When it came to food it always amazed me that my friends and classmates only ate turkey on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas. Or rather, that they only ate turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Now we Italians also had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, but only after we had finished the antipasto, soup, lasagna, meatballs, salad and whatever else Mama thought might be appropriate for that particular holiday.

The turkey was usually accompanied by a roast of some kind (this was just in case somebody walked in who didn’t like turkey) and followed by an assortment of fruits, nuts, pastries, cakes and of course, homemade cookies sprinkled with little coloured things. No holiday was complete without some home baking – none of that store-bought stuff for us. This was where you learned to eat a seven-course meal between noon and 4pm – how to handle hot chestnuts and put peach wedges in red wine. My friends ate cornmeal mush. We did too, but only after Mama covered it with sauce, sausages and meatballs. We called it polenta; now it’s a gourmet food. Mama must have known all along.

I truly believe Italians live a romance with food. Sunday was the big day of the week. That was the day you’d wake up to the smell of garlic and onions frying in olive oil, as it dropped into the pan. Sunday we always had sauce and macaroni. Sunday would not be Sunday without going to Mass. Of course, you couldn’t eat before Mass because you had to fast before receiving Communion. But we knew when we got home we’d find hot meatballs frying; nothing tasted better than newly fried meatballs and crisp bread dipped into a pot of hot sauce.

There was another difference between “Us” and “Them.” We had gardens. Not just flower gardens but huge gardens where we grew tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes. We ate them, cooked them and jarred them. Of course, we also grew peppers, basil, lettuce and squash. Everybody had a grapevine and a fig tree and in the fall everybody made homemade wine. Then, when the kegs were opened, everyone argued over whose wine tasted the best. Those gardens thrived because we also had something that our Canadian friends didn’t seem to have – we had grandparents.

Of course, it’s not that they didn’t have grandparents, it’s just that they didn’t live in the same house or on the same block. Their presence wasn’t that noticeable. We ate with our grandparents and God forbid if we didn’t visit them at least five times a week. I can still remember my grandfather telling us about how he came to Canada as a young man on the “boat.” How the family lived in a tenement and took in boarders in order to make ends meet. How he decided that he didn’t want his children – five sons and two daughters – to grow up in that environment. All of this, of course, in his own version of Italian/English that I learned to understand quite well.

So, when my grandparents saved enough money (and I still can’t figure out how) they bought a house. That house served as the family headquarters for the next 40 years. I remember how they hated to leave the house for any reason. They would rather sit on the back porch and watch their garden grow. When they did leave for some special occasion, they had to return as quickly as possible. After all, “nobody is watching the house.”

I also remember the holidays when all the relatives would gather at my grandparents’ house and there would be tables full of food and homemade wine. The women in the kitchen, the men in the living room, and the kids… kids everywhere. I must have had a thousand cousins – first cousins and second and some friends who just became cousins. Then my grandfather, sitting in the middle of it all, his pipe in his mouth, his fine mustache trimmed, would smile and his dark eyes would twinkle as he surveyed his domain. He was so proud of his family and how well his children had done. One was a cop, another a fireman, the others had their trades, and of course there was always the rogue about whom nothing was said. The girls? They had all married well and had fine husbands, although my grandfather secretly seemed to suspect the one son-in-law who wasn’t Italian. But out of all of this, one thing that we all had for each other was respect.

It is understandable that things change. Everyone now has families of their own and grandchildren of their own. Today we visit once or twice a year, or we meet at wakes or weddings. Other things have also changed. The old house my grandparents bought is now covered with aluminum siding. A green lawn covers the soil that grew the tomatoes. There was no one to cover the fig tree so it died.

The holidays have changed too. Yes, we still make the family “rounds,” but somehow the things have become more formal. The great quantity of food we once consumed without any ill effects is no good for us anymore: too much starch, too much cholesterol, too many calories in the pastries. And nobody bothers to bake anymore – too busy.