SUNDAY MORNINGS
Nonna starts the sauce early.
That familiar smell
sautéeing the air
wakes me up
every Sunday.
I follow my nose.
It knows the scent of
thinly sliced garlic
crackling in olive oil,
splattering up the cooktop,
smacking my senses.
My bare feet hop
down our steep stairs
to Italian music playing
and San Marzanos sizzling,
the pomi d’oro,
the sweet golden apples—
crushed red chunks
my grandmother pours
from a giant can
into a cast iron pot
every Sunday.
San Marzanos are
the Ferrari of tomatoes.
Their skin even comes in rosso corsa,
the original racing red—
hot, fast, and flashy,
the national color of Italy.
Sunday dinner’s at three.
Don’t be late!
Family Is Everything
I’ll never inherit a trust fund
like most kids in my class
(including my cousin), but
my inheritance comes from
family names and traditions
and Nonna’s Italian wisdom—
priceless idioms
that don’t translate literally.
Kinda like riddles.
You just gotta figure them out.
My favorite one is
Non si può avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca. ~
You can’t have a full bottle and a drunk wife.
I used to think this one was funny
since a wife was getting drunk
(enter Lucy’s drunk mom—not funny), but
there’s way more to it than that.
Sometimes,
to keep one thing,
you have to give up another.
One of Nonna’s go-tos
doesn’t need explaining though.
La famiglia è tutto ~
Family is everything
says it all.
I mean, it used to.
If you’re a D’Auria,
you’re supposed to
have your family’s back.
Always.
No matter what.
So what happens when
someone in the family
picks friends
over blood
and thinks everything
means nothing at all?
HYPERACTIVE BLACKOUT
You know when something’s funny
(but not really that funny),
like when your teacher farts then
pretends it’s just a squeaky dry-erase marker and
you know you shouldn’t be laughing but
you just can’t help it?
That’s what’s happening
right now.
I’m no-control cracking up so hard
I have to hold my chest to breathe.
Emilia puts down a stack of eight plates and
glares at me like I have seven heads.
It wasn’t that funny, Ari.
My abs hurt.
(I mean, the place where abs should be hurts.)
I might laugh myself to sudden death.
Why are you so hyperactive?
A lid clanks and clatters against a pot.
Time to add salt before the pasta drop.
You really need to go back on meds.
And just like that,
her voice cuts the vibe
like a full-on blackout.
Over Sunday Dinner
We sit in our usual seats
at the long wooden table
in our small dining room.
Every room in this place is small.
It makes eavesdropping way too easy.
Emilia’s insult repeats
over and
over and I’m
over it. I’m
over her. I’m
overwhelmed and
overpowered and
overstressed and
overshadowed, and it’s all
over this endless echo
over and
over and—
Why are you so hyperactive?
Emilia’s voice
overruns my head. It’s an
overflow I can’t
overcome.
Does she even know
where hyperactive comes from?
OVER WORD ORIGINS
Hyper comes from Greek meaning over,
like excessive or exaggerated,
like hyperbole or hypercritical
(like the label ADHD).
Super comes from Latin meaning over,
like extreme or excessive,
like superhero or superior
(like what ADHD should be).
They’re cognates,
born from the same word,
historically related,
changing with each new language.
Why’d the H in ADHD
have to come from Greek?
It just makes me hate
acronyms
and Greek
and Emilia
and this Sunday dinner
that hasn’t even started.
We’re just sitting at the table
waiting on Babbo and Nonna.
(Can’t start until everyone’s here.)
My body won’t untense.
My fists won’t unclench.
I strap my arms across my chest.
What’s taking so long?
Through the kitchen doorway,
I see Nonna shaking a finger at Babbo.
I hear words too fast to understand.
I smell sauce on pasta getting cold.
I taste my mouth salivating.
I feel anger, simmering
like that pot of salted water, boiling
but there’s no pasta to drop in, intensifying
and I just can’t stop this volcano in me raging.
I hear Nonna say,
Lui è buono come il pane.
I’m not sure
what that even means.
Buono is good
and pane is bread
and good bread’s
the best food on the table
but in any language,
I don’t want a label.
If I’m as good as bread
it must be stale.