Salute Per Tutti

Writing for New Year's Eve late at night after the day and year has left for good, I see images in my mind's eye like a kaleidoscope of shifting colors and sounds, and all involve family and food preparation.

This was Cioppino Day, the big family reunion we have every year.  Four sisters and their loved ones converge on one point from four directions, near and far.  We hate to miss it; we try at all costs to be together "for cioppino."  There is an interesting thing about long-term traditions:  The framework is so strong and well estabilished that only small changes are made, but they are noted by everyone, even if very quietly.

This day is the biggest marker of change, tradition, progress or decline that our family has.  There is some reminiscing, lots of joking, and mental notes about what we look like and act like in comparison to our predecessors, even if we don't admit it out loud.  A grandmother and grandfather, now long gone, were the first generation to establish new lives in America, and we do not forget them; they live large in our memories.  We do what we do on Cioppino Day because they did it first.

One year, one person may bring a tray full of antipasti and the next not at all.  One year, someone will bring a very good wine and the next not even think of it.  The cioppino sauce is recalled and mentally compared to this year's result and judgement passed.  "The sauce was better than last year," or "There's more spice than last year," or "The cookies came out dry this year." The huge pot and deep red sauce filled with crab and prawns is the symbol, the icon of the meal and the gathering.

The numbers of chairs at tables varies according to who can travel and who cannot.  We toast with upraised glasses all who are present and those who will never be with us again.  It is the final flourish on the year, good or bad as it might have been.

We tie on our bibs, fill our bowls with steaming sauce-covered seafood, pasta, bread and another plate of salad.  Grated romano cheese is sprinkled liberally.  Sleeves are rolled up and nutcrackers begin to crush the crab and open up pockets of tender sweet meat.  Prawns are hot and tender, savory with sugu the Sicilian-style hearty sauce that bears up well with rich red wine.  Simple, memorable, traditional now because of our family and Sicilian-American community's interest in keeping it so.

So for Lou and Sarah Bottaro and all others, we say "salute per tutti," (cheers for everyone).  Happy New Year.