Thanksgiving Without Lasagna

My father and my grandmother had conflicting opinions when giving me advice about choosing a husband. My father wanted me to marry an Italian, my grandmother hoped I would marry an Americano.

“Don’t marry an Italian,” grandma advised me on several occasions. “Italian men think they are big shots! Marry a tall man,” my four foot tall grandmother added, as she stretched her arm up as far as she could, and patted the air above her head. “A tall Americano!”

As I got older, Dad’s advice to marry an Italian became a command. “You have to marry an Italian,” he told me. But after my older brother married a blond blue-eyed girl of German descent, and I became engaged to a tall Americano of Dutch descent, his command became a whimpering plea as he turned his last hope to my younger brother, who was already dating an Irish girl, and asked, “Isn’t anyone going to bring home an Italian?”

Dad’s pleas went unheeded, for none of us married Italians. He was in for another surprise that first Thanksgiving at my brother’s house when his wife did not serve lasagna as the first course.

“Where’s the lasagna,” he whispered to my mother. Her answer was a gentle elbow poke into his ribcage. But my father, who never responded well to subtleties, bellowed across the table to my sister-in-law, “Where’s the lasagna?”

“Lasagna?!” she laughed. “The pilgrims didn’t serve lasagna on Thanksgiving.”

“The pilgrims! Humph! What did they know?” he grumbled. “Italians have lasagna on Thanksgiving.”

Not anymore, I thought, as I looked around the table at the three new non-Italian members of the family.

“You know,” my mother added diplomatically, “I think I like this better. When you fill up on lasagna, you have no room for the turkey.”

“Who cares about the turkey? Italians have lasagna on Thanksgiving,” dad insisted, as he glanced around the table for affirmation and got none. Instead, my brothers, my mother and I, all lifted our heads at the same moment to answer him with silent daggers from our eyes that warned, Don’t start! Only the new in-laws kept eating, oblivious to dad’s traumatic realization that things were never going to be the same now that the family had been infiltrated by “outsiders.” I felt a smile curling at my lips as I remembered my first Thanksgiving at my new in-laws, just a year earlier, when I had my own silent realization of the differences between “them” and “us.” It began at my entrance into my new in-laws home…

My father-in-law opened the door and backed away from me as I leaned forward to kiss him hello. My husband forgot to tell me that they don’t do the “hello kissing” in his family. We sat down to a beautifully set dining room table covered with a white linen (unstained) tablecloth and several different sized (all matching!) plates at each setting. I remained frozen in place as I waited through a rather long prayer of thanks, peaking up from time to time when I thought it was nearing the end. Finally, I heard the Amen! and sat with my arms at my sides to wait and watch the others to see which was the correct fork to use first. Lesson learned: Work from the outside in, or, the smaller fork is the salad fork and sits next to larger/dinner fork which rests next to the dinner plate.. Then I accidentally started eating out of my husband’s salad bowl, causing him to search around the table for an extra one, which, of course, drew attention to the fact that I was ignorant to the rules of a properly set table. Lesson learned: Your salad bowl sits to the left of the forks..

Holidays at my mother’s house were different, more relaxed – or chaotic, depending on your frame of reference. In fact, you were lucky to get a fork at all sometimes, since some relative would think nothing of dropping by at dinnertime with a few extra uninvited guests of their own. My mother’s attempts to create order around the table by counting heads, napkins and forks never prevailed, and soon people were standing in doorways, or sitting on couches, plates delicately balanced on a tripod of fingertips, while others rested their plates on the piano to sing a few bars of whatever my dad was banging out at the moment. Holiday dinners turned into events that lasted well into the night.

At my in-laws that first Thanksgiving, I had observed a new phenomenon around the holiday table: it was quiet conversation – the kind where only two people speak at a time and the others listen silently. The adults even spoke to the children present at the dining room table and listened with interest to their responses. I had only seen this before on television shows like Father Knows Best.

