Pasta and Poetry

 

One Bowl of Pasta and Poetry

 

By Alice Jane-Marie Massa

 

In the first kitchen of my Aunt Zita’s Italian restaurant and on the work table to the left of the largest stove was always one long cardboard box at the end of which was a colorful label that proclaimed the contents as vermicelli–pasta that is thinner than spaghetti. While we may most often say “spaghetti,” I do prefer the more flavorful vermicelli. (To read the menu of Binole’s Restaurant, please refer to my WORDWALK blogs of August 7 and August 14 of last year.) Even thinner than vermicelli pasta is fedelini–my favorite of these pastas. Although my family always referred to this pasta as “fedelini,” today this very thin pasta is more often called “angel-hair pasta.” In Italian, “fedelini” means “little faithful ones.” Well, I am faithful to pasta, poetry, my Italian-American heritage, and my dad. On this chilly February night, I hope that you will enjoy the following “pasta poem.”

 

 

Pas de Deux with Perfection

 

By Alice Jane-Marie Massa

 

 

With slippered feet on Wisconsin floor,

I stand before the kitchen sink

With vein-striped hands in sudsy water

and warm memories.

I think of Hoosier days

When I daily danced

A Pas de Deux with Perfection.

 

On the Fridays of my Blanford youth,

When Mother did not pour batter onto the hot waffle iron,

When Dad did not fry rectangles of fish,

When we did not make pimento-cheese spread,

My six-foot-one-inch dad

Stood with perfect posture In front of the stove

and made fidelini soup–

Milk soup–my favorite.

With wooden spoon in his hand,

My dad stirred the fedelini into the milk,

Coming to nearly a soft boil

In the pot of the pressure cooker–

In that Indiana kitchen

Where he taught me how to cook,

How to live,

How to respect my country and my family,

How to cope with an ever-changing

And ever-challenging world.

 

Around our kitchen table,

We sat, talked, and

Broke Italian breadsticks into milky white soup

With the favored fedelini.

This was home, comfort, love.

This was my dad with the dancing heart and twinkling eyes.

 

For almost five decades,

I danced a Pas de Deux with Perfection.

Now, I dance a Pas de Deux with memories–memories of the perfect dad for me.

 

* * *

 

God bless America–the new homeland of my grandparents and my forever heartland!

God bless America–and Brigadier General Charles E. McGee and his great-grandson Ian!

 

Alice and Leader Dog Willow

 

February 5, 2020, Wednesday

 

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