Spaghetti Al Dente in the Window

I would kill to look through that window again – to see my nonna and nonno waving back at us as our old red Honda Chevrolet pulled out from their driveway. To look back at their home, that to ten-year-old me stood as tall as the empire state building and as disheveled as the leaning tower. I feel shaken at the thought of a new family pulling down the discolored kitchen wallpaper, repointing the brick fence that outlined their vegetable garden, or replacing the gas stoves that boiled an inconceivable number of pasta dinners.

A sense of excitement would wash over me as we pulled up to their driveway every Sunday. A huge window – laced with aged floral drapes -- opened from the kitchen outward toward our parked car. Dinners played out like a Fellini film – boorish characters circled the table scarfing down course after course. Prosciutto draped over melon the like folded draperies in a Botticelli painting, pasta boiled furiously almost jumping out of the pot onto our plates – god forbid we say we’re full before Italian sausages coiled tight like a rare snake were tossed onto the barbeque. Something about dinner surrounded by my absurd, ill-mannered, and loud Italian family was the most comforting part of my week.

Here I was, a non-binary Canadian pre-teen growing up in the suburbs desperately trying to assimilate at every chance I could – surrounded by a family whose main goal was to stand out. My nonna’s big beehive hair, my nonno’s unkept style (now considered a fashion staple on any fashion blog might I add), my uncle’s villainous laugh, or my mom’s sharp looks when my siblings and I were fighting. At a dinner table surrounded by weirdos – how could I not embrace my own absurdness.

Dessert, espresso, and some time in front of their outdated mahogany television set was a customary post-meal activity. Sitting on their cowhide couches lined with plastic made it almost impossible to move without drawing attention to yourself. Everything about their home screamed for attention. At the time I hated their brocade drapes, their gold ornate light switches, their gaudy crystal chandeliers, but now I realize how much of an impact their misaligned sense of design has shaped me as a fashion designer. Nothing ever matched (you were lucky if you found two of the same glasses for their homemade wine), silver and gold furnishings mixed unapologetically, and paintings laid on tiled walls uneven and crooked. I really can’t explain how it felt – physically, always hot because of the number of family members stuffed into the small kitchen alongside the blazing oven – but emotionally, it was comforting. As if everything disjointedly worked together in harmony – like their oven that simply would not seal properly. Heat managed to escape from its cracks, wafting the smell of fresh focaccia or lasagna straight through their home to us as if the entrees were on a plate right before our noses. Despite being a broken oven, their food was always perfect.

Food is what bonded us – and once consumed it was time to leave. Slumping down the driveway, past the ingrown weeds, rusted garage gate, and overflowing recycling bins and into the backseat of my mom’s car. Pulling away seemed to take ages –juggling to go platters for the coming week, and endless kisses and hugs. The strangest and most magical part of the night was waving goodbye to my grandparents as we pulled away. If we were lucky, we’d get blown a kiss from nonna, or flashed a funny face from nonno (he was infamous for pushing out his bottom dentures beyond his chin and going cross-eyed). It seemed as though they peered through that larger-than-life bay window for ages – maybe even forever. Waiting for us to return for another meal – standing in the exact spot we left them. As we pulled up week after week, feelings of comfort return, tastes buds exploded with flavor, wine glasses were split, and to go containers were packed to their max. It was all beautiful and magical – until it wasn’t anymore.

Growing up can distort your view of the past. I do fondly remember loving visiting my grandparents’ home – but I also remember resenting it. My strange family only reinforced what I was running from – I was not like everyone else. I fit in a little too well amongst these misfits. How I wished to learn how to embrace my creative strangeness earlier instead of hiding my over-the-top lunches from other kids at school (eating Nutella in front of first graders before it was a popular treat felt like a death sentence – “how could his mother let him eat chocolate for lunch”?), avoiding questions about my family, and shying away from anything that made me stand out more than I already did. How I wished I knew one day it would be my last day peering through their window as they waved goodbye.

2016 my nonno passed away from lung cancer – it was the first time the house felt quiet. We would still visit my nonna for Sunday dinners, but she couldn’t cook for all of us at once – it was too much work. Disjointed decoration turned to decay – cracked tiles, dying plants, and chipped dishes. No more lasagna, no more focaccia, no more scolding summer days with the added heat from the oven. My nonna still waved through that window though – but below her now deflated beehive hairdo – a decaying mind from dementia.

I was away at university when they sold the house – a nice family with young children gets to start a new life there my mom said. I never knew I would never look through that window again. The window that meant so much to me growing up – somebody else was looking through it now while my nonna sits looking through a different window in her care home barely able to piece together the faces that walk towards her in her fleeting memory.

Memories are all I have. A few photos, a few videos (albeit nothing can be heard over the clattering of multiple loud conversations), a few letters – but my memories always come alive with full sound, full disjointed colour, and full emotion. My fashion project serves as an attempt to encapsulate these memories in my present context. I’m living abroad in London – trying to piece together in my mind the flavors from their kitchen, the punchlines from their jokes, the scent notes from their perfumes. My mind always goes back to their entrance window – the hello and the goodbye of their home. Its perfect framing of the kitchen table from its outside view, and its beautifully draped floral curtains, clumsily pulled back as if we were entering the most absurd theatre in the world. I would kill to look through that window again, to see my past staring back at me, blowing a kiss – making a funny face.