Thankfulness

A Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving

Traditionally, families and friends gather around a groaning Thanksgiving table heaped high with bounty, giving voice to what each individual is thankful for. Responses vary from a succinct "my family" to lengthy reviews of the previous year's ups and downs.

Both sides of my traditional Italian family never really indulged in these holiday voiceovers. Our thankfulness was measured by the velocity of how quickly we'd tuck into the day's offerings.

Thanksgiving Day began at noon at our Tuscan (Northern Italian) grandmother's apartment upstairs, which involved many layers of sisters-in-law, first cousins, second cousins, and the occasional attendee who, though not related to any of us by blood, would be greeted as "uncle" or "aunt." Those patronymics signified folks who might just as well have been family.

The fare was traditional: turkey; potatoes (quartered and baked, and aided and abetted by olive oil, salt, and rosemary; nothing mashed here!); sweet potatoes (pureed and baked, though with a very American marshmallow topping; whole string beans; and a baked pasta dish, preferably a ziti or a lasagna.

All that, as a main course, wasn't quite enough. Manhattan cocktails and an elaborate antipasto spread preceded. Following the main fare would be nuts, ice cream, coffee with anisette, and something from the Italian bakery up the street: cannoli, cookies, chocolates, and sfogliatelle. Sfogliatelle is basically a pastry shaped like a clam shell made up of many layers of pastry, and then piped full of custard. There is nothing quite like it on earth.

Sfogliatelle: can you pronounce that? Very few can. In Southern Italian dialect we say "zhvool-ya-DELL." Any way you pronounce it, it's heaven.

After five o'clock we'd go down the block to my Neapolitan (Southern Italian) grandparents' house for the evening meal. It was decidely a racucous affair, because a Southern Italian's idea of fun is sixty people talking at once. Up the block was a reserved meal; down the block was just the opposite. As children, I and my siblings and all the cousins were fortunate enough to see the many facets of human nature as displayed in our extended family, though we didn't appreciate it at the time. That would come later, when we grew as old as the older people in this photograph...

A few of the people "down the block:" at a holiday dinner in Brooklyn, 1967.

The thing that stays most with me, besides the turkey and the pastry, is the sense of family I experienced during the holidays. Thanksgiving was just a hint of what was to come each holiday season, and it was many years before I realized that our family's show of abundance wasn't a form of boasting; it was a way to show that we'd succeeded, of course, but- most importantly- we had more than enough to share.

Was it a perfect Norman Rockwell snapshot? Hardly, though the sentiment was present, albeit with louder voices. But nobody ever went home empty-handed. (And nobody showed up empty-handed, either, but that's another story!)

A happy and fruitful Thanksgiving to our Winter Garden Heritage Foundation family!