Aunt Jenny’s Pasta

No family gathering was complete without a platter of Aunt Jenny's homemade pasta. The most tender noodles one could imagine; practically melting on the tongue. Sometimes she brought lasagna or gnocchi, but if you were really lucky, she whipped up her heavenly cheese ravioli, the likes of which existed nowhere else in the world beyond Aunt Jenny's kitchen. And her sauce was unparalleled - light, almost watery, yet rich with the brightest flavor.

Summer gatherings at her house were beyond dinners, they were more like family reunions (even though most of us saw each other every Sunday anyway). One by one, the cars would start lining Detroit Avenue, we'd make our way up the driveway and enter the house through the side door. The women would carry the desserts or whatever side dishes they were contributing, as the men toted the heavier jugs of wine - pressed and aged in my grandfather's cellar. The kids were either empty handed or did the light lifting with armloads of crusty loaves of bread.

After everything was piled onto the kitchen table, we kids would congregate out back, playing in the gazebo just beyond my Uncle Dan's garden. To this day, when I smell geraniums and marigolds, I think of that garden. They were planted among the vegetables because Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dan believed the smell repelled deer, raccoons, and other unwelcome foragers.

As the ladies tied on aprons and busied themselves preparing the meal, the men helped themselves to ice cold cans of Utica Club and unpacked the bocci balls.

Each Sunday, one "chosen" child was allowed the honor of grating the Parmesan. It was a big deal.

When dinner was ready, my brothers and the rest of the older boys were in charge of setting up the wooden folding chairs. Three tables, placed end-to-end ran the length of the room. They were covered with linen cloths, topped with white paper. There was never a "kiddie table." We all ate together, family style.

Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dan were childless, which was one of life's great injustices, and a heartache for them. So they lavished all of us kids with their love and attention and we adored them for it.

Uncle Dan died within months of learning he was ill. His was the first funeral to which I'd ever been. I remember he died in winter because Aunt Jenny was wearing a mink coat when she entered the funeral parlor. Inconsolable, she stumbled up to the coffin and crumpled onto the kneeler, asking, "Why? Why?" She would outlive her husband by over 20 years, never remarrying or even dating.

By the time I was in college, she was diagnosed with cancer. Now a woman, I joined my mother and all the aunts at my Aunt Jenny's bedside as she lay dying. She kept crying out, "Mia morte! Mia Morte!" My death. My death. I could not bear to watch her suffer. After gently stroking her forehead, I kissed her cheek and left, never to see her alive again.

When she died, she took her pasta and sauce recipes with her. The women of the family scoured her kitchen, her notes, her cookbooks and came up empty-handed. At every family gathering afterwards, someone would lament the absence of Aunt Jenny and her delicious dishes. Once, my Uncle Mike's wife remarked that she'd never really cared for Aunt Jenny's pasta and couldn't understand what all the excitement was about. You could have heard a pin drop. We all stared at her. It was like telling the Pope you never really cared for Jesus and didn't know why we made such a fuss on his birthday.

Years later, when my daughter was 12-years-old, she thought it would be fun to take cooking lessons at a culinary day camp during the summer. Each week, from Monday to Thursday, campers would learn to make foods from a particular cuisine. On Fridays, we parents would arrive an hour before pick-up, and the children would prepare and serve us what they learned.

On the Friday of "Italian Week," my daughter (in her little chef's toque and jacket) placed a bowl of pasta in front of me. The sauce was light, almost watery. I took a bite. Its flavor was rich and bright. The pasta was tender; so tender that it nearly melted on my tongue - and although it was delicate, I found it difficult to swallow past the lump in my throat.

My daughter looked at me and ask, "Mommy, why are you crying?"

I smiled through my tears. "Because," I said, "this is Aunt Jenny's pasta."