By Sal Guarino
Remembering Mom: Violet Di Cristo (1930-2020)
It was hardly past 5:30 in the evening on a winter night in Brooklyn. I was 6 years old. It was dark outside, and the house smelled amazing, as it always did that time of day, since my mom was cooking dinner, which we routinely ate at 6:00 on weeknights. I looked forward to eating dinner every day, and it always tasted like perfection. Ma would never make only one thing. Typically, there would be two courses, such as spaghetti marinara followed by chicken cutlets, pasta e fagiole, then fried eggplant, peas, and macaroni as the opener for gravy meat or escarole and beans as a prelude to meatloaf—Italian (with red gravy) or American (with ketchup), both were dizzyingly tasty.
As dinner drew near, however, my mother suddenly realized that a necessary component of the meal had been overlooked. We had run out of bread! In our house, bread was synonymous with eating, dinner, food, delicious, necessary, and wonderful. Simply put, bread’s presence was essential. That’s when my mom summoned me to save the integrity of dinner’s sacred ritual. She clearly and directly articulated my mission.
“Go to Pete’s and pick up some bread,” she said.
There was no need for mention of additional variables, such as how we needed the bread for dinner, or that dinner was at 6:00, or that it needed to be “Italian” bread. Those data points, which might be necessary for a 6-year-old in one of those “American” homes, were superfluous redundancies in our family. I eagerly embarked on my journey, one dollar in hand, happy hunger in my stomach, and a sense of unstated—yet unmistakably high—importance.
A block and a half and about three minutes later, I was at Pete’s buying Italian bread, warm from their oven, loosely wrapped in its familiar white paper with the heel of the loaf peeking out from the open end—the red, green, and black print denoting the brand, ingredients, and the price of thirty-five cents. While happy to save the day, I also felt a bit embarrassed transacting at the counter, because I was sure that Pete and Lucille, who ran the store, had realized Ma had run out of bread, which bordered on recklessness, if not sinful behavior, on her part.
I headed back down 14th Avenue a half a block and then readied to turn down 40th Street to deliver the requested loaf. The winter air was cold but refreshing. I held the bread tightly against my chest, as if it were a bag of hundred-dollar bills. The warmth of the bread, and its sweet, yeast smell, seemed to bind with my cells on a molecular level. Knowing I was on the return route of my mission induced a self-satisfied air of well-being. I was proud of my efforts, so I rewarded myself by breaking off a nice chunk—a part of the loaf for the walk home. My pace began to slow to a carbohydrate-induced stroll.
About 10 minutes later, right around 6:00, I entered our house, and before even removing my coat, I presented the loaf to my mom. Rather than looking pleased, as I had anticipated, she looked puzzled. She held the whittled-down piece of bread, which began its return trip from Pete’s as a full loaf minutes ago.
Curious, she asked, “What happened?”
Slightly confused but figuring she didn’t appreciate my taking liberties with how much I already ate, perhaps exceeding what was customarily tolerated when buying bread, I sheepishly replied, “I ate some.”
She broke into one of her famed bouts of laughter, laughing without sound for several seconds before gasping for breath like a baby having a good cry. Her curious gestures were immediately replaced by a look of understanding that could have served as a parental exemplar on how to convey the deepest empathy in seconds. She wasn’t upset that I ate as much as I did. After all, she understood that I was essentially powerless over that gustatory action. Rather, she was asking what had happened to the second loaf I was supposed to buy. She got such a kick out of how I didn’t realize that one loaf—well just over half of one loaf now—wouldn’t be enough for dinner, which made my liberal gnawing even funnier.
Truthfully, my mom’s approach to raising us was pretty tough overall, which was the norm in our culture at that time. But, on the occasions that really mattered, she displayed her wonderful and benevolent mastery at conveying a sense of acceptance, warmth, and forgiveness. That’s exactly what she did then, thanking me for going to Pete’s and not focusing on the one-and-a-half loaves that never made it home. When the seven of us ate a few minutes later, no mention of my bread blunder was made. This was a big relief for me, as my older siblings would have taken advantage of the ready-made opportunity to mock me, the “bambino” of the five kids. It was no problem for my mom to cover my oversight anyway. She sliced off the rough edge of the remaining piece and quickly produced some “back-up bread” from the freezer (not having such a reserve was unthinkable), which she heated up so fast that it seemed like she performed a feat of time travel. And, through the years, those were the kinds of timely improvisations Ma always conjured in defense of my emotional well-being, making lemons into lemonade (or my preferred twist—lemons into limoncello), especially when I needed her to.
Sal Guarino
Born in Brooklyn, NY, now settled in Centro with his Mexican wife, Sal brings a rich set of life experiences to the table. “SALudos de San Miguel!” shares his joy for living through a lens of gratitude and positivity here in San Miguel. Sal’s first book “SALutations!” was published in 2018. Contact: salguarino@gmail.com.
