Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I thought I hated my family. I remember one day, telling my mother that I hated my Uncle Louie. She smiled and said to me in her melodic, condescending manner, “Natalie, you don’t hate your Uncle. You hate his ways.”
“No,” I replied, “I hate him.” Funny enough, the defining moment of the apex of my enmity was when he refused to serve himself meatballs from a bowl not more than two feet from his plate. But I’m getting ahead of how we got to this particular Sunday afternoon dinner steeped in the traditions of even this second-generation Italian kid.
Most of my family, including Uncle Louie, have long since passed away. And it wasn’t until after this cast of surreal characters, to whom I served many meatballs, that I realized my mother had actually been right. I only hated my Uncle Louie’s ways and how those ways embodied the values inherent in a traditional, Italian family that conflicted with my sense of self. Ways that invariably lead to putting a woman in what should be her perceived place –in the kitchen. That really irked me.
But Uncle Louie and all the many other Uncles who made up my family – most of whom were not blood relations, were part of a history and culture that I didn’t know was commonplace amongst the stereotypes of Italian immigrants. It was not common in the other semi-attached houses along sixty forth street. But it was in my Uncle’s basement kitchen. He was part of the mafia and I was his niece.
