Lucia

Lucia Abotti rose with the morning sun brazenly shining through her window, illuminating the many wrinkles on her weathered face. Beginning her day in the kitchen, she fixed herself a coffee with milk and nibbled on a round almond flavored biscuit. Looking at her calendar—she crossed off the 24th of December, 1911. She’d forgotten to do it yesterday. So much work needed to be done today. Starting with the pasta, she began. She had made tortellini pasta exactly the same way her mother had taught her sixty years ago. She made the dough and then rolled it into a paper thin sheet using a long rolling pin on an aged wooden board which she only used for rolling out pasta. 

Using a biscuit cutter, she cut out circle shapes from the thin pasta sheet. Over and over, she cut out the round shapes. Remembering that last Christmas she did this with Marie, her six-year-old granddaughter. She sighed as she mixed the ricotta with the grated parmesan cheese that would be used for the filling. Marie was guilty of overfilling the tortellini and then becoming frustrated when the filling leaked out the sides. Lucia smiled at the memory. She dearly missed Marie, Theo, and tiny Alessia most of all. Her three beautiful grandchildren that brought her so much joy, she would likely never see again. 

Lucia’s family, her two sons, their wives and children no longer lived in Sicily or in Italy, for that matter. She couldn’t explain the reasons they left for a new life in America because none of it made any sense to her, though they spent hours trying to explain. Because of a little economic and political upheaval, you leave your family and your country? No. She would never understand. Only three short months ago, they packed all they had into suitcases and took her three precious grandchildren and set sail for a new life in a new country.

Since that day, she had received but one letter from each son telling her how they were getting on in gli Stati Uniti, finding work and a place to live. They wrote so casually, as if one were speaking to a neighbor about the weather as you passed by in the street. She yearned to hear that they missed her, they regretted leaving and that they’d return home as soon as they could. It was wrong of her to secretly hope that things wouldn’t have worked out so they would have written they were coming home instead of how well things were going. If only they knew how they’d broken her heart and how much she missed them. Little Alessia would be a year old soon, she wouldn’t even remember her Nonna Lucia in the years to come.

Chiara, her neighbor, for nearly 40 years, laughed at her when she told her they weren’t returning. 

“Ragazza sciocca! Children fly, you’d not have them be chicks in the nest forever, would you? Look at my beautiful girl, married and off to America with her new husband at eighteen. Sends money home to me every month, she’s such a good daughter! She didn’t waste any time starting her life. That’s good, that’s the way it should be. And who knows, maybe one day I will go, too. Lucia, perhaps, you are wrong and they will return for a visit,” she said.

But Lucia thought that was not likely. Her sons had found good jobs, and they were happily settled in a neighborhood with many other Italian families. Still, there were the ritornati—the ones that sent money home and returned after a few years of working and saving. Maybe it was different with a daughter like Chiara’s, but Lucia knew her sons would not return. The way her youngest son embraced her before they left, she knew it was for the last time. They had their own families to look after now. When they were here, Lucia took such comfort in having her sons close. They had helped her with so many things that she could no not do herself. They had broken the chain of the Abotti family line in Italy, leaving her and the old country behind. Now her sons would forge a new chain in a strange world with more opportunities for themselves and their children.

Lucia was sixty-eight, she had arthritic feet and as a result, she didn’t move as fast as she once had. But, she could still make pasta, and she did. Even if she no longer had a family to feed it to. She dropped a bit of ricotta filling in the center of the pasta circle and folded it in half, moistening the edges with a little water so they’d not come apart when boiling later. She’d bring some to Chiara later after she had forgiven her for calling her a silly girl. 

After an hour of folding and wetting, pinching and folding again, she was finished making the tortellini and now was ready to make the sauce. She took a jar of tomatoes from the shelf. Her small garden this August was brimming with tomatoes and peppers. She always had a good harvest thanks to the rich volcanic soil in the region, but this year was exceptional. They canned so many tomatoes this summer, with Marie and Theo enthusiastically yelling, “Nonna, look!” They brought in basket after basket and dumped them, forming a mountain of tomatoes covering her table. 

