I’d spent the better part of days this past year seeking something precious that had gone lost. A Christmas choir concert brought it back to me.
Saturday night, the Vocal Arts of Ensemble of Cincinnati, at the direction of a dear friend of ours, Trevor Kroeger, performed at Christ Church Cathedral. Early in the program, tears rolled down my cheeks, oddly sun-soaked for December, at the words from “Christmas Memories” sung by Queen City Cabaret’s Sarah Folson:
I close my eyes and see shiny faces
Of all the children who now have children of their own
Funny, but comes December
And I remember every Christmas I've known.
Mostly, every Christmas my mother made known through her gifts, talents, and generosity. In her singing, her cookies. Not least of all, her wedding soup. How was this soup made known to us? Through the purchase of her coveted zuppiera, a white Ironstone tureen, and its accompanying ladle.
Decades later, when we packed my parents for their transition to Cincinnati, I hoped my mother would still use it. After my dad died, the apartment was left for sorting through, helping siblings decide what they wanted, and me, what I needed to keep. It was a difficult task under easy circumstances. My mother was moving to a memory care home. A tureen would be of no use. Certainly, I packed the zuppiera, along with her Franciscan dinnerware, a few other Amish Butterprint bowls and her metallic Christmas cookie tray to store in my home. For a confrontation that would come only after her death.
Our move to Over-the-Rhine a year later threw everything into disarray, including my organizational prowess and memories of Christmastime too.
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This past year, wrapping up a draft of Something Italian, I scoured my belongings for pictures to accompany that journey. Photos of grandmothers, of cookie platters, of anything that was something Italian.
Always, at the edges of the camera frame like an apparition in white, the soup tureen appeared.
I cast off the photos. Instead, for weeks, I sought out the actual zuppiera. Every box that didn’t contain published books waiting to be bought or family photographs and documents kept from light got a twice over. Down on my knees, I waved away sneezy dust bunnies under beds and poked into drawers where the kid still stored college textbooks and old sneaker balls. If that bowl was in the house, after ten years of our occupation, its location was beyond me. I started to believe in house ghosts making things disappear. What was this fixation for a kitchen vessel I could easily replace? Not only did it belong to my mother, but my memory of it was attached to an internal rolodex spinning out of control. How could I trust my brain to remember anything else?
The morning after the vocal concert, I rose early for reading time. Mark soon joined for coffee while drips of rain hit a spout three floors up and pinged through pipes as backdrop to our silence, both of us lost in thought.
Music was on my mind. My mother had been four-time a cappella choir participant in high school. She pushed us all into theatre, choir, musical instruments. None of us, save for some bad karaoke performances, made it stick. “I keep telling you to go back to the piano again,” Mark said. Or at least the keyboard. He wanted us to play together, he on his guitar. Like the misplacement of the tureen, I feared a misplacement of fingers on the keyboard.
I inched one bar stool closer to Mark and typed into my phone. “Christmas Memories” sung by Frank Sinatra (who else when speaking of Mom) was easy to locate on YouTube. The song was written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Don Costa. Frank recorded the song in October of 1975.
I close my eyes and see shiny faces
Of all the children who now have children of their own
Funny, but comes December
And I remember every Christmas I've known
The kitchen was lit with sparkles off our two, Cathedral fir Christmas trees, and their metallic purple and soft peach ornaments, and icicles spinning from the breeze from the heat register below. Low kitchen island lamps offered me the grace of just enough light to read sentences in the book I’d been pondering.
Each note of music poked through the morning fog of my to-do lists, sending me a coded message telling me to look up at the bank of cabinets above the sink.
In our 150-year-old home with 14-foot ceilings, looking up goes a long way. The run of white cabinets is accented with antique glass. Inside each of the eight cabinets, I stored a hodge-podge of white plates and platters. The collection was rarely used, if ever. The items were from a former marriage, or some former life on the coast or in the suburbs. My eyes registered each crock and plate, from left to right. Like reading a book, I wondered how this cataloging would end?
With Sinatra singing about Decembers and children with children of their own, with the breath of someone I loved dear at my neck, within that final compartment of white blocks, the soup tureen made itself known.
“Oh. My. God,” I whispered, keeping to my own request for quiet that morning.
They were the only words available to me. A blessing, a grace, a bit of a disgrace, disgruntled as I had been at the situation over time. All experienced in one singular moment.
Knowing my excitement might lead to further tragedy, Mark dragged a bar stool toward the cabinets, and handed down the lid, the bowl, and the platter, piece by piece. The ladle jingled inside, broken in two.
I hugged the tureen for a moment, as if it were my mother herself. My rounded arms only as wide as her waist after she dwindled away in her final days, but at least, she’d eaten wedding soup her last Christmas with us. Her bowl had been filled.
Within minutes, my handy husband Superglued the ladle. We maintained its upright position, situating the ladle on a bed of confetti paper spooning one lime, with the other resting behind, in a Christmas bowl gifted to me the day before. I wanted to fuss with it while the glue dried. Mark’s words of don’t touch rang true. No need to separate me from the parts, or the parts from each other again.
We’ll be a smaller group this year for Christmas. Down from a record of 25+ in former times when my mother could judge my wedding soup. I won’t fill the zuppiera to the rim, instead, saving a little swimming space for the kitchen spirit to float to top of mind again.
Here’s a few offerings in the new year to jump start your writing. Yet to come are workshops at Cleveland’s Italian American Museum, the Lloyd Library Museum, and more craft talks with Tina Neyer.
January 9
I’ll be appearing on Wellmed’s Caregiver SOS podcast. Live, on-air at 2:30. Visit this link for more details.
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January 17th at 7 p.m. One year ago, my writing partner, Tina Neyer and I, created a space for a community of writers who wanted to meet in northern Kentucky. Thus, Gugel Alley Writers, inside Roebling Books of Newport, was born. On the 17th, we will celebrate by reading and sharing. Come listen in. More details to come.
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February 10, 10 - 12 noon. Contemporary Arts Center. As part of the ongoing Creativing Writing Project, I’ll be leading a workshop on the theme inspired by the newest CAC exhibition by Tia Shani, My Bodily Remains. Visit www.cac.org. soon for details on signing up.
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NEW and On-going
Pauletta Hansel and I are pleased to announce two of our FREE Caring for the Caregiver writing experiences will be IN PERSON. We know this is important to many of our participants, so we are happy to offer this in partnership with Giving Voice Foundation and Jewish Family Services.
Our first date is Feb. 9th, 10-noon in partnership with Jewish Family Services Adult Day program, and August 9th, 10-noon. Watch this space, or visit givingvoicefdn.org soon to register.
Our FREE, VIRTUAL writing experiences for caregivers will continue through Much More than a Meal and Giving Voice. Tentative dates of May 7 and November 14, 10-noon. Forthcoming details will also found at givingvoicefdn.org soon.
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My Italian daughter-in-law asked me last night over dinner if I ever did any German cooking. Short of a Sauerbraten when my son came home after 6 months in Heidelberg to study, just the jarred sauerkraut. But your piece reminds me of the notebook my grandma used to keep her most precious recipes in, held together with a couple of rubberbands to keep the contents inside. The book is lost but a quick search of Christmas recipes has given rise to some possible creations for Christmas eve dinner. Thank you for sharing such a beautiful piece. How wonderful that the things we thought we lost can at times be right under our noses.
I too had a bowl like yours which was my Mother’s but in the move either gave away or still boxed in the garage. Enjoy your story. Would love the recipe for the wedding soup. Happy Holidays ❤️