Christmas… the way it should always be Once a year, when the smells of the old country come alive again, its Christmas time and everyone is bustling with excitement. The children play outside in the brisk December night air, the women in the kitchen with stained aprons, the smell of flour, virgin olive oil, as they constantly brush their hair back in the heat of the kitchens. The men they are outside, their job of setting up tables and arranging chairs now done, they watch over the children while smoking cigars and drinking wine. This is the scene of our Italian Christmas. Through out the night can be heard a language that not only can be heard, but seen as well. Talking with their hands, speaking a language of Italian dialects and broken English. It’s the language you can hear the sing/song word endings of the Roman dialect, the slick imagined well dressed dialect of the northern Milanese, the country chopped words of my calabrese, and the hard earthy of the Sicilian. We are all one under this house, so this combinations of dialects works as one language. This is the language that I understand, it the language that my Nonna tells me she loves me. I stand their transfixed, as a young child of ten, trying to remember something to respond with in this language. While nothing comes to mind, I turn to her and say in English, “I love you too, Nonna” and then place a kiss on her cheek. I can smell her perfume and see the way she’s dressed, how they are all dressed: the men in suits, the women in fancy dresses & heels, and the children like porcelain dolls, all ready to take our annual family photo. My hair is curled, my dressed is pressed, and my shoes have been polished. I wait for the sound of Nonna and Nonna instructing us all to come inside to take a picture. It is difficult trying to fix so many people to stand still and smile. The children sit on the floor, “Indian style” with their hands in their laps, while the grown-ups shout in broken English to their children below to sit still and smile. My own mother stands behind me and playfully grabs a handful of my hair and warns me to behave and smile. I squirm to release her hands from me and force a smile. The photo is taken and myself and the rest of my cousins jump up to return playing outside. To explain an Italian Christmas eve to a non Italian is almost comical. Who would believe seven types of fish, or more importantly why? If you are a seafood lover then this is thee one night out of the year that you want to grab a doggy bag before leaving. There were the appetizers of Calamari, fresh deep fried shrimp, fresh oyster on the half shell, an anchovies’ pasta made with bread crumbs, and topped with steamed cabbage, a wild broccoli, spinach called rapini that every woman that helped out thought for sure her’s was the best. To round out the night as well as our stomachs we finished with a salted cod dish called bacala, that’s made traditional with a red marinara sauce and potatoes. I’m not sure if that’s seven, but I am sure no one was counting at the end of the night, cause soon after that we would start on dessert of Christmas cookies and cannoli’s. And over seeing all this festa annually was my Nonna Rosina. How you may ask did all this come about? It is never a questioned I asked, although I’m sure there is tradition involved in the story somewhere. I never had to ask about Italian tradition because I lived it, and still do. I know where I got it and it starts with a small diminutive woman, my grandmother, who would shake her fist at you when she was angry, shake those same fists at you when she was playfully upset and a wink, a woman who had the strength of five women, cooked, clean, scrubbed gardened, and then cooked some more, everyday. She hovered at her children, but mostly her sons. I’m sure she loved her daughter-in-laws, but held then suspect when it came whether her sons were getting proper care. I heard her speak only three English words my entire life I knew her. And when she passed away a few years back in 2006 at the age of 87, I’m pretty sure those were the words she ever wanted to say in English. Those three simple “I love you” in a heavy Calabrese-English are gold to my ears. She has been gone for three Christmas now, and my mother misses her dearly, as do we all. It was a sight to see her beam during those times to see her with all her family. Plates and dishes going back and forth – noisy chatter of everyone talking at once and my grandmother hardly saying a word. And when we were younger and my dad would carry me in his arms to put me in the car at the end of the night – my Nonna would plant a kiss on my cheek and say simply “ I love you”. To which I reply today I love you too.