You know, this blog has been hard to keep up. I am not getting a lot of new material. The time I’ve spent in person with my husband’s family amounts to four trips. (We’ve been to Italy twice and they’ve come to the U.S. twice.) Sure, we Skype about once a week, but it’s just not being in a room together. And Skype sessions don’t teach me so much about my Roma family as they do about the weather in Italy, etcetera, etcetera. 

I can think of some stories that have yet to be told (our Roma wedding celebration, for example) but it’s hard to delve into my memory of things that happened over two years ago and to get inspired enough to write about it in a way that’s worthwhile. 

One day they all might move here, I imagine, and then I’m sure I will have weekly if not daily interactions with them which will give me all kinds of material with which to educate others on my Roma family, or maybe just motivation to vent. 

The idea thrills and scares me at the same time. You see, I’m a bit of an introvert and sometimes feel more comfortable with books than with people. But I crave that feeling of family togetherness and community. My in-laws are really good at creating it. It’s the satisfaction you feel when every seat is filled. “We are all—all here,” was the conclusion to a poem my mom had copied in her pretty calligraphy handwriting and hung on the wall of family portraits. “We are all—all here,” I wish I could say. 

Longing for togetherness is a resounding theme in the conversation of my parents in law. They talk about the old days in Pristina, when cousins, friends, and neighbors were all the same and had been for generations. Before a war came, before the kids grew up. Before they lived in different countries, speaking different languages, eating different food, practicing new religions. 

The splitting up and spreading apart isn’t some archetype. I think it’s unique to our age. I don’t think we humans are made to live this way, seeing more of our families on facebook than in person. I wish we lived together in a village, the baker and the butcher and the librarian, with only cobblestone streets and whitewashed stucco walls to separate us. 

But anyway, I’m grateful, because although our family is distant, I’m finding a wonderful feeling of community with the new friends and neighbors we’ve acquired since buying a house. I’m grateful that I live within driving distance of many relatives and I’m grateful for the time I get to spend with them. I’m grateful that I know that wherever our paths may take us in mortality, my family (my parents and siblings and my husband’s parents and siblings and our future children and all the parents that came before us and all the kids that will come after) have yet to experience an even more sublime sense of togetherness which will be ours in what comes next, which is eternity.

I’ve been left out of an important bonding ritual among married women—the one where they complain to each other about their husbands’ tolerance for dirt, dust, and clutter. In fact, when any kind of mess or disorder lingers for more than half an hour, my husband gets so agitated that he will either clean it up, or start making comments that make him sound like the housewife. 

I’ve never once found the toilet seat up or the toilet paper roll needing to be replaced. I’ve only very rarely had to ask him to do the dishes. We actually argue over who gets to vacuum. 

I’m blessed, I’m lucky, I know. This rare male specimen of domestic fastidiousness is a product of the deep-seated values in the culture he came from. 

You might think of Roma as barefoot, as dirty. Not the ones I know. I’ve never seen a house cleaner than my MIL’s house. Clothes so perfectly laundered, ironed, and folded. Some maybe 20 years old, but looking brand-new. Cupboards so organized. A bathroom floor clean enough to eat off of. 

“They say that leaving dirty dishes in the sink will invite bad spirits to linger in the morning,” my sister in law told me one time, referring to a Roma family she had known.  (That one is true: I know from experience.) My Gypsy man always breaths a sigh of relief after Saturday chores, saying how nice it is to feel the peace of a clean home. My Roma family frequently use the phrase "unblessed" as in, "It's unblessed to leave the house unclean." This connection between cleanliness and spirituality is significant. It’s more than cleanliness—it’s respect for everything they own or use. It’s respect for themselves and for others. It’s a way of thinking. Clean hands and a pure heart.

If your foot itches, you will soon travel.

If your hand itches, you will soon come into some money.

(You suddenly don't mind an itch so much, do you?)

