I still mother them….

Every year, usually Mother’s Day weekend, we have what we lovingly call Dead Moms Dinner. I know, the name makes people laugh a little and look at me sideways the first time they hear it, but if you have lost somebody big, you understand that grief has a strange sense of humor sometimes. Somehow laughter and heartbreak end up sitting at the same table.

This little tradition has been going strong for years now and truthfully, it has become one of my favorite nights of the year.

For those who do not know, the idea is simple. The girls each bring recipes from their moms or grandmoms and recreate them. For the three of us, our moms have all passed away, and somewhere along the way this became our way of bringing them back into the room for a little while. We sit around the table and tell stories we have told a hundred times, laugh about things only we would understand, remember things we had forgotten, and every year somebody says something that makes us laugh until we cry.

We usually do it Mother’s Day weekend, but life got busy this year and we pushed it back a little. Honestly, I think our moms would have understood because life has a way of lifing.

This year I added strawberry pretzel salad because it was Gab’s favorite. It felt important to have her there too. Grief changes over time, but if there is one thing I have learned, it is that we find ways to bring the people we love into the room. Sometimes it is a picture. Sometimes it is a story. Sometimes it is food.

And speaking of food, this dinner is never fancy food. It is memory food.

Nicole made stuffed mushrooms, and if you grew up in an Italian family or around holiday tables, you already know those are not just mushrooms. They are the mushrooms. The kind that instantly takes you somewhere.

Leslie made English muffin pizzas and listen… if that does not transport you straight back to being a kid, I honestly do not know what does. One bite and suddenly you are back in somebody’s kitchen in the 80s or 90s, probably standing too close to the oven waiting for the cheese to melt.

I know without a doubt my mom and my Mom Mom Ginocchio would absolutely love this tradition because they taught me from the time I was little that food is a love language.

And if you knew my family, you knew that food was never just food.

Food meant love.

Food meant comfort.

Food meant family.

Food meant, “Come sit down and tell me what is wrong.”

Food meant holidays, loud kitchens, too many people squeezed around a table, and somebody always trying to send you home with leftovers whether you wanted them or not.

Some of the absolute best memories of my childhood happened in my Mom Mom Ginocchio’s kitchen.

If I close my eyes, I can still see her there. I can still picture her cooking, moving around that kitchen like she had done it a million times because she had. I can still remember the smells coming out of that house before you even got through the door.

Watching her cook and then sitting down afterward to eat whatever incredible thing she had made are some of the best memories of my childhood.

Those memories feel safe to me.

Loved on a whole different level.

And her fudge with nuts? To this day, still my favorite.

I can still picture her doing the candy test. No recipe card. No thermometer. Just somehow knowing when it was right.

And the thing about food is it transports you.

One smell.

One taste.

And suddenly I am little again. Back in her kitchen. Safe. Loved. Protected in a way only grandmothers seem to know how to do.

This year I made a recipe from my Nonna Ginocchio that I had never made before, and if I do say so myself, it was spectacular. It was a twist on spaghetti and clams with black olives, green olives, artichoke hearts, lemon, olive oil, and garlic sauce, and honestly it tasted like family.

But maybe my favorite part this year was getting to share all of it with my grandson Adriano.

He helped set the table. He helped make every single component of the meal, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized he gets it.

He understands that food really is a love language.

He understands that feeding people is loving people.

And I can already see that he is going to carry this into the next generation, and I cannot even explain how much that makes my heart happy.

Because at the end of the day, grief is hard. Missing people is hard. But traditions like this remind me that love really does outlive loss.

Sometimes it looks like stories.

Sometimes it looks like laughter.

And sometimes it looks like stuffed mushrooms, English muffin pizzas, strawberry pretzel salad, and family recipes shared around a table with the people you love.

Until next year, moms ❤️