When I was young, the children were never allowed to sit in the dining room with the adults and were exiled to the kitchen table for holiday dinners. Even when we were old enough to make that rite of passage to the adult table, we were not considered a part of their world and were excluded from their conversation as they broke into Italian – their secret language.

I was seated next to my father-in-law at that first Thanksgiving. He had the turkey carcass in front of him with the rear of the turkey facing me. Right in front of me was the prized piece, the much fought over turkey culo. Everyone was focused on one of the little children at the moment and I saw my golden opportunity. I swiftly sliced into the turkey’s ass and the culo fell right off into my waiting fingertips. As I was blissfully chomping away on the crispy culo, daydreaming about past holidays at my mother’s house and making humorous comparisons between my family and this new family I had entered through marriage, I suddenly heard the silence and sensed all eyes on me. I looked up to find seven faces watching me curiously.

“What?” I asked, my face ablaze, a chunk of culo stuck in my throat. My hand stretched out in search of the correct water glass, deftly maneuvering between the wine glasses, praying I wouldn’t knock one over. At that moment, I wished I was eight years old again in the safety of my mother’s kitchen with my other rowdy cousins.

Dessert was served immediately after the dinner plates were cleared. There was no time between courses for the men to walk around the block with their cigars while the women did the dishes. We each received one neatly cut slice of pumpkin pie – something I had never tasted before - and a cup of tea. When dessert was over, the meal was over. The table was being cleared while I was still chewing my last few bits of pie. “Are you done with this?” my sister-in-law asked as she lifted my mug of unfinished tea off the table. I couldn’t swallow fast enough to answer, “no,” and then she declared, “Well, I guess Thanksgiving is over.”

The night was still young so we dropped by my mother’s house to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. There were nuts, cracked nutshells and tangerine skins scattered across the tablecloth stained with tomato sauce from the lasagna course. Various pastries, haphazardly cut cakes, broken cookies, Anisette, brandy and a pot of black coffee were also spread around the table. These would not be cleared away until the last person was in their car with the engine running. It would be a sign of disrespect to do otherwise. Clearing the table implied that you wanted people to leave.

There were several animated conversations and bawdy laughter going on around the house while my dad banged on the piano to accompany my uncles who were belting out their favorite Italian arias. It was noisy and chaotic, but this was home to me.

As I walked through the living room kissing and hugging everyone, I felt myself relax for the first time all day. Going from my husband’s reserved quiet family to my outgoing emotional one was like crossing over the border into a different country. Now I was back on familiar terrain, and for the first time I understood my father’s wishes for me to marry an Italian.

He had wanted all of this to continue. The common threads of a culture bring familiarity and comfort to people of a common heritage. His wishes that I marry an Italian spoke volumes to me now that I had married into a family so unlike my own.

But in any marriage, there are adjustments on both sides, and over the years I knew we would join and blend our cultures – accepting some traditions and rejecting others. I think this is what my grandmother had hoped when she advised me to marry an Americano. She wanted me to do what she, as an Italian immigrant, was unable to do in her own lifetime – to finally assimilate into this modern new world called America.

Now, at my brother’s house, Dad was working on his own assimilation, even if it meant doing without his beloved lasagna at Thanksgiving. His old ways were suddenly being challenged where it affected him most – at the table. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was asking his new daughters-in-law to make him sauerbraten or corned beef and cabbage. My father would assimilate very easily if you kept him well fed. He loves his food and his family and the warmth around the table. He is, after all, Italian.

Below is my mother’s lasagna recipe which she gave me on a 3x5 index card. It’s the one I use to make lasagna on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Lasagna

2 lb. lasagna
4 large cans tomatoes
2 smaller cans tomatoes (Del Monte)
2 lbs. chop meat
1 packet sausage
2 lbs ricotta + 1 small container ricotta
1 large mozzarella + 1 small

Layer in pan as follows
1 Tomato Sauce
2 Chop Meat
3 Lasagna
4 Ricotta
5 Chop meat
6 Mozzarella
7 Tomato sauce
8 Grated cheese