Last Friday we visited the Re Store with Grandma. The Re Store is just an Italian gourmet shop in Northbridge that has a deli where you can get a roll made, but it holds special meaning for me. This is because when we were young, as a school holiday treat, Grandma, Aunty, Uncle Andrew, Aunty Robyn and my cousins Kate and Anna would go there and have a roll made just the way we like it. And on the way out the person on check out would give us a Cadbury chocolate.
It sounds so simple when I type it out like that. But for some reason it was a highly anticipated tradition and treat.
I suspect the reason I loved it as a kid was that I got to feel like I had a bit of culture- us skips would also help out on Tomato Day with the Melias, bottling a years worth of pasta sauce in a day in the front yard of aunty's house under the watchful eye of nonna (uncle Bruno's mum). And I could cling to that, as I didn't realise that we had our own culture at the time. I didn't recognise our own traditions to be important as they weren't hugely obvious, so I tried to swing with my wog cousins in an attempt to feel some form of cultural identity.
Also, I got to spend the morning with my extended family whom I love and adore. Nothing beat that.
So you've made your first trip and I hope there will be more :) You loved your roll, almost as much as you loved watching the pigeons each scraps near the table we were eating at! And you loved all the nativity sets in the window of the store (it was fun describing the scene to you as you would point to each and day 'dat!' and I'd tell you who was who).
Love you monkey.
Mum xxx
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