Nona
My grandmother’s 90th birthday is coming up on Saturday. If my left brain serves me, that means she was born in 1916. I imagine she has vivid recollections of the Great War, The Depression, Viet Nam, and pre-Guiliani New York City. Tough times, I imagine.
When I hear stories, I feel like my generation is living in a heavily sanitized version of life. Everything we experience is pre-packaged for us. No work at all. No reason to get your fingernails dirty.
My grandmother experienced life. We watch it.
Her name is Carmella Monaco, but we call her Nona. She’s my father’s mother. 100% Italian, living up to every stereotype in the book. Absolutely adorable woman. Hard as nails one moment, tender the next.
Without the faintest doubt, she makes the best manicotti on the planet. Before you claim that that’s a biased opinion, let me say that I do not tell tall tales about manicotti, my friends. This is a unanimous truth. Nona kills the noodles everytime.
Everything is created by hand: pasta, gravy, she would even milk the cows if he backyard were zoned for grazing.
Nona is a matriarch in every sense. Her table always has room for stray friends n neighbors. I can’t tell you how many folks have sampled Nona’s antipasto. I can’t tell you how many tales have been told at that table. I can’t tell you how many glasses of cheap table wine have been drunk (served in a tiny juice glass, of course). But I can tell you, everyone leaves the table, full n jolly.
Meals at Nona’s are absolutely relentless. Dish after dish after dish. Antipasto first, then a pasta dish, then a meat dish, then seconds of everything (house rule, you must have seconds or Nona will forcibly pack the food down your muzzle with a ram rod), then some kind of vegetable.
There’s a short break to unbutton your pants, exhale and wipe the sweat from your forehead. Then we get into coffee and dessert, which consists a dish of approximately four-thousand different kinds of cookies and treats, two different kinds of pies, and a cake.
Then fruit.
Oh, man, I’m hungry.
G
When I hear stories, I feel like my generation is living in a heavily sanitized version of life. Everything we experience is pre-packaged for us. No work at all. No reason to get your fingernails dirty.
My grandmother experienced life. We watch it.
Her name is Carmella Monaco, but we call her Nona. She’s my father’s mother. 100% Italian, living up to every stereotype in the book. Absolutely adorable woman. Hard as nails one moment, tender the next.
Without the faintest doubt, she makes the best manicotti on the planet. Before you claim that that’s a biased opinion, let me say that I do not tell tall tales about manicotti, my friends. This is a unanimous truth. Nona kills the noodles everytime.
Everything is created by hand: pasta, gravy, she would even milk the cows if he backyard were zoned for grazing.
Nona is a matriarch in every sense. Her table always has room for stray friends n neighbors. I can’t tell you how many folks have sampled Nona’s antipasto. I can’t tell you how many tales have been told at that table. I can’t tell you how many glasses of cheap table wine have been drunk (served in a tiny juice glass, of course). But I can tell you, everyone leaves the table, full n jolly.
Meals at Nona’s are absolutely relentless. Dish after dish after dish. Antipasto first, then a pasta dish, then a meat dish, then seconds of everything (house rule, you must have seconds or Nona will forcibly pack the food down your muzzle with a ram rod), then some kind of vegetable.
There’s a short break to unbutton your pants, exhale and wipe the sweat from your forehead. Then we get into coffee and dessert, which consists a dish of approximately four-thousand different kinds of cookies and treats, two different kinds of pies, and a cake.
Then fruit.
Oh, man, I’m hungry.
G
posted by Greg Monaco at 11:08 AM
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