Dante, a presto.

(Dante, soon.)

I remember the first time I heard the word gonads, said by my grandfather in a "you should kick him in the gonads next time" sort of way. I don't remember who the "him" was, but once my grandfather suggested it, all I wanted to do was find whoever it was and kick him in the gonads. My grandfather was a prince of a man, a true Italian gentleman and the only person I knew who could walk with a trick leg. I remember eating a lot of Italian food and discussing secret family recipes, kept faithfully between Dante and Tony. My grandfather called me Tony, which came from his favorite joke about Italians being named Tony because they wrote To NY on their hats when they left the homeland of tomatoes and garlic. In a family that hands out nicknames as often as birthday presents, I cherished the only one that ever really stuck with me.

My great grandmother, who we all knew as Jenny Balls and not by her real name of Nancy, lamented one day like we were in the Old Testament. She wailed, cried tears of sorrow and meatballs, and then went back to her families' home outside of Pittsburgh where she deteriorated slowly. "She has tried to copy the sauce, but it simply cannot be done," her daughter Red (legally Nancy) would tell us, desperately, over the phone. "She just hasn't been the same since he died."

As if part of an elaborate magic trick, Jenny Balls just disappeared one day, and I often think of her reunion with her son and how good it must have smelled. I also often think of what they have seen but have missed being a physical part of, like my sisters' weddings, the births of my nephews, my college graduation. I imagine him smiling when I fed a bowl of pasta to my nephew the other day, and I imagine her laughing sweetly each time we continually and purposefully botch the pronunciation of ricotta cheese. We wash the walls, we say the prayers, we look to the sky, hoping to see them in thin air, knowing they are too busy assisting with heavenly feasts.

But in the meantime, we will get by, one bowl of pasta at a time.