I stare at the row of jars filled with my parents' homemade tomato sauce. Every time I wonder: Should I really use one? I have been saving these jars like precious treasures. No matter how hard I try to find something instead, nothing compares. Store-bought sauces? It just doesn't taste right. It doesn't taste like home.
During the tomato season all my family were a lot busier than usual. My parents would use the basement as an area for letting the tomatoes they had collected locally ripen. Like the other Italian families in the area, we would then take them to the garage when they were ripe enough. There they were cleaned and boiled. Once stewed, whole tomatoes were passed through my father's homemade machine used to separate the sauce from the skins. Jars at the ready, we filled them with sauce and seasoning. They would then be lined up and ready to use.
My parents would make more than just sauce every fall. I loved it when they would season all the pork sausage. We would fry the meat, tasting it before making the separate sausages. My parents expertly hand-tied the sausages while I would poke (戳) them all over. These were my family's traditions.
These traditions were hard to maintain when my father got ill. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2019, he spent most of his time in hospital. In September that year he came home, on the same weekend we decided to continue the tradition. I have glorious memories of that day as they once again made the sauce. It was a beautiful but short-lived moment. My father died soon after.
Every time I go to reach for one of the jars, something stops me. My mother, ever practical, was visiting us recently and just stared at them. "You should use these or they will go to waste."
What will it feel like to use that last jar? It would mean the end of an era. Who knows? Maybe it's time to bring new traditions to life.
