Singing to the soup

When I lived in my mother’s house, I was banned from her kitchen. Except to wash or dry dishes. I never learned to cook, but watched as her anger boiled over in pots.

Anything culinary after I left her house was usually from a can. But there was one avenue that I excelled in, and that was cooking pasta. This I learned from my grandmother’s kitchen, where I was not excommunicated. And if my mother said anything, my grandmother looked at her with steely, black eyes, the ones that ferreted out and removed “the evil eye”. My mother didn’t stand a chance against my grandmother’s Old World sight.

My grandfather let me stand next to him in the cellar as he rolled the dough for ravioli, then cut it into strips. I had the honor of sealing the edges of the squares so that the filling didn’t come out when dropped into boiling water.

When I decided to learn to cook, it came from necessity because I lived in a city whose idea of haute cuisine was cheese on a doughnut. So slowly, gradually, I learned how to prepare and eat healthy meals.

One day, I started singing to the soup. I felt as if I was in my grandmother’s kitchen again. I only had to open my spice cabinet, and I was transported back to childhood. My mother was on another planet, and all I had with me was the Old Country, and a slower time when appreciation for one’s food, where it came from, who brought it to your table, filled me with so much joy and appreciation, that I sang.

Sometimes I hum. But whatever sound, it is with deep appreciation for my grandparents’ roots in a country I have never visited, except in their kitchens. It has buoyed me past the crass, and the unhealthy. Past cheese on doughnuts. To an appreciation for the Sun, and the soil, and the elements – to all that grows what I place in my belly. That sustains not only body but spirit.