Americana Stories, The Food Court—Essay

Meatballs, by Amy Cook

Having angled off into our adult existences, it is not unusual for my siblings and I to be apart on Thanksgiving. The mornings of padding around in the oversized t-shirts, flipping back and forth, from the real version of the parade to the suspect one on CBS, are long retired. Jewish families like ours didn’t wait for Santa Claus to come gallivanting down Broadway; we waited for the smell of my mother’s Swedish meatballs to creep around the house. 

I must have been the first to stop coming for the holiday, being the oldest and first to pair off; my husband was not adamant about the every-other-year arrangement, but trading off holidays made us feel like a unit unto ourselves. Having divorced parents complicated things for me; when it was my side’s turn to see us, well, which side would that be? We found ourselves prioritizing convenience over fairness. That was especially true after the year we found ourselves with a broken-down car on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike, having to wait an hour in the cold for a tow.

There were tradeoffs in the choosing. I missed long weekends with my paternal grandmother, who is gone now, and with my cousins, who are all grown with in-laws to attend to themselves. In return, I got to see my nieces and nephews and became the auntie they turn to for the good gifts when their parents tell them no.

But I miss the meatballs.

“Jewish families like ours didn’t wait for Santa Claus
to come gallivanting down Broadway;
we waited for the smell of my mother’s Swedish meatballs”

My mother will be the first to say she’s not a chef. She’d serve us hockey puck-shaped meat for dinner; these were ostensibly “hamburgers” (never with cheese or bacon, though we didn’t keep kosher), burned beyond recognition as a source of sustenance. She did make an edible turkey tetrazzini; veal, too, which I devoured before I figured out what veal was. But we had a lot of takeout, fancy dinners out, and plenty of frozen meals; cooking was not my mother’s passion.

It was curious that the special meatballs never made an appearance outside of Thanksgiving. They are labor intensive, but the recipe made one hundred. Couldn’t we have frozen them, or eaten the leftovers the next night? Maybe they wouldn’t feel special. Maybe I wouldn’t hold them in such high esteem. 
~

I find it delicious that the vegetables are browned “in a little fat” and a conglomerate of condiments I would never consume on their own (mustard, catsup, vinegar) disappear seamlessly into a dish I willingly gorge. The meatballs bake into an almost crispy breadcrumb-like crust, the thick orange tang of the sauce unable to penetrate my mother’s will that we not consume undercooked meat. Never one to serve anything less than well done, I now order my red meat rare in revenge.

“It was curious that the special meatballs
never made an appearance outside of Thanksgiving.”

In November 2019, my sister gave birth to a little girl. Maddie arrived a full month early, in time, I joked, for “G-ma’s famous meatballs.” That year, I spent Thanksgiving Day with my husband’s relatives then took the Northeast Corridor to Washington, D.C., to see my father’s family for the long weekend. No meatballs that year. We were so grateful for the safe delivery of our precious niece. Nobody suspected that our way of living was about to change.
~

My husband and I live in Manhattan; for us, the early months of the pandemic were about day-to-day survival. Food wasn’t scarce, but it wasn’t easy to manage, either. I had butcher deliveries scheduled days in advance. We wiped down the groceries with Lysol and wore plastic gloves to pick up the takeout. Desperate for some source of comfort, I sent away for baked goods from a store near my childhood home. When they arrived, only a little stale, I thought of how lucky I was to have memories of food that made me feel anything at all.

The following October, my brother was married in a small, outdoor ceremony. It was the first time we’d seen our family in person in half a year; we nervously took off our masks for pictures, standing a few feet apart. When the topic of the holidays came around, it got quiet. We were not ones to skirt the rules. If the government said not to travel, we weren’t going to travel.

“What if,” my sister said, “—well, what if we all made the meatballs?”

That was how it began.

Later that week, Mom took a picture of the recipe, which was ripped from a notebook. I typed up what I could, including “bake for—”. I added “an unknown amount of time.” After a few phone calls, we got the details straightened out. 

In our separate cities, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and in Reston, Virginia, my siblings and I found a way to be together during the loneliest holiday. My version of the meatballs was far gooier than I’d thought they should be— maybe I doubled the sauce, or perhaps they really are supposed to be well done. In any case, I must have eaten thirty on my own before it was time to dig into the turkey that my husband and I made for two.

A few months later, I turned forty-one. From my sister, I received a large Pyrex baking dish.

Inscribed in the glass is the recipe for our mom’s meatballs. My siblings and I cook them more often now, not just on Thanksgiving. It still feels special; the long process is part of that. But I know that next time we gather, my mom will make her version, and we’ll all be kids again. Because as adults, we don’t cook ours well-done enough for her.

~~~