Italian-American Archives – Lisa Scottoline

By Lisa Scottoline

Recently I mentioned that I received an award from International Thriller Writers called the ThrillerMaster, which makes me sound a lot more exciting than I am.

The award was a lifetime achievement award for writing, and I’m so grateful for it, especially to my readers.

But I’m not bringing it up to brag, but to tell you about the subject of my acceptance speech – my grandfather Giuseppe Scottoline.

Giuseppe came to the United States from the town of Ascoli Piceno in Italy’s Le Marche region, which is rural and beautiful. Unfortunately he passed away before I was born, so I never met him. He was only five feet tall, and by all accounts, he was very shy. My grandmother Mary, whom I knew and loved, was taller than her husband.

And she had no problem speaking her mind.

Giuseppe, Mary, and a daughter settled in West Philadelphia, where they had two more daughters and a young son who would become my father Frank Scottoline.

At first, Giuseppe wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in America, and neither did my grandmother. They were intimidated by this big, busy country, and they’d really believed the myth that the streets were paved with gold, which seems incredible.

The Scottolines are adorably gullible.

But they stayed, and Giuseppe decided to support his family by mowing lawns, with a push mower.

You can see the problem with his business plan.

There’s no grass in West Philadelphia.

So he pushed his mower to the houses that had lawns, and my father told me it was miles away. Giuseppe mowed lawns all day, then pushed the mower back home.

And the Scottolines survived.

What’s remarkable for present purposes is that Giuseppe was completely illiterate. He couldn’t read or write in his own language.

He even signed his name with an X.

I know, I’ve seen it. It wasn’t a big X, like an “X marks a spot” on a treasure map, promising untold riches. It was the little x of a shy and silent man, intended not to draw attention to itself or take up too much space.

And it strikes me as amazing that only two generations later, I received an award for writing books. Me, the granddaughter of an illiterate man.

And as you may know, my daughter Francesca is a novelist in her own right, with her debut novel nominated for Best First Novel by International Thriller Writers and a paperback title Full Bloom coming out this July.

What I’m trying to say is that Giuseppe may have been an unassuming man, but he got himself to this amazing country and thereby changed the story of his family.

His legacy wasn’t millions of dollars, but the hope for something better, which is far more precious.

It really makes me wonder how we measure lifetime achievement.

I’ve written fifty books and I’m delighted that I was recognized with an award.

But where’s the award for people like Giuseppe?

I imagine all the things people like him did during their lifetimes, the hardships they overcame and the obstacles they persevered through.

How many times did they think something wonderful was going to happen, only to learn that the streets were hard with asphalt?

How far did they push their mowers?

How did they stick it out when times became impossibly difficult, through World War II and the Great Depression? Or even now?

There are so many people who have achieved so much in their lifetime, survived, and even flourished through so much adversity, but none of them gets recognition.

I’d love to change the way we think about achievement.

Giuseppe was a little man.

But to my mind, he was a giant.

By Lisa Scottoline

There’s nothing like home improvement to improve your life.

At least, not in theory.

I say this because I’m adding a garden room to my house, even though I don’t even know if that’s a thing, because I have a garden and I want a room in front of it so I can see it through the window.

Like TV, only without Andy Cohen.

The garden room is attached to the kitchen and since it needed a door, the oven and cabinets had to be moved, and in any event, you see where this is going. Adding a garden room meant that the kitchen got remodeled. Because the thighbone is connected to the leg bone and the leg bone is connected to the wallet.

Anybody who’s ever started home improvement knows that as soon as you improve one thing, you have to improve other things, so that everything is New and Improved, like detergent, only much more costly.

But I’m not complaining.

I feel lucky to be able to make these changes, and since I work at home, I’m spending 24/7 on the premises, I want to premises to suit me. And while we’re turning that frown upside down, let me add that since I’m still terribly single, it’s great to have everything exactly the way I want.

Finally.

And then I’ll die.

My epitaph will read:

HERE LIES LISA SCOTTOLINE

DID SHE IMPROVE ENOUGH?

To stay on point, remodeling the kitchen means that I’m starting to look hard at my priorities, namely, spices. Please tell me that I’m not on the only woman who owns approximately 75,932 spices, accumulated over decades, and that the spices are dusted off every decade, which is the only time they’re even touched.

I’m looking at you, cardamom.

How this came about is that when I moved the oven, I lost the shelf above it, which is where I kept the aforementioned spices, and that meant that I had to find the spices a new home or concede the obvious and throw them out.

So I began to cast a skeptical eye at my spice rack.

And it took me on a tour of my own life.

Let’s begin with Marriage Rookie Enthusiasm.

In that time period of my life, I had just married Thing Two, my daughter Francesca was young and I had two stepdaughters living at home. I wanted to be not only the best mother of all time, but also the best stepmother, so I instantly bought American Mom spices, which you use when you bake apple pie. You know the autumnal array of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

To make a long story short, I made exactly one apple pie.

Divorce ensued, but I got custody of the spices.

Then it was just Francesca and me, and being Italian-American, I decided that I was going to make homemade tomato sauce, or gravy. Mother Mary made the best gravy ever, but she refused to give me the recipe because I was a lawyer.

Don’t ask.

I watched her do it and she always used onion salt, garlic salt, salt salt, and extra salt.

No fresh spices were involved.

Yet it was delicious.

Still I could never make gravy as good as she did, and in time I gave up, though I still have the garlic salt. I feel certain that Mother Mary approves, smiling down from heaven and hoping that the garlic salt has solidified into a sodium bullet.

The next stage of my spice life was Francesca going to college, and that was when I decided I wasn’t going to act mopey because I was an empty nester, and believe me, I got over that fast.

LOL.

But in spice terms, that was the time of my Indian Awakening, an idea I got from a Williams Sonoma catalog. I bought every Indian spice known to man, extending well beyond starter curry into garam masala, turmeric, and vadouvan. They came in round pots full of orange and yellow powders, like nightmare blusher.

These were the coolest spices ever, but I never looked at them again because as an empty nester, I stopped cooking altogether.

Which was coolest of all.

This brings us to the present day, when the only spices I use are salt and pepper.

They require neither shelf, rack, nor cabinet.

They’re sitting alone together on the kitchen island, like survivors of a suburban shipwreck.

Where they’ll stay until the next Williams Sonoma catalog comes in the mail.

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