Coming home for Christmas.

Arriving in Palermo occurs always after Rome or Milan. The long uncomfortable terminal connections from international arrivals to domestic departures painfully fills the hour and 20 minutes between flights with the regret of overpacked carry-ons which inevitably deposits me at the bottom of one long stairway up to the putt putt that takes me to my final destination.

Once out of Rome or Milan the flight takes you along the coast reminding you what a beautiful penninsula this is , the mountaings, the infinitely long coast, the agriculture. About 30 minutes into the flight that barely has time to offer water to it's passengers you realize that Italy is not Rome or Milan or Venice or Florence as the states are not NYC or LA. We are over Sicily. It's like entering the orbit of a planet whose spring is tentively emerging from an ambivalent winter, the pointed hills form a cradle for the sea that marks our approach to Palermo. It looks deserted. There is no evidence of human life, no cities are seen from the flight route, it appears an exclusively agricultural and fisherman's Island.
It is December 25th, all self respecting italians are already at home with their loved ones dipping the panetone into asti and sopping up the sugo with the sesame coated semolina loaves we simply can not find elsewhere.

The flight from Newark to Rome is calm. No one is rushing. But the passengers are different from the usual dual passport holding nonni , the teenagers with nike shopping bags, laquered hair and chinatown gucci sunglasses. These folks are not particularly going to Italy.

They are connecting through Rome to Istanbul, Prague, Russia. These folks are flying away from the holidays. They are definitively outside of the holidays, walking in the space between inhale and exhale. They are watching us rush to family, rush to enjoy, to celebrate, arriving tired, incomplete and anxious. My fellow travelers though, have ascended.
Every moment in line, rushing, watching the baggage carousel adds insult to injury. I am being kept from my husband. 20 minutes at the baggage claim, we are told that American luggage is in another part of the luggage carrousel.

Finally by the time I get my luggage on the cart, rush to the exit,I have had it. I shoot a look at the customs officer, and say, do I put the luggage through? He says, yes. I shoot another look, which one, … va bene, just that one. Thank heavens, hoisted once more on to another rolling table, no beeps, bells or whistles. I am through.

Through the doors. So few people left to greet the remaining passengers. Those American passengers retrieving their luggage with me were mostly tourists. No tour guides to greet them, no cousins to escort them home.

And there he is , hands in pocket, the grin that holds back the tears. We never can look at each other fully when I arrive. This usually happens once I am in the car. These akward here not here few minutes that get me to the car, I don't know what to notice first. But the options are often the same, Iam framed by some part of the parking structure we walk through to get to the car, bright unobstructed sunshine complimenting the moistness of the impenetrable sea . Today the ground is moist. It rained while I was in flight.

I kiss him and get in the car.

These separations are not unusual, sadly. I notice he seems pale and weary. His health seems to be stressed this time, a bronchial infection that required daily shots of super antibiotics, his mother' month hospital stay for an operation to remove the hernia that sprouted when he was born- 40 years ago, the stress of living with her knowing she is the reason I was gone.   He looks abused. He looks like a mammone. There is no hiding that we have both gained weight and although I can't see it, I am sure I look my masculinized female self that is so American, after all.

I am sure I look as pasty, unkempt and distressed as I feel.

This time it took me 4 months to make the trip home.

 Since I had quit smoking just before I got on the plane, I treated his Diana Rosso with grave respect. On our best behavior-let’s not f**k this up-it’s been 4 months- he notices and kindly suggests that I may prefer that he not smoke in the car. I sweetly demur and finally we take each other in, and honestly, the clouds part just a bit more and we hug. The side to side in the car over bucket seats, avoiding the parking break, and man have we gained weight hug. That hug.

The car smells of roasted peanuts. How odd, like peanut butter. Ah yes, the 5 loaves of the bread, the sesame coated semolina loaves. The bread.
Heading home.

The mother is at home cooking. Pasta con with carne al forno. ( a dish I can not bear for the peas that in this season are frozen or canned)  And this time it is without the peas- a concession to me.

Franco's sliced  homemade artisanal salami is displayed on my gift, the santa plate that is never actually given to me. The mother says,  "this is your gift and I am using it already. Ha haa."

Her preparations are excessesive and overly manipulated. A great cook at one time, the dishes are anxious. We are 8 for dinner, my sweet favorite Li Pira, Michellina is due and one of her daughters family.

I change into a dress, making an attempt to be sensual in some capacity. It is hard, but being hard does me no good.

So I am home with the Butcher. That's great.

And there are cannolis made with Sheep's milk Ricotta and that's great too.

All contents copyright 2004-2011. All rights reserved.

wisdom of the seasons

Christmas in Sicily is like a parade of sweets. Sicilians LOVE THEIR TREATS. We ate Cassata, cannoli, 7 veils chocolate mousse/cake, panettone, pistachio nutella, regular nutella, and so much of everything else.

Then January comes and Mother Nature's merciful wisdom, springs forth the remedy. Wild Greens. All sorts of chicoria, chards, bitter greens. This is the way to love your liver.

I think back to Whole Foods and how thrilled I was to pay 2.99 a pound for cultivated dandelion, if and when I could get it.

Just the other day I purchased off the back of a one of those aluminum foil putt putt truckettes, 5 euro worth of greens. It weighed 5 kilos. 11 pounds of greens!!! So I have blanched and shocked some, juiced some and had some in salads and sauteed the rest for pasta (gluten free, really this O blood type girl needs a break from the wheat!)

