It's All in the Sauce

As a child, I would spend my summers with my grandmother in her little kitchen on the south side of Chicago. My grandmother was a first generation Italian-American. I credit her with giving me the simple things that make life worthwhile. The sparkle in her brown eyes and the kindness in everything she did resonate with me today. She died the day after my twins were born. But I will never forget the last time I stood in her kitchen and learned how to make Sunday Gravy.

Meat sauce. Spaghetti sauce. Whatever you want to call it. It was a rite of passage. A simple family tradition that tethers me to my roots and is a mainstay in my cooking repertoire.

I’m having surgery on Monday. I won’t go into specifics, but when it’s over I won’t be able to have babies anymore.

The idea comes as no shock. I’ll be 42 next Sunday and I pretty much hung my hat on reproducing any more young’uns around my 40th birthday. If I need to smell or hold a baby, I can pick up my granddaughter from day care and get it out of my system.

So why am I so melancholy? Why does losing the physical ability to bear children send me into mourning when I decided years ago that I did not want any more kids?

I remember quite vividly how in love I was with each one of my children the moment I found out they were setting up shop in my belly. When they were born, instincts and emotions I didn’t know I had came out with them. I learned what every cry meant—I knew theirs smells, their expressions, every detail of their faces. The meaning of life rests in the unconditional love I have for each of my kids.

But I hold no illusions. I remember the tired in my bones. Pacing the floor in the middle of the night, holding my son and waiting for the medicine to put down the pain from another ear infection. Sleeping with one eye open next to a three-year-old kickboxer with the face of an angel. And days where I didn’t have a moment’s peace because I was too busy trying to control the chaos.

I’m still bone tired. But the root of my exhaustion has shifted from the physical drain of raising babies and toddlers to the mental and emotional cluster-fuck of adolescence. Things are way more complicated now.

I’m developing relationships with my children on a more cerebral level. As I navigate the waters of raising young adults, I am inadvertently carving out my place in their lives as they begin to live outside my boundaries. One wrong move, and I’m the root of every hang-up and the topic of discussion in therapy sessions.

And I find myself yearning for the years when they were babies.

And maybe that’s where the sadness comes in. After Monday, I will have lost the chance to bring a fresh one into the world—and have a do-over. But in that sadness I have also found another rite of passage.

My reproductive years will soon be over. And so I stood at my stove today and made Sunday gravy. While I have passed the baton of bringing fresh ones into the world, life goes on for me—in me and through the lives of my children.

It’s in the patience of simmering relationships. It’s in the belief that keeping things simple brings out the best in all of us. Passing on what I know and keeping my heart open to the things my children can teach me makes me a woman. Not whatever parts nature has decided are no longer relevant.

I think that is what my grandmother was trying to teach me. It’s all in the sauce.

Sunday Gravy

2 T. extra virgin olive oil

1 lb. ground Italian sausage

Course ground black pepper

2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced

2 to 3 T. fresh rosemary, chopped fine

2-28 oz. cans fire roasted crushed tomatoes

1/4 c. red wine (optional)

1-inch Parmesan cheese wedge

1 tsp. cinnamon

Warm olive oil in a large sauce pan and add Italian sausage. Liberally pepper Italian sausage and cook until no longer pink. Add garlic and rosemary and cook until fragrant (about 30 to 60 seconds). Add tomatoes, red wine, Parmesan cheese and cinnamon. Simmer on lowest heat at least 30 minutes or up to three hours. Remove Parmesan cheese wedge and serve over warm pasta or rice with freshly grated Parmesan.