Twenty Dollar Palms
Holy Week and saving Dad from the devil.
We were brought up Catholic. Our mother, an Irish protestant with little religious background converted very soon after she married my father. It was a given to be part of the family and of course, not to burn in hell. There was no question, she converted.
My mother, sister and I were expected to attend mass on Sunday. My dad never joined us unless it was a wedding, a funeral, or a Holy Sacrament that involved one of the kids in the family being baptized, confirmed, or receiving Holy Communion.
When he did go to church, he was preoccupied. I can remember my dad at one of the cousin’s Holy Communion’s, sitting in a pew in the back of the church with his brothers reading the racing form. When mass ended, my nonie smacked all of them over the head with a rolled up church bulletin.
But for the three of us, attending church was not up for discussion. We each had our little veil to bobby pin on our hair, and our own Rosary Beads. On Sundays and Holy Days, we were the ones with the giant smudge of ashes on our foreheads and our purses full of palms.
As for my dad, he was probably out betting on horses or breaking someone’s fingers. I guess it was some sort of balance that would work itself out in heaven.
I was an antsy kid, and of all the holy days, Palm Sunday was the hardest mass to get through. On top of all of the regular readings, the songs, the Gospel, the homily (the informal talk that usually involved a sermon about going to hell), and communion, we had to do all the stations of the cross.
It added at least 30 minutes to an already long mass but it was worth it because we would get a blessed palm at the end and that was worth gold.
Every year I’d give a piece of palm to Dad and he’d give me twenty dollars.
He would carry that palm in his wallet all year long and then replace it with a new one on the next year’s Palm Sunday. Each year, I would *sell* him another palm for another twenty bucks. It meant something special to him, like a lucky rabbit’s foot or an insurance card with God. I just liked the easy money.
Every thing my dad did seem bigger than life and this time of year was no different. He’d make sure we had the biggest basket over flowing with toys and the largest chocolate bunny he could find, whatever it was that he had to do to get it, we had it. The hardest thing for dad was not taking credit for it. Whether it was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, if a good deed was done, he wanted credit for it, but somehow, miraculously, we never knew, it was just big and over the top and all for us. It was awesome.
Easter was always one of my favorite holidays. On all the other holidays, we would eat some of the same foods we ate all year long, like pasta dishes and lasagna. But on Easter, we prepared foods that we only ate that one day a year and I would long for this food all year long. The preparations on Good Friday were elaborate. We would lay out flour all over big cutting boards and make a crust of flour, eggs and black pepper. We would cut up ham, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese, and what seemed like hundreds of eggs; enough to give anyone a heart attack. Hours were spent chopping and baking, and kneading and rolling, and eating and drinking and laughing.
We knew that when we would take our place at the table on Easter Sunday, we would be there for hours. We would start out with apizza aghane, a traditional Italian Easter meat, cheese and egg pie for breakfast and it would just continue from there.
We would eat homemade braided bread entwined with colored Easter eggs. Trays of food would be brought out throughout the day. We would have entrees that some might assume signaled the end of the meal, but would just segue into the next. There would be Easter Ham followed by Easter Lasagna.
And then there came the desserts. Italian cookies with pastel frosting and sprinkles, candy coated almonds, and the mother of all desserts…ricotta pie. Ricotta pie is a sort of Italian cheesecake that tastes like a baking dish filled with cannoli filling.
When each meal was finished, the men would all go into the living room to watch sports. The women continued cooking and began the long process of cleaning.
Conversations in the kitchen usually included what the next meal would be. Maybe that’s why the women in our family have all outlived the men. After eating dozens of eggs and several animals they would sit there, letting their cholesterol levels fester, and depending on whatever bet was on the table, their blood pressure rise.
Our family today would like to think we’d know better. We know that meals like this can be the death of us, but come Good Friday the women will gather in the kitchen with stacks of egg cartons, ham, pepperoni, blocks of cheese and cartons of ricotta. Bags of flour will be spread on the counters, Sinatra will be playing, and wine will be flowing.
We make each dish not just because we are all die-hard traditionalists. And not because we know that these recipes are to die for. We make each of these recipes because we fear a curse from beyond. Whether we call it OCD, or call it dad turning over in his grave… come Easter Sunday, even if we’re not sitting in a pew for mass, every dish will be made.
