In the United States and other countries around the world, a day is set aside to honor motherhood.  In the U.S. and many other nations, that day is the second Sunday in May.   Regardless of the precise date, Mother’s Day is a special day in our lives to recognize the women who bear the pain, nurture, guide and love their offspring selflessly their entire lives.

Not limited to humans, the strong bond and caring between mother and child can be observed throughout the animal kingdom.  In Roman Catholicism, the Virgin Mary is worshipped and adored as the spiritual Mother of all.

Growing up in a family of Italian heritage, my brothers and I considered our Mom special not just on Mother’s Day, but all year long.  She was always there for us when needed, toiling endless hours cooking and cleaning.  She took care of our family business while Dad was earning the money to put a roof over our heads and food on the table.  Despite her seemingly endless household chores, she still found time for Dad when he came home from a hard day at work.

She did all these things and more out of love of family and did them without complaint, calling it her duty.  Today, it would cost a King’s ransom, even without perks, to pay an employee who kept a home as tidily and lovingly as did my Mom.

When things got out of hand amongst us kids, she stepped in and solved the problem.  And, if you thought you could avoid punishment by being fleet of foot, forget it.  The average Italian Mom could nail you in the back of the head with her shoe at fifty paces.  Ask George W. Bush how difficult it is to avoid a shoe attack.  And, he saw them coming!  Call it tough love or any other politically correct term you choose, we soon learned the secret of getting along with our friends and relatives.

Yet, we always felt the protective shield of Mom in our lives.  Always watchful of her brood, Mom could transform herself from meek and mild-mannered to ferocious in an instant, should anyone or anything threaten her family.  And, when Mom wasn’t happy, nobody was happy.

The day I marched off to war, she tried to keep a stiff upper lip when we said goodbye, but she could not hide the tears in her eyes.  My future uncertain, I knew that I would be atop Mom’s prayer list.  They say, “A mother’s prayers go straight to heaven.” And, while I am certain that my Mom’s prayers helped keep me safe, I also think of another old adage, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

So as we celebrate Mother’s Day, I would like to take the liberty of including the entire writing staff of Write On New Jersey in wishing all mom’s of every time and place a “Happy Mother’s Day.”

In the 17^th century, King Louis XIV of France elevated the humble pea by ordering it to be placed, en masse, on the dishes served at the parties in his most elegant palace.   Tasty snow peas were being developed in Holland at about the same time Louis’ guests were rolling them around on their plates in Versailles. After the colonists arrived on the shores of America, peas were introduced to the “New World” and thus became a staple here.   Peas, as legumes, belong to the family of beans.

In the 19^th century, an enterprising monk and botanist, Gregor Mendel, played a pivotal role in the budding field of genetics by crossbreeding peas in his experiments.

A more modern experiment, in the 1970’s, crossed the common garden pea with the snow pea to result in a new product: the sugar snap pea.  To extend the edible life of the pea, most are canned or frozen; only 5% of the fruit is marketed fresh.  Today, the largest growers of fresh peas are the United States, Great Britain, China, Hungary, and India.

At the turn of the 20^th century, when America opened its doors to thousands of immigrants flocking in from Western Europe, those throngs included Italians. Their culture had a history of cultivating, drying, reconstituting, and eating legumes.  Along with their food and its preparation came the Italian culture.

Many Italians celebrate Spring by eating fresh peas at their peak.  Although this peak occurs in May, peas are in season from February until September.  As a boy, I would sometimes help my mother shuck fresh peas from their pods when she made a delicious vegetable soup with other assorted vegetables.

Many families of Italian immigrants grew up on pasta e fagioli (macaroni and beans, usually cannellini), lentils and peas, lentils and pasta, and pasta e piselli.  All of these dishes from “the old country” are meatless; all are very tasty and healthy.  And all go a long way in feeding a hungry family on a stretched-to-the-limit budget.  Peas have also been used as ravioli filling in place of the usual meat or ricotta cheese.  Pea ravioli are usually served with a rich pesto sauce.

One of the joys of growing up in an Italian family is to reminisce about the old days and our favorite dishes.  As I listened to these tales, I sometimes smiled and interjected, “Did you ever eat stuffed peas?”  With that, everyone around the table looked quizzical until one brave soul asked, “How do you stuff peas?”  With a wicked grin and a bad Italian accent, I would reply, “Upper U.S.,” thus giving my audience a little chuckle.

The little round legumes have finagled their way into our vernacular through sayings such as, “They are as close as two peas in a pod”.  The modest pea is also featured in nursery rhymes like “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in a pot, nine days old.  Some likes it hot and some likes it cold, and some likes it in the pot nine days old!”  Given American ingenuity, it was inevitable that we take William Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy and give it a little twist.  What school kid has not recited the immortal words, “To pea or not to pea?  That is the question!”

Peas have been also used as bait in catching fish and small animals. Armed with a wooden mallet and a can of peas, the hunter or fisherman spreads the peas on the water or the ground and waits patiently.  As soon as the beast comes in range, he hits it on the head.  Believe that one, and I have a Bugs Bunny cartoon to sell you!

As Bugs noshes his carrots (another veggie best left to another story), let us return to the pea’s main use in our society.  It is a wonderful legume in all of its varieties.  It brightens plates, provides nutrition in a pretty little package, and gives our grandkids something to play with at the dinner table, other than their sisters’ pigtails. In today’s fine Italian and Continental restaurants, one often finds the hearty peasant dishes, such as pasta e fagoli.  Like King Louis’ peas, the modern pea and its cousins in the legume family are now served to very discerning diners!