While I’ve flirted with vegetarianism and have a penchant for vegan recipes, meat is so culturally important to my husband (and well, gastronomically important to him too, of course), that I don’t think we’ll ever abandon it. When I start getting too carried away with lentils, for example, he will predictably start complaining, “When was the last time I ate meat?” and “We need to eat more REAL food.”

After last week’s meatless meal plan elicited some of those comments, I decided to make him happy this week with one his mom’s classics: goulash. 

This was likely one of the meals she made for us in the first few days I went to their house in Italy for the first time. Some kind of meat would be the star of each family meal. There would always be white Italian bread, and usually a simple salad of romaine with oil and vinegar, and other sides such as rice, pasta, potatoes, or other proteins or vegetables. 

After the long journey to arrive there and the nerves of meeting a lot of my in-laws for the first time, the first lunch and dinner after this fashion tasted so incredibly good to me. And it would have been good even without any appetite inducements. I enjoy my MIL’s cooking just as much as my husband does. (I learned from observing her that to cook well, you don’t need recipes, you need method). But after being offered first and second and third helpings of things like goulash and cevapi and sujuko (types of sausage) for lunch and dinner, and again the next day, and the next, finally on the third day I found myself saying to my mother in law something like, “It’s so good, but I’m just not used to eating this much meat.” 

I’ve since learned that she doesn’t make meat for every meal, but that it’s appropriate when entertaining guests. Guests are extremely important in Roma culture. They can come any time and stay as long as they like, and they are offered the best of everything. So in terms of food, that would be meat. 

After the first week or two of staying at my in-laws, I must have developed a better appreciation for meat, because since then it has become a running joke with any of my Roma family that I can be depended on to be interested anytime someone talks about sujuko.

After a long and justified hiatus from blogging during which we bought a house (hooray!), I’m back!

Tonight I made a walnut jam cake for dessert. Or perhaps I should call it dinner, since I didn’t make anything else. It’s the kind of cake that’s so easy to make and turns out so delightfully that it makes me want to make a cake every Sunday. Once I had it in the oven and was clearing the debris from the counter and sink, my Gypsy man started working with the broom to make things spick and span for the friends who were about to stop by to help us eat said cake. 

When I didn’t move out of his way quite fast enough he swept right over the top of my feet and said off-handedly, “Now you won’t get married.” If it were not my husband speaking, I might have been worried.

 “It’s not just a Gypsy saying; it’s also Italian,” he continued, to lend it more credibility. Such superstitions are characteristic of my husband’s Roma upbringing, and I love the dialogue they add to our life. 

One night we heard a cat screech outside and he said matter of factly that it meant someone was going to die. I was horrified, naturally. 

Then one afternoon when we had been in the car a long time and were far from a usable restroom, he decided to reenact his days as a boy scout and relieve himself in nature. He came back with a proud and amused smile, having remembered that when you pee outside in the woods you have to spit on the pee to prevent anything bad coming your way. 

Such folklore significantly increases the quality of my life. Reflecting on that thought tonight, I told my Gypsy man that marrying him was the best decision I ever made and he said, “Yuck!” Translated, that’s a lot of mushy poetry that basically means, “Ditto.”

I woke up this morning to a laptop being placed on my stomach and my Gypsy man enthusiastically telling me "Batalo to Djurdan! Look at this video!" I was a little confused since waking up is process that usually takes at least half an hour for me, but I enjoyed the video in my half-sleep.

(I don't know why it's not embedding, but see the video HERE.)

It was made in the neighborhood where he grew up, just two years after his family moved away, and shows the festivities for Djurdan--short for Djurdjevdan, an important Roma holiday, which is also called Herdelezi. I've been telling my in-laws Batalo to Djurdan (Happy Djurdan) on May 6 for the last few years and hearing about the good old days when everyone would dress up, go out to a big field, dance, and eat pita and lamb freshly slaughtered by a neighbor--but this morning I could not remember exactly what it was all about.

