Ma’s Broccoli Sandwiches
In 1954 we left Gloversville, NY. None of us kids
understood why we were leaving our grandmas,
grandpas, aunts, cousins for Dad’s new job
for New Haven, Connecticut, Manager
for Sears Roebuck’s New England Territory.
He was on the road all week. Mom with three kids
under six, one a babe in arms, in charge
of the home front, never away
from her six sisters and mother. I often wondered
how she’d manage it all alone? So began
our tradition
Christmas, Easter, the 4th of July
our family piled into Dad’s new Buick
for the long ride up-state. Our homecomings!
Mom prepared a sandwich sack. Before
we hit the end of our street we clamored for her
broccoli sandwiches.
Hours later,
first stop off the New York State Thruway,
Amsterdam, my Ma’s childhood home
Her Ma’s back porch looked out on the wide
gravel bed of tracks, trains speeding
from Boston to Chicago and back, screeching,
squealing, horns blasting.
In the kitchen we, too, learned to shout
to be heard
a habit the women who grew up here never lost.
We three kids still call up the aromas
when we would arrive and open grandma’s door-
memories of winter cold, our cheeks and nose red-
her stove always cooking a pot of sauce. Her smile
wide, her greeting still the music of her village,
Pisciotta,
abandoned forty-five years earlier,
but never her native tongue.
Ma’s broccoli sandwiches
were born in this kitchen
A pot of fresh spears of broccoli steamed until
soft bright green, cooled, dressed, tossed in
drizzled Italian virgin olive oil, fresh squeezed
lemon, sprinkled salt. A gifted serrated bread knife
cut the large loaf of fresh, crusty, Italian bread,
each side thinly buttered, seamstress-sliced, spear
after spear after spear lay on lightly buttered bed.
Generous pulls
from the wax paper roll got cut and uniformly
measured by eye. Before placing the broccoli
sandwich in the middle she took her knife and
sliced the irregular oblong in half slipping
the knife under and sweeping the separated parts
as one onto
center of wax paper. My memory, her fine,
fingers-fluttering-folding a secure wax paper
envelope. There were always ten. With my Ma
no one worried about going hungry for love.
Mary DeRocco is a second generation Southern Italian-American born in Gloversville, New York. Her father’s parents are from Canicatti, Sicilia; her mother’s family is from Pisciotta, Campagna. These ancestors settled in upstate New York mill towns for the work, joining old world neighbors.
Mary is a licensed family therapist, poet, and writing a fictional memoir born of a dream. Mary moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1986. Transitioning out of her business, she refired a passion facilitating Women’s Radical Aging Groups.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 