Now that I’m older I spend a fair amount of time reflecting during the holidays. This is an irritating habit old people have because we’re never sure how many holidays we have left. So, in an attempt to appear deep and philosophical we look back, then bore younger people with our reflections.
This year my family gathered at Bernie and Donna’s house for Christmas dinner and later we all sat watching a video of our family’s 1989 Christmas Eve. It featured my mom cooking, and my father and brothers in the basement kitchen (Italians can never have just one kitchen) cooking. Mom was making her squid sauce, Bernie was making his crab sauce and Bob was making his shrimp sauce and his scallops with curry cream sauce. It was such fun to see my parents so vibrant.
Our family has always celebrated the Feast of the Seven Fishes, or La Vigilia di Natale. La Vigilia is a southern Italian custom dictating that Catholics should abstain from meat on Christmas Eve because they apparently need a little more guilt.
You’re supposed to serve seven different types of fish, but no one has ever counted. My parents cooked smelts, squid, eel, cod, shrimp, and pasta with octopus. My father’s eels were suspect, and I thought Mom’s octopus pasta looked gross, but it was great for scaring neighborhood friends when I was a kid. I remember poor Kathy Pfleghar recoiling in horror after I pulled a sauce covered tentacle out of the refrigerator and showed it to her.
I didn’t love our Christmas Eve dinners until 1965.
That was the year Bernie came home with a bag full of crabs and this promise, “I’m going to make the best sauce you’ve ever tasted with these!” He’d learned a recipe from his friend, Tony Pedone’s mom and couldn’t wait to share it.
It was a pretty gutsy thing to say. I thought my mom would be offended, but I know she was happy to see her oldest son home with the family, and she was always game to try something new, especially if another cook was helping.
I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I was ten years old and thought Bernie was totally cool. He always took his time with me, like a younger, more fun version of my dad. He taught me to throw a football, dance, beat someone up, and be a smart ass (wait…Bob helped with that too) all things a girl needs to know in life.
I loved that he was twenty-two years-old and could have hung out with any of his friends, but decided to come home and share his newfound crab passion with us. Afterward we all agreed that his sauce was a must have for every Christmas Eve thereafter.
His decision to be with us that day and cook, set the precedent for decades of wonderful Christmas Eves. My brothers came home in the early afternoon and cooked all day, competing to see whose sauce was best. Once my nephews came along the house was only slightly controlled chaos.
The video showed the dining room table crowded with crab pasta, scallop pasta, pasta with mussels, pasta with shrimp, squid pasta and my dad’s eels, plus salad and vegetables. Everything was in mismatched plates and pans and we could have cared less. My nephews were running around having fun while my oldest nephew and godson, Marc videotaped.
My mom said grace and everyone dove into the delicious food. . Afterward my brothers got out their accordions and played Christmas favorites. Uncle Richard showed up at some point, and began singing and dancing with my mom. My sister-in-law, Patty even gave a spirited dance effort attempting to keep up with Mom’s dance moves.
The family’s joy at just being together was abundantly clear. Would we have had all those decades of wonderful Christmas Eves if Bernie had decided to go hang out with friends instead of coming home that night? Maybe, but maybe not.
Because Bernie was there, cooking and having fun, Bob joined in and the two of them made it fun for everyone, for decades. It’s like that Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where Clarence the angel shows George Bailey what life would have been like if he hadn’t been there.
You just never know how one little decision can change everything for the better for decades. So, next time you have the chance, make that trip. Whether you bring crabs is your call. You could be starting a tradition that will last decades and become the reason everyone loves coming home.
I hope your Christmas was fabulous, with or without crabs. I wish you a Happy New Year and want to thank those of you who’ve bought my audiobook. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If so, please take a moment to write a review. And don’t run it through AI first because Amazon will flag it. (The paperback and ebook should be coming out in late January.)
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