Just as she was taught, she showed them how to dip the whole tomatoes into boiling water and peel the skins off before placing them in jars. Who would she teach these things to now? And who would teach her grandchildren? She brushed away a little of the moisture from her eyes that threatened to pour out of her like a boiling pot about to bubble over. She added the tomatoes, water, salt and fresh oregano to the heavy pot and lit the flame underneath. With a few hours of simmering to take place before the sauce was ready, she’d begin gathering the ingredients for the pandoro.

Preferring the sweet sugary taste of the pandoro to the cloying taste of dried fruit and fat that was panettone she began mixing the dough for the sweet bread. Lucia’s mother had let her sprinkle the dusting sugar on top of it since she was a small child. She loved to pretend it was a mountain and she was making it snow on the peaks. She missed her mother most during this time of year. She was hard-working, always baking, cooking, and cleaning for her family. Her mother would scold her father for not helping but then argue that he did it the wrong way when he did. 

Lucia grinned at the memories of her parents bickering on the holidays. They argued for fun, it was a way of showing off around the guests and making them nervous. She thought they both must’ve had a good laugh about it after the guests left and she found them in the kitchen in each other’s arms. It was all a ruse. It may not have always been spoken out loud but there was so much love in their little house, the very house that she was standing in now.

The sweet scent of butter and vanilla coming from the oven began to mix with the aroma of simmering tomato sauce on the stove. Too many mingling smells assaulted her nose. It was time to open the window. Lucia lifted the sash and a flood of fresh crisp air came rushing in. She could hear the song birds now. Her checked curtains flapping in the breeze, Lucia turned her attention to penning letters to her children. She wrote about the meal she was preparing, the traditional midnight mass the evening before and that Don Emiliano says chiao and sends his blessings. Chiara also sends her best wishes and to be sure to have a Buen Natale and give the children a kiss from her. Lucia ended her letters with her usual sentiments and then wrote at the bottom, P.S. We’re only a letter away. It was all she could think of to say to somehow soften the distance between them.

It was nearly noon. She rushed out the back door to feed the chickens. They would be irritated now that breakfast was a few hours late. She gathered the eggs in her apron while the hens greedily devoured the grain off the dirt ground. Scratching and pecking at each other when they got too close, much like her neighbors in the last few years. Crime, famine and hardships were a way of life here, years of poverty and political unrest had many friends and neighbors setting their sights on greener pastures. But, no matter how things changed, Lucia would never leave her home.

She loved her home like she loved her old wooden pasta board, worn and trusted. The luster and sheen it once had was now gone but for her it brought great comfort to know that it was there and it was hers. She had no desire to see the new world, the consistency of the old one so comforting. The same dazzling sunsets and the same copper fields. The same villagers and shop owners that greeted her when she went about her errands in the village. The same little house she was born in and raised her two sons in. Just as her sons were compelled to leave for a better life—she was compelled to stay and hold on to the only life she knew. 

Just as she was about to open the back door, Chiarra called out,

“Lucia, you be sure to come over for supper, I made capetone and panettone! I know you don’t know how to make a good panettone.”

“Grazie, Chiarra! I think I will. I made tortellini and pandora for you to try. You might like my pandora, much sweeter than panettone. And I do know how to make panettone, I just choose not to.” Lucia replied.

They had the same argument every year, which was better, her pandora or Chiarra’s panettone? Lucia sighed with relief that some things never changed. She could always count on Chiarra to brag about anything that was hers, her panettone or her daughter. Chuckling to herself, she went inside and took off her apron. She put on her best dress and took her silver hair out curlers and pulled it up in a bun. She packed up the food she’d made and brought it over to Chiarra’s house and they dined together, sharing the food they each prepared. Reminiscing over funny stories from their younger years brought on fits of laughter. Toasting each other on this holy day with a glass of wine, they lit a candle and prayed a blessing for the ones they loved dearly that could not be there with them. Chiara prayed that the next year would bring hope and promise. And somehow, despite her loneliness, Lucia believed that it would.