Discovery Health : Everydaydishes

11/03/2009

They say you can’t go home again but last night I did just that. Well, sort of. There was a death in the family - my Aunt Teresa died - and I had to go back to my hometown for the wake. It’s not like I’m never back in the ‘hood; my parents still live there, although not in the house where we grew up. I had been hoping to run in to my brothers at the wake, thinking maybe one or all of them would be able to go out for a drink afterward, but my timing was bad. So, I left the funeral home and decided to take a drive around my old neighborhood. Of course, I headed for the house. I drove up my street, passing many friends’ houses on the way. The houses were always close together, though I didn’t think they were back then. But now there are new houses crammed between the old. At least it’s nice to see small new houses. The builders around our town only know how to build huge, silly houses. I pass where my elementary school was - that was knocked down years ago to build townhouses. When did that become a one way street? I’ve heard that our old house is a mess so I wasn’t surprised - only saddened - to see what bad shape it’s in. Everything is familiar but nothing really looks the same. But in my mind, it’s clear as day.

It’s no lie that I’ve been feeling very nostalgic lately. This can be blamed directly on my recently discovered and full-blown addiction to the TV show Mad Men. I find the work-place story lines riveting, but it’s the home scenes that really capture me. This was our life. The clothes. The hair. The smoking! Most of my family smoked and our kitchen was often filled with smokers. We obviously never thought anything about it. But now, almost no one smokes, and it’s unusual to see someone smoking in public. Can you even imagine sitting at work - or in a restaurant - and having a smoke? Seeing Betty Draper smoking at her kitchen table when her kids come in from playing outside is like watching home movies. But I think the unhurried pace of their lives is what really brings me back. My father wasn’t an ad man but he put on his suit and hat (don’t you love men in hats?) and went to the office. I’m certain there wasn’t the drinking and carousing going on that goes on in Mad Men, but I’m sure I thought that there was. My life revolved around us being at home together and just being with each other. There weren’t after school activities and sports. There was school and home and the neighborhood. And that was enough.

Believe me, I could take any subject and bring it around to Mad Men. Sorry about that. Back at the wake, being amongst my people (who, by the way, would never be mistaken for Irish), I become a different person. I am no longer someone’s wife or mother. I am the baby of the family. The only girl. I’m just me. Once you have kids, how many opportunities are there for you to be seen as just you? Just your childhood self? Someone else’s baby? Not too many. And it feels nice. It’s so natural and so easy. I don’t feel this way when I’m together with just my immediate family - my parents and brothers and their families - only when I’m with the entire, extended family. (La famiglia, if you will,) So, basically at weddings and funerals.

I stayed for the duration of the visiting hours, seeing my mother’s childhood friends come through to pay their respects. We sat toward the back, chatting about this and that as you tend to do at these events. Some people said the rosary - this being a wake, and all. Many of us did not. There was a lot of reminiscing and a healthy dose of laughter. When the crowd thinned out toward the end, just my mother, her cousin and I remained. I knew it was time to go, leave behind being the baby once more and go home to become Mom again. But then my cousin Marie turned to my mother and said “Did you see last night’s episode of Mad Men?” and we were off again and I got to stay the baby for a while longer.