think of her.

Three.

I love napkins. And tablecloths. I can’t help it, I love all table linens ironed and matching and sitting clean and ready for duty on a table. The right tablecloth makes me want to pull out my best dishes and glasses, set the table prettily and create something suitable to serve for dinner.

Last night at dinner my mom laid the table with a tablecloth and napkins my grandmother had embroidered. I exclaimed when I saw them and running my fingers over the cloth lightly told her again how beautiful I thought they were. Those are your genes at work, she said, laughing. Her tablecloths are always printed or embroidered with brightly coloured flowers.

My favourite linens are the ones I remember from my childhood. Napkins and napkin holders with little clasps my mom made and embroidered each of our names onto, a set of white napkins printed with tiny yellow flowers she fashioned into a tablecloth by binding them with detailed crochet work, heavy cotton linens. I have one of her old, worn tablecloths and use it to wrap the lettuce in after I’ve washed it.

I still use tablecloths and cloth napkins at home. And I still like ironing them and all my tea towels while I am watching TV in the evening. There’s something about that stack of linens piling up sharply folded and smelling of clean and steam that satisfies me. When the pile is done I bring it downstairs to the kitchen so I can put everything away in the linen drawer first thing in the morning. Then I’m ready for bed.

Two.

Today is my mom’s birthday and for some reason I am brought to mind the day when she was cleaning up after breakfast in my grandmother’s kitchen. I could hear them putting things away and talking about the involved garbage disposal and recycling system the city demanded. Then I heard my grandmother say the cafetiera was on the wrong shelf.
“But it’s always on this shelf”
“No it’s not. It belongs here”
“OK mamma, I’ll put it there”
There was a purposeful show of tolerance in my mom’s voice that I had heard before. Silence followed for a while and then a quiet scrape and immediately afterward my mother walked quickly out of the kitchen and into the bedroom to dress for the day.

When I asked her later what happened she told me that she moved the cafetiera, even though she had seen it on the other shelf, had always seen it on the other shelf every time she had come to visit. She moved it to the other shelf and as soon as she turned her back to continue drying dishes, her mother, still unsatisfied, leaned over and slid it an almost imperceptible amount to the left.

“She can’t let me do anything without correcting it a little”.
“Uh huh” I responded, smiling. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was a bit of a revelation to see my mother in the same position I had been in so many times and I was enjoying seeing her in the other role.
“What”? Mom asked, “I’m not like that”!
“Of course not, and I’m not either”.
I thought about all the times I tried to get my husband to see why my system in the kitchen was so important. Or why it mattered so much that the laundry was done in a certain way.

I finally got why I loved order so much.

A couple of days ago my mom and I picked up my sister for some sushi. While we waited for Lisa to get her purse I could see my mom looking at a calla lily and fern arrangement my sister had put together. “Those don’t belong there” I heard her say to herself. She removed two thirds of the fern leaves from the arrangement and then shifted the lilies around a little. Stepping back she reviewed her work with a little grunt of satisfaction and then walked to the kitchen to throw away the stems she had removed.

"Uh huh" I thought again, "you're not like that at all".

Happy Birthday Mamma!

One.

My grandmother died almost three years ago now, but I still think about her all the time. I don’t talk about her a lot, the reality being that I only saw her a handful of times. She lived in Italy and I live in Canada.

When my parents immigrated in 1965 it was still prohibitively expensive to make phone calls to Europe, let alone visit. After 8 years we returned as a family for a summer, and then she came to Vancouver twice, with my grandfather. But after he died she didn’t want to travel alone. We went back again when my mother remarried to meet my stepfather's family who lived close by, in the mountains. After that I didn’t see her for over 20 years. In 2006 my mother and I made a trip together and I was able to sit down as an adult and talk with my grandmother for the first time. That was the last time I saw her.

So it may seem from my limited exposure to her that she would have had a very slight influence on my life. Luckily, the opposite is true. From the time I can remember, my mother, stunned by homesickness and an inability to understand this new country and its ways, soothed us, and herself, with stories of food prepared the same way for generations, life on a multi-generational farm, and her mother. While bathing us or cleaning up after dinner she painted a vivid portrait of my grandmother’s character, and what it was like growing up poor in post-war Italy. Over the years, my mother’s own experiences gave her further insight into her mother’s decisions and choices, and the portrait she drew for us developed further. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood my mother poured into my ears a detailed history to compliment the genes she placed in my body.

The trip I took with her in 2006 was an attempt to satisfy my burgeoning questions about destiny and obligation. I had rebelled wildly in my early 20’s, so was confused to find myself in my late 30’s growing into a person I didn’t understand but recognized only too well. By chasing the strong and demanding blood-thread that ran through my body back past my teenage years to my mother, and back again (restlessly tapping through a continental flight) to my grandmother’s kitchen table, I began to learn about myself.

I find myself wanting to live up to the women who came before me and to connect with them in a significant way every single day. I know my grandmother lives within me. I recognize her in how I arrange my dishes and how I refuse to grate the cheese until the pasta is cooking. I hope to learn even more about who she was. I hope to take this intangible thing that binds my mother, my grandmother and me together, and to bring it into the light.