From Scratch: A Memoir Of Love, Sicily, And Finding Home Quotes
"The reward of jet lag is a new set of coordinates, a new language, and local delicacies."
"Italy was just a quick adventure, a time apart from time. A perfect interlude."
"The energetic pulse of the evening took over me, and I vowed then and there to welcome the unexpected."
"I knew enough to decline the coke. I never did ask to see the Picasso."
"This new me would embrace every part of the adventure."
"I already liked the feel of this new country on my skin, its language taking root in my mouth."
"I wanted to crawl into the bed with him, to feel his skin next to mine."
"I promised him a road trip to the Grand Canyon and another up the Alaskan coast."
"I felt the shiny sting of betrayal. Morphine. He hated drugs."
"I knew he wanted to stay clear and unburdened by the fog of sedatives for as long as he could."
"His skin was warm, I could still smell his signature earthy mix of salt and spice."
"I am sorry I made you wait. I fell asleep. But I am here now. I am here."
"He had left this world characteristically tenacious in his love."
"The air was pregnant with an energetic pulse."
"I was breathing in new air, air in which he was gone."
"I turned on the gas and lit a tiny flame in all that darkness."
"I hadn’t yet told her I’d be bringing some of his ashes to Italy, a final promise I had made him."
"I could only tell her what I knew. That his ashes would be ready in ten days for pickup or delivery and that there would be no funeral but rather a memorial service a week later."
"My eyes fell on words in the second sentence, Saro’s own words about his origins."
"An invisible trapdoor opened up beneath me, and I felt a part of me fall in as I handed the paper back to Aubrey."
"The thought of a lifetime of this hung at the back of my mind, a different kind of loss not easily explained to anyone who had never been loved by a chef."
"Cooking is about surrender. He had always demonstrated that."
"But I knew he welcomed the idea of moving to America."
"They were prepared for mourning. They had done this before, many times."
"It felt impossible to bear. Yet I pushed forward in the name of love."
"This was about the baby. I hopped off the Reformer and raced to the door to meet him."
"The beauty of adoption is that dads get to hold and feed the baby equally."
"We acknowledged that this was a difficult decision for her to make."
"Race didn’t matter. Combinations of races didn’t matter."
"The only thing that mattered was that we asked not to be shown to birth mothers known to carry twins."
"I knew we could handle a lot, but I knew we couldn’t handle two kids at once."
"Motherhood made me into someone I was meant to become."
"With motherhood had come the blinding reminder that I couldn’t fly from the anguish of what it means to be human."
"I’ll do anything to make sure you are okay in the world."
"What mother hasn’t disappointed, wounded, or made their love conditional?"
"They reminded me that a thing can be tender or hard, depending on conditions and care, intended or otherwise."
"There is nothing worse than a bitter almond."
"I have stacked fifty-two Wednesdays on top of one another, at the base of which was that Wednesday morning that had changed everything."
"In cheese making, the curing comes from the earth element salt. It requires pressure and the addition of time."
"The pleasure is all mine," he said. His Italian was tentative and spoken with a wonderful accent that I couldn’t place.
"Do your best and keep your heart open. Show up in the face of the unknown."
"Za Croce must be happy." "How can I help you?"
"In my dreams, I will tell Babbo how absolutely beautiful and spectacular you are. You are the pearl of his beloved sea."
"The world had closed ranks here. Our countries of origin and economics aside, we were all part of a seaside tableau."
"Talking about her dad and making her smile at the same time was rare in our new life."
"I wanted to journey to beyond where my eye can see and greet the self who carried me forward to get there."
"He had the mark of a strawberry where his hairline gave way to his forehead. Com’era bello. L’ho baciato ogni giorno."
"The greatest joy is knowing that in the dead of winter, you can open a bottle and make a pasta that tastes like the height of summer."
"I was prepared to sit and listen to Nonna bear witness."
"I will use the love of this place to fortify me. It is my stone inheritance, the gift of Saro’s life."
"Being near Nonna had done that for me; every dish she made would be a culinary afterimage."
"It was collaborative, practical, healing in the sense of the continuity it provided."
"In Sicily, fault is relative. Facts are always subject to how you see the events of the world."
"That land was a place as real and alive to me as my skin."
"I wanted to be reminded of the bounty of life. I ached with desire, the possibility exhilarated me."
"You have to want to know first, before you can take a journey."
"This is how we found this world, and this is how we will leave it."
"The waves of grief still came; I just had a better sense of how to ride them out."
"I had seen a calm Sunday breakfast of tea and fresh-baked croissants erupt into chaos."
"I wanted to know what my hands would look like at eighty-five."
"I realized I hadn’t called my parents to tell them the news."
"The scent of pine, and the winding red clay roads were in my blood."
"I realized that I was on the road that Sicilians say makes a person seem like un’anima persa—a lost soul."
"I was the kind of child I imagined might become a woman who was not afraid to face life’s heat and fire and still stir the pot."
"Sicily was the water and sun that fortified me to stand stronger in my life after loss."
"Without water, all relations remain small. They can’t open, and eventually they die."
"Her food spoke of malleability and resourcefulness in loss, in love, and in life."
"I had dared to read something else into her words."
"I was ready to do my best ‘to live to be a hundred years old.’"
"I was translating furiously as I twisted my fork around strands of pasta delicately coated with a sauce as unpretentious as the woman who served it."
"Translation is the other side of a tapestry."
"Being with [someone] had been like weaving a beautiful, complicated tapestry."
"We are all the children of God, just look at our hands."
"One is short, one is long, one is crooked. They each do different things. But we are all part of the same family."
"Being here, I understand my son-in-law in a whole new way. But I really understand my daughter more than ever."
"Magic hour, the moment when the diffused rays of the sun make everything more beautiful."
"Coincidence and fate are two words for the same phenomenon."
"The wound of loss had become a scar of love."
"I closed my eyes, held [someone's] hand, and asked, 'Anu—Ana—Grace' to follow me—one mother, one widow, one traveler, wherever I would go next."