Nicholas and I only knew each other for about a week when I met Mom and Poppi–I taught by day and worked nights and weekends at Cafe Au Lait (next to Nicholas’ Target store), so taking off a Sunday to “meet the parents” was a welcome change of pace in lieu of making raspberry lattes and slicing over-priced cheesecake for a clientele that were often my high school students. (Insert humility lessons here.)  Poppi was grilling on the back deck, I went out to meet him, and it was as if we’d known each other forever. He hugged me straight off, started telling stories, and cracking jokes with that big belly laugh. My first memory was all love and laughter, and that couldn’t have been more perfect for me, considering I had moved to Atlanta a semester prior without knowing a soul.

He supported our wild 3-week engagement, kept the groomsmen in order right down to appropriate socks, and loved me as his own. He cooked up a storm every Sunday and there was no better place to be than next to him, stirring the red sauce, dicing garlic, and snitching the sauteed mushrooms for quality control.  The Rat Pack kept us musical company and we only turned it down long enough for Poppi to sit at the head of the table, bless the food and begin stories between bites.  Sundays were an event, and we were in no hurry to break up the dinner table party to clean up the kitchen. The priority was never the sauce-stained table cloth or scraping the meatball remnants from our plates. The priority was God, Family, Love, Food, Stories, and Laughter. In that order. Always.

Poppi is the reason I’m in the food industry now (story cataloged in other Pop blogs) and the reason that I could accept another job in the food industry as of yesterday. I would never have had the courage to even consider a change–but he taught me enough about confidence and cooking to be dangerous, and I took it from there.

Pop had a “weak heart,” the doctors always said, and 5 years ago that heart stopped beating; I like to think that he loved so hard his heart couldn’t keep up.

He was only in my life for 11 years, but that kind of BIG love will sustain me always–I feel him in every great sauce I make and this morning as I was picking 2″ basil leaves, I couldn’t help but think how excited he’d be that it’s growing like a weed in California soil and the homeless folks that terrorize my front flower bed haven’t touched it. I’m pretty sure he’s watching over it and probably spooks anyone who passes with his, “I got two words for you, and it ain’t Happy Birthday!”

But today, Happy Birthday is in order. I know he’s dancing to Sinatra while he sautes onions and San Marzano tomatoes, a rumpled towel over his left shoulder, and his seltzer close.  At some point, he’ll spill sauce from the taste-tester spoon and have a bright red splatter down the front of his white Hanes undershirt–“Italian war medals,” as he called them.

I often have dreams of him and when I started in the food industry, those dreams helped simmer my anxiety and night terrors, reminding me that I have a Heavenly Chef in my corner.  A couple weeks before we moved to California, I had a dream that Poppi and I were in a red sports car burning down Route 66–his laughter was so real and the air smelled like ocean salt and garlic.  Mom was staying with me in Atlanta still; I came downstairs to tell her and she said Poppi talked about a red sports car, and road-tripping the West Coast would have been so his thing. After that, I didn’t question the move anymore, as it felt like Pop’s nod of approval.

Happy Birthday, Poppi. Thank you for teaching us to cook slower, laugh louder, and love harder.