Love in a Cookie

In a typical year, I travel back to Beantown only in the summer, but this year, with my parents’ 50^th anniversary in May and my cousin’s wedding in August, I was high above the fly over states for more than my usual schedule. Tomorrow, I once again get on board a United jet bound for the east coast.  Yet, although the occasion is a sad one, really, the bidding goodbye to my grandmother’s sister – the family’s great Aunt Lil – is really a celebration of a life that has touched so many.

For as long as I can remember, my aunt has been there. When I was just eight years old, after my grandmother succumbed to ovarian cancer, it was clear that Lil was not going to be her replacement. But she was something even more special – she held the family together in so many ways and for so many years to come. She had fought and won her own battles, lifesaving operations, the loss of her beloved husband, illness, and more. Yet, if she were afraid, she never once showed it. Perhaps that’s where I get my confidence from – it’s hard to tell. But in all of her 95 years, Aunt Lil was the rock of this Italian brood I call my family.

When I moved away – I knew how much I’d miss her and with every visit, hers was the first house I stopped in on the way back from the airport. When all I wanted was a simple breakfast and time to visit, she produced a buffet of culinary overload. And, how privileged I was when one year, I brought my San Francisco friends to her house to experience her hospitality and unique way of loving.

She asked nothing of us –and all that it took to make Diamond Lil happy was a handful of scratch tickets. How she’d squeal like a little girl opening her first doll on Christmas Morning when there was just a hint of a winner revealed. But don’t try to fool her – she knew those tickets like nobody’s business – the second an 11 appeared, she knew the ticket was a loser. And she would curse the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission for being so cheap. The day she won $50 on a ticket I gave her was pretty special, and of course, she took me out to lunch, which was even better.

For her 80^th birthday, we all gave her a bouquet of roses with scratch tickets on every flower. There were chances from all corners of the state, Provincetown, Boston, The North Shore – and not a jackpot winner in the bunch. But it was the thrill of the game she loved. Vegas in the 50’s was where she and her husband played, Judy Garland sitting on the edge of the stage was  one of their entertainers, Broadway with all the greats, including Hello, Dolly with Carol Channing – the stories of her travels made me envious.

Her love was in everything she did. In her cooking, in the time spent with family, in her never failing to remember any occasion with a card and “$25 to have coffee and a bagel on me.” The fact that she was the reason my parents met has never been lost on me. This year, to have her sitting in her living room, presiding over their 50^th vow renewal like the queen that she was – was the most precious gift my parents could have received that day.

Her cookies were coast-to-coast famous, and over the years, she shipped tins and tins of them to me every year for my holiday parties. She guarded her recipes tightly and only recently as the reality of her age set in, did she relinquish them to me. The day she mailed me her pizzelle maker was bitter sweet – I realized that she was now too weak to make her famous Italian cookies and the sadness disappeared when I felt so privileged that she had given me the machine. When I returned to Boston this summer to visit her, I took her bags of the cookies I’d made. She nibbled on them and deemed them worthy. It was a very special day for me.

She very rarely spoke of the “old days,” of her Italian immigrant parents and the hardships they faced. Instead she was all about living for the day. During her marriage, her husband spoiled her so much that it set the precedence for years to come. But, really, how could we compete with the man who brought such things into her life, including the puppy of the original Rin Tin Tin? When he passed away in 1973, the light went out from her eyes – but she ventured on – greeting each new generation of our family with the same outrageous behavior she’d been showing for years.

This was a woman who never wanted for anything and who remained living alone until she turned 94. How many in this world can say that? But, I knew that when she lost her ability to bake, that her time with us would be winding down. So when I got that pizzelle maker last year, I put as much love in every cookie as she had done so many times before. 

And if you don’t think you can convey that in a cookie, then, like my Aunt Lil always said, “You can go shit in your hat.”