Garden Spaghetti House
2 minutes

Garden Spaghetti House

- contributed by: Lucy Cortese

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September brings thoughts of my Italian parents as this is the month of their birthdays. They are gone now, but their memory lives on in lives they touched.

Sepia-colored images on the wrinkled photo
dissolve the faded smiles and blurred features of my parents
proud Italian immigrants standing in front of their new establishment
first-time restaurant owners

Garden Spaghetti House the sign above their heads in bold letters
euphemism bastardization of our family name
Garden literal translation for Giardino a word that stumbles and mumbles
from the lips of locals, i.e. yokels

Ya’ll talk funny, they often chide and I endure the mispronunciation of that
surname by my 4th grade teacher the entire school year

Foreigners in a foreign land divided by words and ways clothes and customs
Italian, not Eye-tal-yun? Spaghetti, not Pas-ketti? What the heck is a Pizza?
Would the real strange-speaking people please stand up!

Our family is a garden of bright, fragrant flowers variegated vegetation and a few blooming idiots hiding in a closet somewhere

My younger brother the wandering vine meanders around the planted rows
My big brother grows straight and strong rooted in old-country ways
My sister the rose that smells sweetest sprouts thorns when picked
My father the tough cactus prickly to touch moist and succulent inside

Self-appointed gardener my mother is gone
Who will tend Il Giardino our family garden now?
Who will plant fertilize and prune the errant leaves that grow awry?
Who will gather us to arrange a brilliant bouquet for the Thanksgiving feast?

Not I
I am the tenacious weed who sprouts and re-sprouts
wherever I find fertile soil
I am not my brothers’ or for that matter sister’s keeper

The plot is vacant
The ground is barren
The earth is dry
Nothing sprouts but memories
sepia-colored and mispronounced 

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