How to Mourn for Something That Was Never Yours

By Claire Giannosa

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This recipe/poem explores my longing to establish a connection to my familial ancestry through my grandmother’s delicious cookie recipe. I reveal what I know, what I don’t, and the murky truth in between.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes (plus a few years to simmer)
Serves: 1 family (lost or found)

Ingredients:
    -  A spoon
    -  Crushed anise
    -  Flour
    -  Pecans
    -  A fuzzy memory

     1. Fix mistakes 

A spoon is not the right tool for this.
The anise seeds slip out under the curved metal, clanging like a beaded chain on the sides of the 
cup they’re trapped in. 
My shoulder blades ache as I bend over the cup, 
smashing the spoon down with increased vigor. 
The recipe calls for crushed anise. 
We only have seeds.

Note: Prepare yourself accordingly. 

     2. Simmer

I peer into the window of the oven.
My nose slightly stinging from 
the sweet aroma of the anise, 
the crumbliness of the flour, 
the crisp brown edges, 
the nutty pecans, 
the addicting buttery aftertaste. 
The perfect blend of thick and soft. 
I watch, carefully, as the blend of ingredients rises to form something new.

     3. Wade in the past

My grandma’s cookies are the only thing of hers I have left.
If she left behind Italian heirlooms, I am unaware of them. 
If she told me stories in a thick accent as a baby, I cannot remember them. 
Her laughter is captured on video,
Her handwriting immortalized within the recipe card
held inside crinkling plastic
yellowing at the edges
slick with baking grease 
and dusted lightly with flour. 

     4. Try to remember 

My dad tells stories of his family in snippets. 
Photographs.
Laughs that fade into tense silence. 
Italian is a word that doesn’t belong to me. Never belonged to my father either, 
shut out from the language
scratched out of the immigration papers
change the name
change the story
Maria Mary (easier on the tongue).
I sit here and watch these biscottis cookies
and wonder
if my grandma remembered 
Sicily
Palermo
Salvato (all the letters that made up her existence)
and 
the churning waters of the Atlantic that carried her all the way to a little house in Detroit with seven children she didn’t know how to handle—
or if her memory was as fuzzy as mine.
The way my dad tells it, 
my grandma is framed in an ocean of contradictions:
Saint, Villain, Lover, Monster

     5. Regret

I do not know how I am supposed to think
how I am supposed to feel.
I eat
and think about 
The way I stood immobile at the funeral—
Tears soaking pressed cotton suits, 
An ocean of memories tucked into a wooden box, 
A seed. 
Unsure if I am allowed to mourn for something I never had. 

Process

From the start, I knew I wanted to write about my Italian family, but I didn’t know what direction to take. One of the strongest connections I have to my family is my grandma’s pecan cookie recipe I make every Christmas. This sparked the idea of turning my messy thoughts into a recipe—to bridge the tangible and the speculative. I especially wanted to highlight my desire to have a connection with my family, but the inability for me to do so. I never had a relationship with my grandma as she died before I was born, but I hope this piece of writing demonstrates how we may be more similar than I ever believed.

Visit Claire’s WIX page: Seeds of History