And this week Carnevale has started. It can be a roller coaster here participating in all the food rituals. But if you look really closely and pay attention to the land, you find what you want.

I am determined to make my own olive leaf tincture one day soon. There is a fornaio just down the block from us that burns huge branches of olive trees and all their leaves for the daily bake. It bugs me every time. Gotta get the leaves.


I am though, happily brewing my latest batch of kombucha and this is definitely adding to my quality of life. Thank you fermentation and culinary wisdom from around the world.

So amongst the temptations of Bar Ester (making amazing gelato and other too beautiful to resist pastries) and all kinds of seasonal desserts, I am perservering in eating in sync with the real seasons, not just the festivals.






All contents copyright 2004-2010.
All rights reserved.

Siamo Qua.

This is the life I want. This is the life I have wanted. 55 square meter apartment with a terrace, early morning drinking water with lemon sitting at the kitchen table after an evening of friends for dinner, my loving husband off to work, listening to Bach's unaccompanied cello suite #3 and writing. The dishes from last night are in the sink, a bit of cleaning to do and Sunday lunch to prepare, possibly 2 or 4 more guests coming at the last minute.

And this is the life I want. It has been an oddly warm Christmas. A sirocco on the 23rd has kept us bathed in warm weather all this week, a bit of rain, but nothing to interfere with Christmas celebrations.


The lemons are sicilian, the terrace is in a strange town in Sicily. And I am ,as it would be, a stranger here.

I remember my Aunt Rita's cabin in Lake Lenape, NJ. And the important thing about that home was what she filled it with. I know Uncle Eddie was a sentimental, repetitive, needed to hear himself talk, compensating Piscean man of a certain generation, loyal to his Irish mom till the end. But they made it work. They did love each other. Both Aunt Rita and Uncle Eddie married when they might have both become an old maid and lifelong bachelor. By some miracle, they took care of their mothers in good Brooklyn Irish form, and when they completed their loving mission, they were not left alone in the world.

I know Aunt Rita might have liked to have children, she was a terrific aunt. And as I am faced with the consequences of my choice to put off motherhood until after Paris, After Florence, After London, After Cooking for xyz, after the Kurdish Refugee, ..... never having enough money, or the right man, or a decent home, and , and, and , and ,and , and.......I feel the grief of maybe having waited too long. ---But here I am , and it’s exactly where I want to be. Unlike Aunt Rita however, I have not been the greatest Aunt. Perhaps that can change.

Last night we had a friend of the butcher and her 5 year old daughter come to dinner. She is a single mom in Sicily. She is a female friend of my husband for probably 15 years, and the sister of his last girlfriend before he met me.

The specifics of this woman, this relationship, and our new found friendship are significant, and one day soon I will explain how.

I hear lots of stories about what life is like in Sicily. I hear lots of stories about what Family is in Sicily, I am told about life here, but now I am beginning to have my own life here ,and the information I experience is somewhat different than what I have been told. I am here, in my home whose wood beams and sleeping loft and loving Piscean (particular) husband all remind me of Lake Lenape and the genuinely loving couple in the history of my family.

Siamo Qua. We are here. A comment I here often after discussions about outside events, that may or may not affect the life of the person who says, siamo qua. Ready, for what life brings. It is both a passive and an active stance.

I look to the butcher as he goes to work every morning, spends the whole day there, and loves to go, loves to be there, there is a sense of preparedness that he brings to the shop every day. He rushes to finish the morning routine even when it feels like no one will come. He is ready. Even in his life when he could have taken time to prepare for a new adventure, learn english for example, he arrived to be as he was, ready or not.

I have not felt that much in my life. I have always felt that I was not prepared, I was not ready, I always had more to do before I could get to the thing I really wanted to do. No suprise then the present childlessness.

This has been an extremely trying year, being pushed out of our last apartment in the states, ( a justifiable and necessary incentive for the year that has followed) living in his brother's hotel in Livorno, the near miss purchase of the ferrari Butchershop in a 3 buggy town in the north of Italy, the uncertainty of where we would wind up, the very difficult and uncomfortable arrival and presence of his mom in our lives, my travels without him to Corsica, Florence and Austria, when it all got to be too much, my living at the school on the beach when it got to be too much once again; the constant feeling of missing my husband through all of this, being partners and barely husband and wife in the business, the jealousy and constant flow of opinions of others how to do what we both so clearly know how to do.....and more. There were power struggles, there were misunderstandings, there was stressssssssssssss. But now there is a butchershop with the best tasting veal and sausages that did the best of all others for Christmas or at least tied with who did the best, and the introduction of healing meals to our neighbors, starting with basic diet items in ready to prepare meals for the new year, and this 55 square meter flat, with a terrace, my bike that takes me everywhere, the ocean just 15 minutes away, my intuition and instincts that brought me here in the first place and the renewal of the relationship that brought me back.


The church bells are clanging without order, celebrating this 3rd day after Christmas. So my year rushes to an end in a cacophony of color, flavors, shouting young men and old women, burning wood ready for the Sunday fillets of rib eye off the bone, hand made sausage on the grill, and the bones and flesh of the dear animals that allow us to live this life in this manner.


It is 9am, Sunday December 27th and siamo qua.





All contents copyright 2004-2007.
All rights reserved.