Saturday was Sauce Day.

Ever since my father was a child, Saturday had been Sauce Day. And Sauce Day would be a tradition at his parents’ house for the next forty years, until they passed away in 2001. Indeed, every Saturday, Nana would craft her homemade marinara sauce for their weekly pasta supper.

Nana was a child of the Depression, and an Italian immigrant to boot. She was pious, strict, good-natured, and hardworking, but most of all, she was quite accustomed to being poor. All her family could give her on her sixteenth birthday, the day a girl becomes a lady, was a pack of gum. She went on to marry a young navy veteran, and they both worked multiple jobs that could barely feed them and their children. Though she never escaped a working-class life – or maybe because of it – Nana did learn to be resourceful. Surely the most delicious proof of this was her marinara sauce. She could take the big cheap cans of tomato purée — the type poor folk buy by the gallon — and turn it into a gourmet dish. Her “five-meat” sauce, she called it proudly. Everyone else just called it “Ma’s.”

No matter what she could afford to make during the week, Nana always made sure her family had an honest meal on Sauce Day. She would start her task right after breakfast, smoothly palming fresh oregano, Parmesan cheese, reclaimed bread crumbs, and homegrown garlic into the ground beef that would become the best darn meatballs in southern Maine. Lifting herself lightly on a toe, she’d push her hand just past the edge of the towering stockpot, and she’d let them fall with little plup plup plup’s into the simmering tomato purée. Next she would add more spices and the butcher’s discarded-but-palatable hunks of ham, sausage, pork, and chicken – five meats in total – and let them stew in that enormous stockpot for eight slow, stomach-rumbling hours. Carefully, she would place the lid on the pot and go to knit. Every so often, she would amble back to peek on the sauce’s progress, hot steam turning to droplets on her palm when she did. And then, at last, when Papa came home from his day shift at 5:00PM, it would be nearly time for pasta.

Saturday supper could be an overwhelming experience. My father’s sisters would visit, too, bringing their husbands and children and eventually their baby grandchildren, often bearing desserts as tokens of appreciation for the free meal. As could be expected, we would fill that tiny tattered house – with bodies, sounds, smells, and communion – every time we visited. There would be no space to walk, with the sitting room at capacity and the kitchen politely left to the cooks. To a child like myself, this would cause a phenomenon which I termed the Wonderland Effect. The hyper-crowded sitting room would transform into a Lewis-Carroll-style maze of legs and furniture, with ever-changing paths and surprises around every bend, like the occasional tempting cake, leaping cat, or babbling child. It was remarkable: there were so many interesting things in so small a space. So much, from so little: the motif of Nana’s life.

When everything for supper was officially ready, Nana would go to fetch the other children from outside. A casual call always whisked them to the table before the creaky screen door could spring itself shut. Two pounds of rigatoni, cooked al dente with un pizzico di sale, would sit steaming in the strainer in the sink. Eagerly we would sit before our plates, laid delicately on the aged oak dining table and cushioned by handkerchiefs. Saturday supper and visiting family members meant Nana would use the nice plates — the thin, fired-clay saucers that were dabbled with orange-yellow paint meant to be gold. The edges were wavy like the ridges of a classic New England clam shell, and the undersides were left unpainted, a dusty sandy caramel. It was cheaper that way. But they were still the nice plates, the family’s “fine china.”

“Dear Lord,” the room would murmur, “We thank you for this time, for this family, for this good meal upon our table, and for the sacrifices of Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

For once, no one would speak. Only the gentle sounds of sliding tableware over worn cloth would break the silence after grace. Nana, Papa, my parents, my aunts and uncles, and the kids would pass the pasta ’round the table, pass Ma’s sauce ’round the table, pass the Parmesan, the bread, the water pitcher. In that little house there was no space for a dining room, so we all ate in the kitchen, which we managed by fetching a dozen or so folding chairs and a spare table from the pantry. I would have preferred the kitchen, anyway. The air there held the heavy aroma of tomato sauce, Italian meats, and garlic — the sweetest smell to complement the tastes on our lips.

The regular chatter would resume after the first few minutes of delighted dining. What an elegant word – “dining.” But we did dine! We felt like royalty, with a hot, rich meal on the table and my grandparents seated opposite one another, the revered patriarch and matriarch. Although politicians and charity workers often grouped my father’s family with “the poor” or “the underprivileged,” surely they were mistaken. For as far as I could tell, we were certainly not the less-fortunate. Rather, the kitchen was our kingdom on Sauce Day, and we always had riches to spare. And the room would stay warm and comforting and full of love long after supper was cleaned up, after the nice plates were drying on the rack and the blessed leftover food – hallelujah! – was chilling in the fridge. The huge stockpot, dented all over from decades of faithful service, would once again return to its place in the cupboard flanking the stove. Stomachs and souls satisfied with food and family, my siblings and I would climb into Nana’s old bed, all of us together, snuggled like kittens in a basket.

Every Sauce Day was this way. We never went to sleep hungry, we never felt lonely, and we certainly never felt poor.