“Mommy, the Musto’s have garlic fever!”

Sadly, my grandfather, Papa, passed when I was an infant, before an introductory family visit could be arranged.   Papa had come to the USA through Ellis Island as a young teen, with guaranteed work as the assistant to a shoe cobbler. With no further education, he labored and saved until he was able to buy the Old Mill Cafè, a family friendly bar situated on Mother Brook, a tributary of Boston’s Charles River.  He also acquired properties to house a steady stream of family and friends following his migrating footsteps. As his wealth increased, so did his value as a potential husband.  After uniting with my much younger grandmother in an arranged marriage, he bought a large family home, in the same neighborhood.   They raised four children in this home where each Sunday, Papa presided over a feast for the large extended family, friends, and anyone else in need of food and comfort. 

By the time we arrived from Oklahoma to live temporarily with Grandmother, the café and surrounding properties had been sold. As each relative achieved the American dream, they moved further afield to homes purchased on their own. 

However, Papa’s brother, my Uncle Joe (for whom my dad was named) still lived around the corner with his wife Clementine.  The Musto family, a young couple with two children who had recently immigrated, lived across the street from Grandmother.  So, for two years, I lived in my own Little Italy, wandering from yard to yard and kitchen to kitchen.  In the summer Uncle Joe would let me join the daily convention of local “Paisanos” under the leafy shade of his grape arbor.  The musical lilt of their Calabrian dialect was like a lullaby and was always accompanied by glasses of home brewed vino rosso. While laughing, arguing, and contemplating, they carved ripe peaches, plucked from the garden tree.  Each juicy slice was dipped in wine before it was popped into the mouth.  A few were always passed to me, without the Bacchus baptism. 

I attended a cooking catechism each Saturday morning.

After climbing a step stool pulled up to Grandmother’s kitchen counter, the ceremonial preparation of Sunday dinner’s tomato sauce would commence. Perfection could only be achieved via a holy trinity of beef, pork, and chicken.  The beef was always meatballs, the pork could be either sausages flecked with fennel or a chunk of left over pork roast (bone-in of course), and the chicken was a whole bird cut into parts and slow roasted in wine, olive oil, and herbs.  I solemnly participated in the ritual of mixing and rolling carefully gauged plum sized meatballs, and then watched Grandmother gently rotate them in a cast-iron skillet of hot olive oil until they achieved a sublime crispy brown surface.  

This was the unquestioned gospel of meatball making until the day I witnessed Aunt Clementine immerse raw balls, the size of a navel orange, directly into simmering sauce.  Without the calibrated browning in olive oil, they emerged from their tomato bath with a rather pale gray complexion. Not understanding the doctrinal divide that I was about to breach, I innocently asked Grandmother why Aunt Clementine made big white meatballs. Though I don’t remember her specific word choice, I got the clear message that it would be heretical to suggest Aunt Clementine’s boiled lumps belonged in the same realm as her golden orbs. Regardless, both women nurtured me in their kitchens and christened my own custodianship of our edible heritage.

Across the street, the Musto kitchen was enveloped in the same aromas of garden-fresh tomatoes, basil, and garlic.

While frequently nibbling Biscotti, Canestrelli, or my favorite Pizzelli, at their kitchen table, I listened to the children volley back and forth between two languages.  I already believed that I too was multilingual, mistakenly convinced that I spoke a native American dialect thanks in part to family lore about Oklahoma and in no small part from watching too many wild west TV series. To prove my linguistic prowess, I would parrot the horrible, and certainly politically incorrect, “Indian” accents perpetuated in these shows. “Not-a-now” became my favorite response to undesirable requests, and thanks to the Musto children, I could now add Italian to my linguistic quiver.

I was soon making “minestra” soup in Grandmother’s yard from a mixture of mud and grass clippings, greeting the day with “buongiorno” and engaging a few choice words the adults reserved for mature or explicative remarks.  My joy in the sound of words in any language was often at the expense of accurate meaning.  One day I rushed back home insisting that “the Mustos had garlic fever!”  This was not the first nor the last Malapropism I would boldly employ to the delight of my elders. I’m not sure we ever confirmed exactly what illness had plagued the Musto household; perhaps some variation of scarlet fever was assumed? 

When I turned six years old, our family moved once again on my birthday.  

This move was out of my grandmother’s house and into our own small suburban 1960 split-level in the same town where my father worked.  Though the transition to our new home was only a half hour drive, and not the four-day journey of our first move, it was equally extreme.  In an instant, the magical microcosm of extended family and rich Italian culture was replaced with the melded sameness of suburban living.  This loss was complicated by an abusive first grade teacher who stole the joy of learning from all her students.  My tearful departures each morning and inability to get through the school day without being sick to my stomach was shocking for parents so dedicated to the values of learning. 

My misery eventually led to a confrontation between the teacher and my father.  The showdown led to some improvement in the classroom, but the damage to me and my classmates had already been done. Second grade provided some positive transitions, but third grade brought unexpected joy and a pivotal cultural collide.

My heart skipped a proverbial beat the first time Monsieur Pineault swept into our classroom and declared, “Bonjour les enfants!” 

A red scarf draped perfectly around his neck and a jauntily tilted black beret perched on his head, he returned every few weeks to teach us basic French language and culture.  For me it was no coincidence that I was born on the “Quatorze Juillet,” France’s National Day of Celebration.  More importantly, the music that flowed from Monsieur Pineault’s lips was not just another language.  In my heart, I knew it was a portal to some other mysterious world and when he called me “Térèse,” I wanted to be that girl! 

Decades later, on a post college academic tour of Europe I could not afford while in school, I was overwhelmed by that same childhood joy the evening I first stood in the middle of the historic Champs-Elysée. As I looked up the avenue toward the Arc de Triomphe, a giant “tricolore” flag, dramatically suspended and illuminated within the arch, lifted in and out on the breath of a balmy August breeze.  I stood alone and wept.  To this day I struggle to describe what stirred within me, some divine reincarnation?  What was this profound connection that was not equaled when visiting the homelands of my own Scottish and Italian ancestors?  Was it prophesying yet another move beyond my current purview?