six impossible things before breakfast 141together in the routines of childhood. We’re hoping our kids will remem-
ber us somewhere other than in the driver’s seat of the car.
Later in the summer when this workshop and trip were behind us,
Steven’s mother came for a long visit. She served grandma duty on many
fronts, but seemed happiest in the kitchen. She told us stories I hadn’t
heard before, mostly about her mother, who at age fifteen was sent out
from her hardscrabble village in the mountains of Italy to seek her fortune
in America. In the dusty town of Denver she married a handsome Sicilian
vegetable farmer and raised five daughters with a good working knowl-
edge of gardening, pasta, and other fundamentals. She made ricotta rou-
tinely, to the end of her life.
Laura was her name, ultimately known as Nonnie, and I suppose she’d
have loved to see us on a summer Saturday making mozzarella together:
daughter, grandson, great- granddaughters, and me, all of us laughing,
stretching the golden rope as far as we could pull it. Three more genera-
tions answering hunger with the oldest art we know, and carrying on.