Listening to the Lady from Sicily

I heard the young guys off in the corner telling harmless Jesus jokes, apparently borrowed from some faintly civilized meme contest on Facebook. The grandson in the midst was ordering everyone into a Conga line, destined to wait patiently for a stick-on Ninja Turtle tattoo. The five-year-old eventually marked everyone in the place. We are still wearing the scars.

The lady and man of the house were wrestling with a lamb shank and ham hock and everything in between. I was witnessing a feast in the making. I was a paying particular attention to a subtle dish she invented on the fly for cod and olives in a marinate that was the perfect Easter hors d’oeuvre.

The young guys found leftover, round, face food that looked like a FB emoji on the grandson’s plate after he left to climb bedroom walls with his infant cars and trucks. Naturally, “selfies” became the order of the day and we all took turns seeing our faces through cartoon food and whatever else was left on the kitchen floor. In time, the animals showed up. Thanks to the raging and accurate distributive technology of Snapchat all attendees took turns wearing panda, monkey and reptilian faces. The guys swore that our collective animal celebrity and transient fame would last hardly a nanosecond.

This day, art arrived in many forms. The lady who came from Sicily sixty years ago showed up at the door holding lilies in her hands. She caused quite a stir because she was wearing a beautiful, sleeveless turquoise silk dress that she had received as an Easter gift. No one in the house could remember when our lady from Sicily had worn such a dress before, even at weddings.

But, old habits die hard and she is soon at the sink cleaning up dishes from pre-dinner dining. I told her that she shouldn’t be doing dishes in such a beautiful dress. And anyway, she should take the holiday off. I started washing some dishes to make the point, mentioning to her that I do a lot of the cooking and cleaning at home. I could hear her spreading the message among family constituents.

Our lady from Sicily has worked a lifetime repairing and refurbishing furniture. I was fascinated to watch her remove a plastic covering from the lilies, explaining to a disbelieving relative that this can be used in her furniture business. I was curious because the plastic seemed thin and I was wondering how this could be used to repair furniture. I got the back story first.

She had gone to a store to buy a yard or so of plastic and when she got home she realized she was short a few inches. The shopkeeper was Chinese, apparently a newcomer to the Bronx. She was reluctant to go back to him for such a paltry amount. I joked that the way to communicate with a Chinese shopkeeper in the Bronx is to speak in Italian real loud. She laughed, but her mind remained on the project at hand.

A woman was given a foot stool by her mother and our lady from Sicily felt an obligation to repair it. She pointed to a foot stool in the house and said that the one she was repairing was a little smaller. The plastic would be to “cover” and protect the new cloth covering, with the hope that it would last for generations. But the plastic is so thin, I remarked. Could it take a stitch? She felt the plastic and said sure it will. By hand? I asked. No, by machine, she said. It will hold up? I asked. She smiled at me in Italian.

The lady soon got out of her dress and into something more comfortable because she was cold. I thought of the many times I had seen this woman at family gatherings and never really talked to her. Later, I thought, she could never get out of her Italian as she repaired and renewed furniture, using what was at her fingertips, discarding nothing. I am not sure if she heard me, but earlier I told her she was speaking like an artist.

When I was leaving, I thanked the lady of the house for such a fine meal. I said I remembered seeing her late mother at the gathering two years earlier. I asked her how she was doing. She said she feels comfort in continuing her mother’s tradition.

As I was driving away, I saw the grandson on his relentless quest to find the forty buried eggs before dark. The mother, whose presence was everywhere this Easter, probably would have thought the family, while it could never compete with her lasagna, was doing a pretty good job.

When I arrived home I heard that writer Jim Harrison had died. I remembered one of his quotes: “Attentiveness is your main tool in life.”