So, the next time you are faced with a plate of peas, either stuffed into ravioli or mounded on your dish with a pat of golden butter, you may feel vindicated in telling them, “You’ve come a long way, baby!” 

Christmas Eve in America is celebrated with pagan rites, Santa Clause, Reindeer, Tree trimming, and last minute shopping in preparation for the birthday of Jesus the Christ.

In Italy it is a Holy Day, celebrating the eve of the birth of Jesus.  It is called The Vigil (La Vigilia) and is celebrated as a feast day.  The Nativity is the heralding of the newborn King in Bethlehem, Judea and the story of Christmas.

In Italy, particularly Southern Italy, the celebration of La Vigilia is composed of an odd number of fish dishes, 7, 11, or 13.  For more than 1000 years during fasting periods amongst Roman Catholics, meat was forbidden, as it is for certain Lenten meals.  In place of meat, fish was substituted.  Thus, Christmas Eve represented a day of abstention from meat, and the feast of the fishes became tradition.

During the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, many Italians immigrated to America and, with them, they brought their old world customs.  The Feast of the Seven Fishes was one of them.  The number 7 represents The Seven Sacraments, 11 represents the 12 Apostles minus Judas, and 13 represents the 12 Apostles plus Jesus.  From these computations was derived the number of courses of the meal.

Over the years, the number of courses has diminished to the currently-accepted 7 fishes and pasta.  Among Italian-Americans, there is no uniformity in the way in which the meal is served and individual family traditions reign supreme.  Usually, however, the first course is Pasta with garlic and oil (Aglio Olio), which signifies the purity of the virgin birth, followed by shellfish, crustacean, squid, eel, octopus, small finfish, and large finfish.  The ritual of eating in this order signifies a progression in the nature and size of the fish consumed as one moves closer to God.

To those who live in proximity to New York City and find they would like to celebrate Christmas Eve Italian-style without all the preparation required, try visiting Mulberry Street.  Here, you can find many old world Italian restaurants that serve traditional Holiday meals.

Italian-Americans who follow this tradition relive and commemorate a time when Christmas Eve meant a gathering of one’s family – including grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins – to share the joy of the Eve of the birth of our Savior.

The Holiday Season, in the midst of which we find ourselves, is a time of giving, sharing, and reflection.  As we gather together to enjoy or endure (in whatever situation you may find yourself this year) the blessings of the season and conclusion of another calendar year, many of us will pause to remember Holidays past.  For me, what made those occasions special were not the gifts given or received (most of which I can barely recall) or the food and drink consumed, but the people with whom those times were shared.  If you were fortunate enough to have grown up within a close extended family, you have a sense for that about which I am speaking.  The offspring of members of two tightly-knit Italian-American families, I – of course – shared those joyous times with parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins!

And, during my childhood and adolescence, our family gatherings were not reserved simply for Holidays, but were a regular part of life.  Every Sunday was like a mini-Holiday!  For, on that particular day of the week, my mom, dad, brother, and I all traveled from our home in New Jersey for a day with our families in Philadelphia.  We began with dinner at the home of my paternal grandparents in the early afternoon.  Later in the day and evening, we joined my mom’s side of the family at her parents’ home.  Why and how that particular schedule was established, I do not know.  But, what I do know is that for the ten-plus years that I remember our Sunday pilgrimages to the City, the dinners and family gatherings were attended, with extremely rare exception, by each and every aunt, uncle, and cousin.  Regardless of what was happening in our individual lives and nuclear families, we all made it a priority to join with our extended family for that one day out of the week.

My father was one of three brothers and my mother one of five sisters.  And so, our Sunday dinner with my father’s family was usually shared among fifteen adults and children, and the evening gathering of my mom’s clan customarily totaled twenty-one.  As Americans of Italian heritage, we always viewed our families as being more loving and closer-knit than those of our non-Italian friends and neighbors.  And indeed, I, to this day, know of no other non-Italian-American families who were more in each other’s presence or whose lives were more closely intertwined than were those of my mother or my father.

Imagine experiencing Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter on a weekly basis!  That is what my childhood was like.  The incredible food was just a small part of the equation.  The truly amazing aspect of those days was the overwhelming sense of love and fulfillment that was enjoyed by all on those occasions.  Now, I do not mean to suggest that my mom’s and dad’s families did not have their share of disagreements and even animosities, as most people do.  But, in the presence of each other, those feelings faded away, as the snow melts on a mild spring day.  Harmony reestablished, we were liberated to enjoy the reverie, camaraderie, and peace that one can only experience in the presence of those whom he or she truly loves.

It occurs to me now that there was one other individual who, although unseen, must have attended our weekly gatherings.  If Heaven is the presence of God, then He must have been there among us.  And, if His presence can create harmony and joy among biological family members, then why not among all his children?

The day is fast approaching when all of us must come to the realization that our peace, harmony, and very survival are interwoven with those of our brothers and sisters inhabiting this planet.  Fuel, food, and clean air and water, in diminishing supply, are among the commodities that we must equitably share.  The root causes of hatred and violence must be illuminated and eradicated.  And, we must all learn to tolerate and even celebrate our cultural and religious differences.

Perhaps, as naive as it sounds, we should begin by acknowledging ourselves as members of the same family, relatives not by place of origin but by common Creator.  Then, perhaps, we may feel inspired to gather together and discover the enriching power of sharing a meal or companionship with our brothers and sisters of every race, culture, nationality, and religious persuasion.  In the presence of each other and our Heavenly Father, we will surely see our differences melt away and be left with a sense of peace and fulfillment, as well as a blueprint for resolving the difficult problems that we share.