A question from M. C.
Hello Frank. Loved your book. So many things I can identify with. Thank you for writing it.
I don't believe you mentioned your mother's family other than the one paragraph in the first chapter. Did you have no interaction with them? Is there unpleasantness here? You seem so forthright about uncomfortable truths and yet there is virtually nothing about fully one half of your family.
Thank you for any clarification you'd care to give.
Answer:
That's a great question, though it saddens me somewhat to get it. No, there's no unpleasantness there at all. It's simply that due to certain geographic realities and due to the sort of all-encompassing assertiveness (in a good sense) of my father's extroverted and fiercely close Italian family, Mom got absorbed into it, and let us get absorbed into it, and that side of the family was a bigger influence on us, especially in a gastronomic sense. They were bigger factors in my eating life and eating psychology, for sure.
I just saw one of my cousin's on my mother's side --- one of my Mom's brother's daughters --- a few weeks ago, over dinner in New York. It was lovely to see her, and we had a great visit. It's just that many years elapse between visits: a bad habit we've all fallen into, and a function of busy modern lives.
