Sunday Sauce

Seasons, sacraments and secrets.

This coming week my youngest child leaves primary school, ending a sixteen year continuous relationship with a place which has educated all four of our children. 32 sports days, 32 class assemblies, 30 Christmas plays, 44 parent’s evenings, and too many school runs to count. A journey which began when I was an idealistic young mum in my twenties, ends as a disillusioned woman in my forties, coping with teenagers and an adult child, with a headful of heart-squeezing memories and too many broken dreams. Raising these kids, a job by no means done yet, hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would at all. I was going to do everything just right, and so of course I messed absolutely everything up because God seems to delight in humbling perfectionists. The task has been way bigger, way scarier, way more joyful and way more painful than I ever imagined. It’s been a lot. Mostly, I’ve been a hopeless parent, but for reasons which have everything to do with God and nothing to do with me, I remain stubbornly hopeful. There’s nothing I would change.

On Saturday nights my husband, who was raised in the north-east of England by Italians, makes Sunday Sauce. Cooking it the night before is absolutely key, he never tires of telling me. The beef, diced into mouthy chunks, sits in a passata and onion sauce for the best part of three hours and it slowly tenderises as it simmers away. This is how his father Giuseppe told him to make it; the night before, so the beef sits in the sauce overnight, taking on more of the flavours and becoming even softer and melt in the mouth tender. This is what Saturday nights smell like in our house; sweet onions, fragrant tomatoes and mouth-wateringly juicy meat, bubbling lazily on the stove, permeating our home with an aroma born in Southern Italy, but now happily adopted by Crewe.

“You need to brown the meat off after the onions have cooked down. They need to be translucent and soft,” my husband tells our 14 old son, two dark heads (one now peppered with white) bent over the giant cast-iron pan where the Sunday Sauce magic happens. The girls have already been taught the ways of the sauce, and the secret is safe with them. One day it will be the turn of the eleven year old too. Maybe all their future homes will also be scented with Southern Italy, a memory of Nanna and Nonno, and being taught how to cook by dad. A comforting throwback to easy weekends when we were all under one roof and all safe together.

Over these sixteen years, along with the recipe for the secret sauce, we passed on other secrets too. We taught them how to love us and how to love each other, which made it easier for them to love other people who weren’t part of us. Growing up as one of four, means you have to learn to share – treats, clothes, space, time. This has been one of the most valuable lessons we’ve taught them, albeit unintentionally. (Also the lesson that you have to be quick off the mark whenever high value treats like Magnums or doughnuts come into the house.) We taught them that sitting together round the table every single day and eating together is a form of communion which echoes the sacrament eaten in church, and that’s why it’s so special. We’ve passed on tales that have the resonance of scripture; our family oral histories which tell stories about who we are, where we’ve come from, and why it matters. We’ve taught them that they belong and that there is always a place for them here, with us and with each other. Most of all, we taught them that we’re not perfect and neither are they, but we love them deeply and completely just the same.

Sixteen years is a long time and I’m so sad that it’s finally come to an end. Seasons come and seasons go, but the secret sauce remains the same. On Sunday afternoon the sauce, now thick and unctuous, will be reheated and served piping hot over penne pasta, with a freshly grated blizzard of Parmesan cheese. We’ll sit together at the table and we’ll chat and bicker and tease, just like we do every Sunday. And I’ll look at them all and wonder, not for the first time, how on earth these four beautiful, noisy people came out of me. And that’s it…right there. That’s the secret sauce. It’s a moment. It’s a rhythm. It’s an unbroken bond, born out of brokenness, blessed by a God who was broken for us all. It’s the thing which holds us all together and I wouldn’t change a thing.