"Remind me what Djurdan is for?" I asked.
"It's a holiday!"
"Yeah, but for what?
Well, I've noticed that in Roma culture, the fact of a holiday and an opportunity to celebrate is often more important  than its origins or explanations. They find it easier and more interesting to articulate the memories than the rationale. So my Gypsy man had me read this to gain a better understanding. I think it's fascinating that this holiday (not unique to the Roma, but very important to them) has roots both in Christian and Muslim traditions.

I love the mood of the second song that starts at 2:36 and the child's voice. It's crazy for me to think that this was 1994--I was probably playing foursquare at recess and keeping notes in my pink and purple Trapper Keeper with dolphins on it, and I had no clue about a little boy from this other universe who was going to ask me out on a date when we had both grown up. Watching the video makes me feel strangely nostalgic. I love having a connection to this black and white recording of a place that really doesn't exist anymore. All those people left, some even died in the war. I think it's nice to remember their holiday. I want to understand it even more.

I was puzzled when she hugged me and I realized her tears were not just about saying goodbye. I expected to hear, “Have a good trip, we’ll miss you, I wish we didn’t live so far away.” Instead, she said, “Take care of him. He eats little.” It felt like a rebuke, a chastisement. I was offended. On the airplane I asked him why she had been crying so much, why she had said that to me. I didn’t understand what it meant for him to be her baby.

The first time I saw his mom cook was here, a few days before the wedding, for an audience of friends interested in a traditional food made without a recipe by experienced hands. She made a mound of flour directly on the counter, shaping it like a volcano. In the volcano’s hole she poured a little warm water and pinched some flour into it so that beads of dough began to form into a ball. She poured and pinched a little at a time until the volcano was gone and she was kneading one pliant chubby ball of dough. She used a knife to carve off smaller chunks, until it became a colony of miniatures. One little ball at a time, she used her left index finger and thumb to spin around under her right hand, shoving with the base of her thumb, lifting with the tips of her fingers, all in a quick rhythm, until it was a perfect sphere. Then each sphere was flattened, coated with sunflower oil, sandwiched with another one, rolled out with a rolling pin, coated again with sunflower oil, and finally stretched larger than a pizza, thinner than paper, a little translucent. A mixture of eggs, plain yogurt, feta cheese, and salt was waiting in a bowl to be dropped in dollops onto the sheet of dough. Then she folded the edge, rolling up the sheet until it was a long lumpy snake, and coiled the snake onto a greased pan, linking its tail with the head of the next one, until the pan was one spiral of filled and rolled dough sheets. After brushing it all one more time with oil, it went in a very hot oven for half an hour.

Oh I crave this food—pita, it’s called. I learned how to make it, beginning that very first time with her, blushing with embarrassment when with everyone looking at me I couldn’t manage to form one of those smooth spheres, and blushing with anger when he, who had never even attempted to make it, tried with best intentions to give me tips. Once or twice after we had been married for a while, it came out almost perfectly when I made it on my own.

My grandma used to put the butter on the toast before it went in the toaster, so when it came out the butter was all melted into the bread and the toast was crispy and gooey at the same time. She would ask you if you were hungry, and when you said you had already eaten and were full, she would invite you into her kitchen and make you eat some of her canned peaches, broccoli cheese casserole, banana bread, and whatever else she had prepared in the fridge, or at least some sandwich cookies hidden in a pot in the cupboard.

His mom and my grandma knew something I didn’t that day at the airport near our one year anniversary: how it feels to want to feed others just as much as you want to feed yourself.

I hold my baby and I kiss her again and again and again. I hug her and I tell her I love her over and over and over. I worry about what to feed her. What should this little human eat? What is good for her, what is best, is she getting enough?

He and I go to bed and we read. He holds his book open above his chest until the blood probably drains from his fingers, and I prop my book against him, my head on his shoulder. He says he is going to go to sleep. I put my book down and my hand under his neck, my wrist turned up just behind his ear, feeling his hair. I kiss him like a baby on his cheekbone, his eyebrows, his temples, his nose, his jaw, his forehead. His eyes are closed and he lets me, like a baby.

I get it now.